dpapp2

So South Ossetians had no Georgian citizenship at all? I.e. Georgia denounced the citizenship of all of them?

Don't know the exact number of civilians killed during the siege of Tskhinvali, but it was definitely larger than zero.

Fixed it for ya. Deliberately shelling one's own citizens is anything but outright state-sanctioned murder.

Er... the issue is not about F-35 but the Typhoon. The DOD have to pay for 232 Typhoons (24 of them accounted for by SA). A Typhoon-N would come out of that number (specifically, of the 88 tranche 3 birds), a feat that neither the F-35, F-22 nor the Rafale can come even close to.

The current Russian Fleet would go the shorter way, through the Arctic in summer.

I looked into Nathan Okun's work, and the composition is similar to historical face hardened armors - Krupp Cemented and such, unfortunately I found no expressed composition given there. C, Mn, Mo <0.5%.If you exchange 0.5% Si for 1% of Cr (on an atom-by-atom basis) you get a fairly regular FH armor. The substitution of Cr with Si might have been due to the thinness of the plate.

Almost standard medium-carbon high-strength steel, with medium nickel content. Hardened to 58RC ~ 630BHN, about the max you can get if you not want it to get too brittle, but nothing fancy. My guess is that some of the alloying elements came from scrap metal, and Ni was added to reach whatever specifications/properties.

Horses eat grain, too, esp. during winter, so hoarding grain up and denying it to the Mongols is still useful. Scorching pasture in Eastern Europe, is not something to rely on, with rains coming somewhat evenly distributed along the year - you cannot count on when the rains/dry spell would come and how long it would last.

There goes my nice theory through the window

The river Sajo, is a minor one, not much of a width/depth even flooding. Full cavalry, with no army train living on the countryside makes logistics much easier. Most of the Mongols' major river crossing was fording or even swimming - no problem for cavalry without any significant train. Or when the rivers were frozen. Granted, crossing a major river with significant opposition on the other side, either by fording or swimming is very difficult. As the Mongol mobility relied on foraging, withdrawing to walled cities with all the food available and scorching the country would have denied them that mobility advantage.

Compared to the 50% depopulation Hungary suffered during a mere one year of campaign, scorched earth tactics combined with fortresses would have been a viable strategic choice.

It's a bit odd that despite being a 'North Sea Navy' German dreadnoughts had only slightly smaller bunkerage than the British ones.

I'd say the 5" could do the NGFS just as fine but neither the ERGM nor BTERM is alive...

What's the current status of CSAR-X?

There's a History or Discovery Channel documentary on the issue. Their finding was that the main problem was the most shipwrights had experience in building riverine crafts only, so they did built riverine ships (from useasoned timber etc.) IIRC. Hungary was not strongly fortified before the Mongol invasion. It's much easier to keep counts and barons at bay if they do not have large castles to withdraw to. Fortification efforts started only after the lack of strong keeps contributed significantly to the Mongol success and the depopulation.