Free Republic

It had been three days since Egypt and Syria launched a two-headed assault against Israel, and now,..Kissinger and the rest of Richard Nixon’s administration faced a decision with titanic consequences. Should they send a flagging Israel the tanks, jets, and other weapons it needed to win the war? Or let the belligerents duke it out as is? The president and his administration chose the former. For the Israelis, this was a deliverance that could have come from God himself. Simply put, America’s resupply saved Israel.... The whole of the U.S. government was caught unawares by the outbreak of the Yom...

Operation Nickel GrassExcerpt: The Arab states had trained well and Moscow had supplied equipment on a colossal scale, including 600 advanced surface-to-air missiles, 300 MiG-21 fighters, 1,200 tanks, and hundreds of thousands of tons of consumable war materiel. By Monday, the Israelis were reeling as missiles supplied by the Soviet Union took a heavy toll on aircraft and tanks. The IDF was running out of artillery shells and the Israeli Air Force warned that its capability to sustain combat would be exhausted within the week... On 12 October, Nixon decided that no more delays could be allowed, and ordered the...

SPACEPLANE SHELVED? For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few...

5/5/2006 - DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. (AFPN) -- One month after a C-5 Galaxy crash-landed less than a mile short of the runway here, recovery operations are proceeding on schedule, officials said. All 17 people on board survived the April 3 crash. “We started the recovery effort the same day of the mishap and have been working every day since,” said Maj. Rob Triplett, the 436th Maintenance Squadron commander and director of the mishap recovery effort. “Safety has been our number-one priority. Our team’s primary focus, besides safety, was to preserve vital evidence for the safety investigation board.” An...

DOVER, Del. — A C-5 cargo plane carrying 17 people crashed just short of a runway at Dover Air Force Base early Monday after developing problems during takeoff, military officials said. There was no immediate word on fatalities.