Cold War

On April 12th, 1961, a Russian man named Yuri Gagarin made history aboard a Soviet Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft. For years, the United States and Soviet Union had been using the barrier between our world and beyond as a benchmark to test each nation’s greatest technological and engineering advances, and on that day, Gagarin achieved an […]

No fewer than ten Russian submarines, eight of which are confirmed to be nuclear powered, are said to be conducting a large-scale exercise in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. This series of drills could potentially last months, and thus far has been centered around the Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom Gap (commonly referred to […]

The CIA webpage is an oft under-appreciated gem in the U.S. government’s suite of dry, formal websites.  There’s no formal decree that mandates government sites have to be boring, but something about the need to exude inoffensive professionalism throughout every corner of these sprawling domains has sanitized everything .GOV into the digital version of the […]

Back in 1988, the Cold War was not quite as pressing a concern as it had been in years past. Mikhail Gorbachev had already begun his Glasnost initiative to open the nation up both internally and externally, and in the minds of many historians, the gears of progress were already turning toward the fall of […]

On July 9, 1962, the United States launched a Thor rocket armed with a W49 thermonuclear warhead up to an altitude of around two hundred and fifty miles over the Pacific and detonated it.  It took thirteen minutes for the missile to reach its predesignated altitude before the 1.45 megaton explosion illuminated the night sky […]

Good morning. This is the Rhodesian Broadcast System: Two American ex-Marine deserters from the Forces who robbed jewelry stores in Salisbury, while carrying stolen Uzis, were involved in a shoot-out with authorities at the South African border. The two men managed to escape by stealing an aircraft from Charles Prince airport. Their most likely destination […]

One of the things movies always get wrong about firearms is how water will affect the way a bullet travels. Even in the otherwise-almost-too-real “Saving Private Ryan,” bullets are shown flying through water almost exactly as they do in the air: on a straight trajectory and with a lethal amount of kinetic energy. The truth […]

With President Trump expressing an interest in the purchase of Greenland, it seemed like a good time to delve back into the history of American-Greenland relations. One can trace U.S. involvement with the large chunk of ice northeast of the continental U.S. since the Cold War. Then, the threat was different; namely a nuclear armageddon […]

Soldiers from Latvia and Poland recently wrapped up the “Ridge Runner” training exercise in West Virginia which partnered them with American military forces to train in unconventional warfare. The training prepares these Eastern European soldiers for what was once known as the “stay-behind” mission, in the event Russia invaded their countries with conventional or irregular forces, […]

The Cold War was a crazy time in the United States. Kids were taught to duck and cover beneath desks in case of nuclear war, NASA was given a near-blank check to get to the moon, and America invested so heavily in defense that the piles of money alone could have served as cover in […]

While Russia’s new T-14 Armata main battle tank is widely seen as an extremely capable armored platform, budgetary restrictions have severely limited Moscow’s ability to purchase them in enough numbers to serve any real strategic purpose. If a conflict were to ignite between Russia and NATO forces in Europe, it would really be columns of […]

Since Russia’s military annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO officials have been working tirelessly to find ways to effectively counter Russian aggression throughout Europe’s Eastern flank. Troops from throughout the alliance have established new commands all over the continent, and plans continue to develop to mount an even more robust defensive posture in the region. […]