Free Republic

Germany's air fleet was grounded this week after "too much biodiesel" fuel found its ways into the gas tanks, according to German reports saying the Luftwaffe cannot safely fly with such a mixture. Germany's Tornado fleet of war planes was reportedly grounded after an unsafe mixture including too much biodiesel was used to fuel the planes, requiring the fleet to be grounded and their fuel tanks flushed. "The tolerance values are minimally exceeded," Colonel Kristof Conrath of the Tactical Air Force Squadron 51 was quoted as saying in media reports. "It's not that the aircraft would fall from the sky....

It was December 2015, and Dr Weisi Guo was having dinner and listening to the grim news about the conflict in Syria. Over the previous decade, Dr Guo had grown increasingly troubled by the amount of violence towards civilians. He had worked in UNHCR refugee camps in Algeria and seen the human cost at first hand. His own expertise - as an academic specialising in communication networks and telecoms - seemed a world away. But as a physical scientist he wanted a model to help understand the nature of conflict, and so a highly innovative approach began to take shape....

Mueller’s indictment is an ineffectual response to a provocation by Russia. The Russians are engaged in “information warfare” against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses. That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution — the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s...

Donald Trump’s recent proposals to register Islamics living in the United States and to bar more Islamics from entering this country until we can determine how to separate the dangerous ones from those who are not dangerous show that he is the only candidate who understands what a Fourth Generation world will be like. The hysterical denunciations from all other candidates except Senator Cruz demonstrate they don’t get it. While that alone may not be enough to indicate Trump would be a good president, it strongly suggests none of his opponents are fit to hold the office. Whether they like...

A warning that Iran is planning something and trying to divert our attention from what that is, and that Israel will not tolerate the manufacture of more precise weapons that will eliminate the advantage that they hold in the region, nor will they respond gently to missiles coming from Lebanon.Also, a reminder that we who follow prophecy are more aware of what is happening than the usual newspapers or even the leaders of the United States and Russia.God is sovereign and is doing just what he wants to do.

They were Hitler's equivalent of the Dirty Dozen and known as the 'worst of the worst' - an entire SS division made up entirely of psychopaths, murderers and rapists and led by a child molester. The 36th Waffen SS Grenadier Division, commanded by Oskar Dirlewanger, was initially created to wage war against resistance fighters in Poland, but soon became a weapon of terror used indiscriminately against civilians and armed combatants alike.

If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq. If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon...

Pappy folded the newspaper he had been browsing as he had made his way along the path from his quarters to his office, tucked it under his arm and reached for the knob on his office door.

The first essay in this three-part series about Noah Feldman’s “The Three Lives of James Madison” discussed how Madison’s theory of war powers was focused heavily on internal dangers to liberty and republican governance from war or standing armies. The allocation of the declare war power to Congress played only a small role in his theory. More important were structural checks on national-level military establishments, especially constitutional provisions that preserved state militias as the primary source of military manpower and that required Congress to fund—and then keep funding—a national army. Without an army, the president couldn’t fight a war regardless...

I have long believed two things about constitutional war powers, which my reading of Noah Feldman’s “The Three Lives of James Madison” largely confirmed. First, James Madison was brilliant and prescient about many things, but the strategy and politics of war were not among them. Second, modern constitutional critics of an imperial presidency place too much weight on the declare war clause—and especially Madison’s statements about it. Madison, indeed, worried deeply about unchecked presidential war powers. But Feldman’s book shows that Madison did not emphasize the same risks and checks so often ascribed to him today, especially by congressionalists who...

In the last half of last year, U.S. armed forces under President Donald Trump’s direction launched 2,000 air strikes against Taliban targets in Afghanistan. That constitutes more raids than in all of 2015 and 2016 combined, the last two years under President Barack Obama’s command. “The huge spike in airstrikes is the product of new rules of engagement, adopted as part of a strategy that President Trump announced in August,” reports the Washington Post. “U.S. forces can now strike Taliban targets at will, whereas under the Obama administration they were restricted to defending Afghan forces under imminent attack.” Like the...

Need a little help folks. A co author has joined the "Old Sergeant" team---Meet Gayle Rae! She has developed a new character and since the Old Sergeant was practically born on FR I wanted to give you first glimpse and also to get your reaction to her writing. Tell us what you think. And thank you.

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour. Beria and Stalin, back...

Sweden is preparing to issue a public information manual on what to do in the event of war, as debate in the country grows over how to deal with the threat from Russia. The brochure, due to be sent to 4.7m households, will inform the public how they can take part in “total defence” during a war and secure water, food and heating. The booklet with the working title If Crisis or War Comes will also give guidance on dealing with threats from cyber attacks, terrorism and climate change, the FT reported. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military support for...

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas threatened war if US President Donald Trump does not allocate Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian State. In a Cairo speech, Abbas said, "Jerusalem is the key to peace if it is our capital, and if it is not - it is the key to war. Trump will need to chose." According to Abbas, Trump provoked millions of Muslims by choosing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "There is no such thing as a Palestinian who will give up even one millimeter of Jerusalem," he claimed. Last week, Abbas told the Palestine Liberation...

Like Hannibal, I wanted to rank powerful leaders in the history of warfare. Unlike Hannibal, I sought to use data to determine a general’s abilities, rather than specific accounts of generals’ achievements. The result is a system for ranking every prominent commander in military history.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday claimed that the tone of comments adopted by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia towards Iran was virtually “a path to war”, Reuters reports. “The official line pursued by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are our allies in many ways, is almost one that would lead us to war,” Macron was quoted as having told reporters. The line being taken was “a deliberate strategy for some,” he said, while adding that France wanted to maintain some balance. “Otherwise, we end up surreptitiously rebuilding an ‘axis of evil’,” he said, referring...

South Korea's defense authorities said Thursday there has been no indication of an imminent missile test by North Korea, responding to U.S. news reports that the secretive nation appears to be preparing to fire another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). "There is no activity that would lead to an assessment that a missile provocation by North Korea is imminent," Army Col. Roh Jae-cheon, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing. He pointed out, however, that it's possible for the North to press ahead with a missile provocation anytime, adding South Korea and the United States are...

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave a full-throated defense Friday of U.S. efforts to prevent civilian casualties in the conflict in Yemen, making the case that without American involvement, there would be more. Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said that “it’s a tragedy every time” a civilian dies, but that the United States is held to a high standard when it comes to preventing civilian fatalities. “We are being held to a standard – ‘we’ being us and anyone associated with us – that has never been achieved before in warfare,” he said. The comments came after two separate...

On a frosty, starlit night, a miracle took place. In 1914, a melody drifted over the darkness of No Man’s Land. First “O, Holy Night,” then “God Save the King.” Peeking over their trenches for what must have been the first time in weeks, British soldiers were surprised to see Christmas trees lit with candles on the parapets of the enemy’s trenches. Then a shout: “You no shoot, we no shoot!” The Christmas Truce was a brief, spontaneous cease-fire that spread up and down the western front of World War I. It’s also a symbol of the peace on Earth...