History Book Lessons: First Spy Satellites Were Civil War Balloons
On June 16, 1861, at the invitation of the War Department, Lowe ascended in Enterprise 500 feet above the capital, telegraphing U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in the White House: “This point of observation commands an area nearly 50 miles in diameter.
Here s What You Need To Remember: The principles behind balloon observation endured - even though the practice itself was criminally underused by the Union Army.
A week after the first shots of the War Between the States at Fort Sumter in April 1861, the future of warfare came to Appalachia. Plowmen in the remote Allegheny Mountains heard a voice calling, “What state is this?” and, seeing no one about, replied toward the nearest woods: “Virginia.”The voice answered, “Thank you,” and the farmers were startled by a stream of sand pouring, unbelievably, from the sky. Looking up they saw, hanging in space above them, a gargantuan cloth sphere. Professor
The Bloodiest Day in American History Came in 1862
As recently as 2009, the remains of soldiers who were interred on the field, their final resting places forgotten, have been rediscovered.
Here s What You Need To Remember: Even though McClellan knew Lee s plans in advance, the Battle of Antietam was drawn-out - and horrific. Some units sustained casualties approaching three-fourths.
During the September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam, casualties piled almost too high to count. The culmination of the first invasion of the North during the American Civil War by General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, it was the bloodiest single day in the history of the United States and the bloodiest day’s fighting ever in the Western Hemisphere. Due to the massive scale of the losses, the Antietam death toll has always been hard to accurately determine.
Since the commissioning of HMS
Dreadnought in 1963, the Royal Navy has maintained a formidable force of nuclear attack submarines. Indeed, HMS
Conqueror is the only nuclear attack submarine (SSN) to ever sink an enemy warship in anger. But the Royal Navy has undergone a transformational crisis over the past decade, shrinking in size and changing in composition. The latest nuclear attack subs, the Astute class, have become a critical component of the future of the Royal Navy but, given Russia’s resurgence, are they enough?
Origin
The Royal Navy operated nineteen nuclear attack submarines across the course of the Cold War. As in the United States, the fall of the Soviet Union changed the requirements for the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet. The UK initially expected to build what amounted to Trafalgar Mark II boats: subs focused on antisubmarine warfare, expected to defeat Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic and the Arctic. But the collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically r
Israel has most of what it needs from the United States; in several areas, the technical capabilities of the IDF exceed those of the U.S. military. But in some areas the Israelis could take more advantage of U.S. technology.
Barring a total collapse of the Pyongyang regime, China is unlikely to invade North Korea any time soon. The economic, political, and military costs outweigh the benefits at least for now.