Re:Nearly half of Mariupol has suffered grave damage
by gfodor on Friday April 22, 2022 @09:59PM
(#31130660)
It has been a rule: the US and USSR went to insane lengths to maintain plausible deniability of direct military-to-military engagement. The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets! The scenario I am arguing against is the one proposed in some circles that nuclear armed NATO members ought to shoot down Russian jets over Ukraine.
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Re:Nearly half of Mariupol has suffered grave damage
by dragonwriter on Saturday April 23, 2022 @05:31AM
(#31132661)
> The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets!
They spoke in Korean sometimes (but especially under stress, spoke Russian), and flew Soviet jets based in China and nominally assigned to Air Defense, not Frontal Aviation.
They weren't maintaining plausible deniability, but a transparent fig leaf. We knew they were Soviet pilots, and they knew we knew they were Soviet pilots.
And the Soviet anti-aircraft crews shooting down American jets in Vietnam didn't even have a transparent fig-leaf of not being Soviet troops.
Re:Nearly half of Mariupol has suffered grave damage
by gfodor on Saturday April 23, 2022 @09:44AM
(#31134204)
Fair, but why the leaf?
Re:Nearly half of Mariupol has suffered grave damage
by dragonwriter on Saturday April 23, 2022 @01:00PM
(#31136008)
In the 1950s, when it was bothered with? To provide a face saving way to back down without changing the official narrative in the absence of MAD constraining escalation of geographically-constrained conventional combat. Nuclear arsenals we're tiny at the time of Korea.