1.
French Armed Forces
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The French Armed Forces encompass the French Army, the French Navy, the French Air Force, the French National Guard and the National Gendarmerie of France. The President of the Republic heads the armed forces, with the title chef des armées, the President is the supreme authority for military matters and is the sole official who can order a nuclear strike. France maintains the tenth largest defence budget in the world and the second largest armed forces in size in the EU, France also maintains the third largest nuclear deterrent behind only Russia and the United States. The Gallo-Roman conflict predominated from 60 BC to 50 BC, with the Romans emerging victorious in the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, after the decline of the Roman Empire, a Germanic tribe known as the Franks took control of Gaul by defeating competing tribes. The land of Francia, from which France gets its name, had points of expansion under kings Clovis I. In the Middle Ages, rivalries with England and the Holy Roman Empire prompted major conflicts such as the Norman Conquest and the Hundred Years War. The Wars of Religion crippled France in the late 16th century, in parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. Resurgent French armies secured victories in dynastic conflicts against the Spanish, Polish, at the same time, France was fending off attacks on its colonies. As the 18th century advanced, global competition with Great Britain led to the Seven Years War, internal political upheaval eventually led to 23 years of nearly continuous conflict in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The rest of the 19th century witnessed the growth of the Second French colonial empire as well as French interventions in Belgium, Spain, other major wars were fought against Russia in the Crimea, Austria in Italy, and Prussia within France itself. Following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Franco-German rivalry erupted again in the First World War, France and its allies were victorious this time. The Allies, including the government in exiles Free French Forces and later a liberated French nation, as a result, France secured an occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The imperative of avoiding a third Franco-German conflict on the scale of those of two world wars paved the way for European integration starting in the 1950s. France became a power and since the 1990s its military action is most often seen in cooperation with NATO. Today, French military doctrine is based on the concepts of independence, nuclear deterrence. France is a member of NATO, and has worked actively with its allies to adapt NATO—internally. In December 1995, France announced that it would increase its participation in NATOs military wing, including the Military Committee, France remains a firm supporter of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other cooperative efforts. Paris hosted the May 1997 NATO-Russia Summit which sought the signing of the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, France has undertaken a major restructuring to develop a professional military that will be smaller, more rapidly deployable, and better tailored for operations outside of mainland France
2.
French Air Force
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The French Air Force is the air force of the French Armed Forces. It was formed in 1909 as the Service Aéronautique, an arm of the French Army. The number of aircraft in service with the French Air Force varies depending on source, the French Air Force has 233 combat aircraft in service, with the majority being 125 Dassault Mirage 2000 and 108 Dassault Rafale. As of early 2016, the French Air Force employs a total of 42,607 regular personnel, the reserve element of the air force consisted of 5,187 personnel of the Operational Reserve. The Minister of Defence is responsible for execution of military policy and he is advised by the Chief of Staff of the Armies in regard to the use of forces and the control of military operations. The Chief of Staff of the French Air Force determines the air force doctrines and advises the CEMA how to deploy French air assets and he is responsible for the preparation and logistic support of the air force. The French took active interest in developing the air force from 1909 and had the first World War I fighter pilots, in the post–World War II era, the French made a successful effort to develop a domestic aircraft industry. Dassault Aviation led the way mainly with delta-wing designs, which formed the basis for the Mirage series of jet fighters. The Mirage demonstrated its abilities in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, the Falklands War, the French Air Force participated in several protracted colonial wars in Africa and French Indochina after the Second World War, and continues to employ its air power in Africa. The Military Air Transport Command had previously formed in February 1962 from the Groupement dUnités Aériennes Spécialisées. The Dassault Mirage IV, the principal French strategic bomber, was designed to strike Soviet positions as part of the French nuclear triad, also created in 1964 was the Escadron des Fusiliers Commandos de lAir, seemingly grouping all FCA units. CFAS had two squadrons of S-3 IRBMs at the Plateau dAlbion, six squadrons of Mirage IVAs, coTAM counted 28 squadrons, of which ten were fixed-wing transport squadrons, and the remainder helicopter and liaison squadrons, at least five of which were overseas. CAFDA numbered 14 squadrons mostly flying the Mirage F. 1C, two other commands had flying units, the Air Force Schools Command, and the Air Force Transmissions Command, with four squadrons and three trials units. In 1994 the Commandement des Fusiliers Commandos de lAir was established, the French Air Force is expanding and replacing aircraft inventory. After an absence lasting several decades, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that France will rejoin the NATO integrated command, from 2008-2010 the Air Force underwent an organisational streamlining process. This project was called Air 2010, which was the year of the deadline for all transitions, the main targets of this project were to simplify the command structure, to regroup all military and civil air force functions and to rationalise and optimise all air force units. Five major commands, were formed, instead of the former 13, CDAOA CFA CSFA DRHAA SAGF The last remaining squadron of Dassault Mirage F1s were retired in July 2014 and replaced by the Rafale. The Chief of Staff of the French Air Force determines air force doctrine and he is responsible for the preparation and logistic support of the air force
3.
French Army
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The French Army, officially the Land Army is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. Along with the French Air Force, the French Navy and the National Gendarmerie, the current Chief of Staff of the French Army is General Jean-Pierre Bosser, a direct subordinate of the Chief of the Defence Staff. All soldiers are considered professionals following the suspension of conscription, voted in parliament in 1997, as of 2014, the French Army employed 111,628 personnel. In addition, the element of the French Army consisted of 15,453 personnel of the Operational Reserve. The Kings of France needed reliable troops during and after the Hundred Years War and these units of troops were raised by issuing ordonnances to govern their length of service, composition and payment. These Compagnies dordonnance formed the core of the Gendarme Cavalry into the sixteenth century, stationed throughout France and summoned into larger armies as needed. There was also made for Francs-archers units of bowmen and foot soldiers raised from the non-noble classes. The bulk of the infantry for warfare was still provided by urban or provincial militias, raised from an area or city to fight locally and named for their recruiting grounds. Gradually these units became more permanent, and in 1480s Swiss instructors were recruited and these men would be paid and contracted and receive training. Henry II further regularised the French army by forming standing Infantry regiments to replace the Militia structure, the first of these the Régiments de Picardie, Piémont, Navarre and Champagne were called the Les Vieux Corps. It was normal policy to disband regiments after a war was over as a cost saving measure with the Vieux Corps and the Kings own Household Troops the Maison du Roi being the only survivors. Regiments could be raised directly by the King and so called after the region in which they were raised, or by the nobility and so called after the noble or his appointed colonel. In 1684 there was a reorganisation of the French infantry and again in 1701 to fit in with Louis XIVs plans. This reshuffle created many of the regiments of the French Army and standardised their equipment. The army of the Sun King tended to wear coats with coloured linings. There were exceptions and the troops, recruited from outside France. In addition to these regiments of the line the Maison du Roi provided several elite units, the Swiss Guards, French Guards, the revolution split the army with the main mass losing most of its officers to aristocratic flight or guillotine and becoming demoralised and ineffective. The French Guard joined the revolt and the Swiss Guards were massacred during the storming of the Tuileries palace, under Napoleon I, the French Army conquered most of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars
4.
French Navy
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The French Navy, informally La Royale, is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces. As of June 2014, the French Navy employed a total of 36,776 personnel, the reserve element of the French Navy consisted of 4,827 personnel of the Operational Reserve. The French naval fleet includes more than a hundred vessels and nuclear type submarines, the history of the French Navy dates back to the History of the French Navy of Antiquity to the Renaissance, part of the History of the French Navy. The French Royal Navy was quasi inexistent prior 1624, the Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, which was both a religious and military order, had its own respective international war fleet which assured the policing of the seas in the Mediterranean. The members which had satisfied obligations for periods in service at sea fulfilling their service, were granted the rank of Knights Hospitaller, however, many considered the naval service formation to integrate later, while being well formed, their respective navy. The Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem was one of the ancestors of the French naval schools and in principal, the Order accordingly formed most of the ships Captains, Officers of the French Royal Navy and Admirals of the Marine française de guerre de la Méditerranée. During the Revolution, the French Navy succeeded to the French Royal Navy, under the First French Empire and the Second French Empire, the navy was designated as the Imperial French Navy. The French Navy is still designated today familiarly as La Royale and this expression was used by commercial sailors due to their military service at the corps of the navy by the institution of maritime inscription. The implementation then of the Ministère de la Marine later the de la Marine de guerre française at rue Royale. The symbol of the French Navy, which was since origin a golden anchor » and this symbol featured on all naval vessels, the arms, uniforms, the couriers, equipment, and general arms of the navy. This symbol was replaced in 1990 by a logo featuring a bow section of a warship with two ascending red and blue spray foams, and the inscription Marine nationale. The Chief of Staff of the French Navy was Admiral Bernard Louzeau, the navy became a consistent instrument of national power around the seventeenth century with Richelieus efforts under Louis XIII, and Colberts under Louis XIV. Under the tutelage of the Sun King, the French Navy was well-financed and -equipped, managing to score several victories in the Nine Years War against the Royal Navy. Financial troubles, however, forced the navy back to port and allowed the English, before the Nine Years War, in the Franco-Dutch War, it managed to score a decisive victory over a combined Spanish-Dutch fleet at the Battle of Palermo. The French Navy scored various successes, as in the campaigns led in the Atlantic by Picquet de la Motte, in 1766, Bougainville led the first French circumnavigation. During the American Revolutionary War the French Navy played a role in supporting the Americans. French warships participated in the battle by bombarding British ground forces, in India, Suffren waged campaigns against the British, successfully contending for supremacy against Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes. In the Mediterranean, the French Navy waged a campaign during a 1798 French invasion of Egypt
5.
National Gendarmerie
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The National Gendarmerie is one of two national police forces of France. It is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior—with additional duties to the Ministry of Defense and its area of responsibility includes smaller towns and rural areas, while the Police Nationale—a civilian force—is in charge of cities and large towns. Due to its status, the Gendarmerie also fulfills a range of military. The Gendarmes also have a cybercrime division and it has a strength of more than 100,000 personnel as of 2014. The Gendarmerie is heir to the Maréchaussée, the oldest police force in France and it has influenced the culture and traditions of gendarmerie forces all around the world—and especially in the former French colonial empire. The Gendarmerie is the descendant of the Marshalcy of the ancien regime, more commonly known by its French title. During the Middle Ages, there were two Grand Officers of the Kingdom of France with police responsibilities, The Marshal of France, the marshalcy dates back to the Hundred Years War, and some historians trace it back to the early twelfth century. Another organisation, the Constabulary, was under the command of the Constable of France, the constabulary was regularised as a military body in 1337. In 1415 the Maréchaussée fought in the Battle of Agincourt and their commander and his existence was rediscovered in 1934. Gallois de Fougières was then recorded as the first known gendarme to have died in the line of duty. Under King Francis I, the Maréchaussée was merged with the Constabulary, the resulting force was also known as the Maréchaussée, or, formally, the Constabulary and Marshalcy of France. Unlike the former constabulary the new Maréchaussée was not a fully militarized force, in 1720, the Maréchaussée was officially attached to the Household of the King, together with the gendarmerie of the time, which was not a police force at all, but a royal bodyguard. English visitors to France saw their armed and uniformed patrols as royal soldiers with an oppressive role, despite their connection with the king, they were therefore perceived as a force favouring the reforms of the French National Assembly. As a result, the Maréchaussée Royale was not disbanded but simply renamed as the gendarmerie nationale and its personnel remained unchanged, and the functions of the force remained much as before. However, from this point, the gendarmerie, unlike the Maréchaussée became a military force. During the revolutionary period, the force responsible for policing was the National Guard. Although the Maréchaussée had been the police force of the ancien regime. In 1791 the newly named gendarmerie nationale was grouped into 28 divisions, in turn, two companies of gendarmes under the command of captains were based in each department
6.
National Guard (France)
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The National Guard was originally a French militia which existed from 1789 until 1872, including a period of official disbandment from 1827 to 1830. It was separate from the French Army and existed both for policing and as a military reserve, for most of its history the National Guard, particularly its officers, were widely viewed as loyal to middle-class interests. This had rapidly spread anger and violence throughout Paris, the National Assembly declared the formation of a Bourgeois Militia on 13 July. In the early morning of the day, the search for weapons for this new militia led to the storming of the Hotel des Invalides. Lafayette was elected to the post of commander in chief of the Bourgeois Militia on 15 July, similar bodies were spontaneously created in the towns and rural districts of France in response to widespread fears of chaos or counter-revolution. When the French Guards mutinied and were disbanded during the same month, the officers of the National Guard were elected. Under the law of 14 October 1791, all active citizens and their role was the maintenance of law and order and, if necessary, the defence of the territory. Following a nationwide scheme decided on in September 1791, the National Guard was organised on the basis of district or canton companies, five of these neighbourhood units made up a battalion. Eight to ten battalions comprised a legion, districts might also provide companies of veterans and young citizens, respectively drawn from volunteers of over 60 or under 18. Where possible, there was provision for mounted detachments and artillerymen, the citizens kept their weapons and their uniforms at home, and set forth with them when required. This combination of colours matched those of the revolutionary tricolour, the former Guet royal had held responsibility for the maintenance of law and order in Paris from 1254 to 1791, when the National Guard took over this role. In fact, the last commander of the Guet royal, de La Rothière, was elected to head the National Guard in 1791, in the summer of 1792, the fundamental character of the guard changed. After 9 Thermidor, year II, the new government of the Thermidorian Reaction placed the National Guard under the control of conservative leadership. The Paris National Guard thereafter ceased to play a significant political role, napoleon did not believe that the middle-class National Guard would be able to maintain order and suppress riots. Therefore, he created a Municipal Guard of Paris, a full-time gendarmerie which was strongly militarised, however, he did not abolish the National Guard, but was content to partially disarm it. He kept the force in reserve and mobilised it for the defence of French territory in 1809 and 1814, between 1811 and 1812 the National Guard, was organized in cohorts to distinguish it from the regular army, and for home defence only. By a skilful appeal to patriotism, and judicious pressure applied through the prefects, with the invasion of France by allied Austrian, Prussian, Russian and British armies in 1814, the National Guard was suddenly called on to provide support for regular Imperial forces. Existing National Guard units, such as those of Paris, were deployed as defence corps in their areas of recruitment, mass conscription was extended to age groups previously exempt from military service, to provide more manpower for the expanded National Guard
7.
Ranks in the French Army
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Rank insignia in the French army depend on whether the soldier belongs to an infantry or cavalry unit. The infantry arms include normal infantry, naval troops, the Foreign Legion and engineers, cavalry arms include armoured cavalry, artillery, maintenance, sleeves are emblazoned with marks denoting either gold insignia for the infantry or silver/white for the cavalry. The title of marshal of France is awarded as a distinction, the marshals wear seven stars and carry a baton. Six marshals of France have been given the more exalted rank of marshal general of France, Biron, Lesdiguières, Turenne, Villars, Saxe. Général de corps darmée, in command of an army corps, général de division, in command of a division. Général de brigade, in command of a brigade, or of a région in the Gendarmerie, a famous général de brigade was Charles de Gaulle, who often wore military uniform whilst being President of the French Republic. There is no distinction between infantry and cavalry generals, since they are all supposed to be able to command any type of unit, in the below descriptions, horse-mounted does not refer to current units but to the traditional affiliation of the units. The word colonel originates in the medieval term capitaine colonel, the head of a column, lieutenant-colonel is the one who can hold the place of a colonel in his absence. The word chef or chief in English comes from the Latin word caput meaning head, a colonel commands a regiment of the army or a groupement of the Gendarmerie. During the French Revolution, they were called chef de brigade, the lieutenant-colonel has the same responsibilities as a colonel. They were called major during the First French Empire, notice that the metal colours alternate silver and gold in each case, as opposed to those of the colonels. This characteristic goes back at least to alternating stripes on the uniforms of that empire in epaulettes, commandant is equivalent to a major in English-speaking countries. A capitaine is in command of a company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry or a battery of artillery, a lieutenant commands a platoon of infantry, a troop of cavalry, or a brigade of the Gendarmerie. A Sous-lieutenant commands at the level as a lieutenant, but is a more junior officer rank. Aspirant An Officer Designate rank, it is used in the Armée de Terre, the Armée de lAir, the Marine Nationale, technically it is not a commissioned rank but it is still treated in all respects as one. Aspirants are either officers in training in military academies or voluntaries, the aspirant must have been previously élève officier. S/He can afterwards be commissioned as a sous-lieutenant or enseigne de vaisseau de deuxième classe, the insignia is a single curl of gold lace, disrupted by flashes of wool. It was widely used during both World Wars for providing young educated people with an officers authority, eleve officier, a rank held during the first years at the officer academies Major, the senior sub-officer rank, is derived from the old abolished rank of maréchal des logis-major
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Ranks in the French Navy
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The rank insignia of the French Navy are worn on shoulder straps of shirts and white jackets, and on sleeves for navy jackets and mantels. Until 2005, only commissioned officers had an anchor on their insignia, the two highest ranks, vice-amiral descadre and amiral, are functions, rather than ranks. They are assumed by officers ranking vice-amiral, the only amiral de la flotte was François Darlan after he was refused the dignity of Admiral of France. The title of de la flotte was created so that Darlan would not have an inferior rank to that of his counterpart in the British Royal Navy. Personnel with a particular attribution may wear distinctive features on their rank insignia, for instance, medical officers bear two red stripes on their insignia. Similarly, the Ingénieur des études et techniques de travaux maritimes wear pearl-grey stripes, peintres de la Marine, who are not employed by the Navy but have a special status, wear a uniform and officier straps with rank insignia replaced with the words Peintre officiel
9.
Military history of France
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The first major recorded wars in the territory of modern-day France itself revolved around the Gallo-Roman conflict that predominated from 60 BC to 50 BC. The Romans eventually emerged victorious through the campaigns of Julius Caesar, after the decline of the Roman Empire, a Germanic tribe known as the Franks took control of Gaul by defeating competing tribes. The land of Francia, from which France gets its name, had points of expansion under kings Clovis I and Charlemagne. In the Middle Ages, rivalries with England prompted major conflicts such as the Norman Conquest, the Wars of Religion crippled France in the late 16th century, but a major victory over Spain in the Thirty Years War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, resurgent French armies secured victories in dynastic conflicts against the Spanish, Polish, and Austrian crowns. At the same time, France was fending off attacks on its colonies, as the 18th century advanced, global competition with Great Britain led to the Seven Years War, where France lost its North American holdings. Internal political upheaval eventually led to 23 years of continuous conflict in the French Revolutionary Wars. France reached the zenith of its power during this period, dominating the European continent in an unprecedented fashion under Napoleon Bonaparte, by 1815, however, it had been restored to the same borders it controlled before the Revolution. The rest of the 19th century witnessed the growth of the Second French colonial empire as well as French interventions in Belgium, Spain, other major wars were fought against Russia in the Crimea, Austria in Italy, and Prussia within France itself. Following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Franco–German rivalry erupted again in the First World War, France and its allies were victorious this time. The Allies, including the Free French Forces led by a government in exile, as a result, France secured an occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The imperative of avoiding a third Franco-German conflict on the scale of the first two world wars paved the way for European integration starting in the 1950s, France became a nuclear power and, since the late 20th century, has cooperated closely with NATO and its European partners. Starting with Clovis,1,500 years of warfare and diplomacy has witnessed the accomplishment of most of these objectives and these periods of incessant conflict were characterized by their own standards and conventions, but all required strong central leadership in order to permit the extension of French rule. Important military rivalries in history have come about as a result of conflict between French peoples and other European powers. Anglo-French rivalry, for prestige in Europe and around the world, continued for centuries, starting in the early 16th century, much of Frances military efforts were dedicated to securing its overseas possessions and putting down dissent among both French colonists and native populations. French troops were all across its empire, primarily to deal with the local population. The French colonial empire ultimately disintegrated after the attempt to subdue Algerian nationalists in the late 1950s. Since World War II, Frances efforts have been directed at maintaining its status as a great power, for example, France withdrew from NATO in 1966 over complaints that its role in the organization was being subordinated to the demands of the United States
10.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
11.
Nuclear triad
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Only the United States and Russia have maintained nuclear triads for most of the nuclear age. Both the US and the Soviet Union composed their triads along the lines, including the following components. Nuclear missiles launched from ships or submarines, although in early years the US Navy sea leg was carrier aircraft based with a very short period using sub launched cruise missiles such as the Regulus before SLBMs were ready to be deployed. SLBMs, launched from submarines, allow for a chance of survival from a first strike. Strategic bombers have greater flexibility in their deployment and weaponry and they can serve as both a first- and second-strike weapon. A bomber armed with AGM-129 ACM missiles, for example, could be classified as a first-strike weapon, a number of bombers often with aerial refueling aircraft kept at safe points would constitute a second-strike weapon. Bomber airborne alert patrols are very expensive in terms of fuel and aircraft maintenance, tactical nuclear weapons are used in air, land and sea warfare. Air-to-air missiles and rockets, surface-to-air missiles, and small air-to-ground rockets, bombs, Naval forces have carried nuclear-armed naval rocket-assisted and standard depth charges and torpedoes, and naval gunnery shells. They possess nuclear forces consisting of land-based missiles, ballistic or long-range cruise missile submarines, chinas nuclear force is much smaller than the US or Russia and is closer in number and capability to that of France or the United Kingdom. This force is mainly land-based missiles including ICBMs, IRBMs, unlike the US and Russia, China stores many of its missiles in huge underground tunnel complexes, U. S. Currently China has one Type 092 submarine that is active with JL-1 SLBM according to Office of Naval Intelligence. In addition, the PLAN has deployed 4 newer Type 094 submarines, the new Type 094 fleet uses the newer JL-2 SLBM. China carried out a series of successful JL-2 launches in 2009,2012 and 2015, the United States expect the 094 SSBN to carry out its first deterrent patrol by 2015 with the JL-2 missile active. There is an aged albeit upgraded bomber force consisting of Xian H-6s with a nuclear delivery role. The PLAAF has a limited capability fleet of H-6 bombers modified for aerial refuelling as well as forthcoming Russian Ilyushin Il-78 aerial refuelling tankers, China also introduced a newer and modernized H-6 variant the H-6K with enhanced capabilities such as launching long ranged cruise missile the CJ-10. In addition to the H-6 bomber, there are numerous tactical fighter and fighter bombers such as the, J-16, J-10, JH-7A, india completed its nuclear triad with the commissioning of INS Arihant in August 2016. INS Arihant is a ballistic missile submarine armed with 12 K-15 missiles with a range of 750 km. India maintains a no first use policy and has been developing a nuclear triad capability as a part of its credible minimum deterrence doctrine
12.
Nuclear weapon
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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. The first test of a bomb released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10 million tons of TNT, a thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate a city by blast, fire. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of destruction, and their use. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in nuclear warfare, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II, the bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The ethics of the bombings and their role in Japans surrender remain the subject of scholarly, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them, israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states, south Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. Modernisation of weapons continues to occur, all existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as bombs or atom bombs. This has long noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom. The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT, all fission reactions necessarily generate fission products, the radioactive remains of the atomic nuclei split by the fission reactions. Many fission products are highly radioactive or moderately radioactive. Fission products are the radioactive component of nuclear fallout
13.
Russia and weapons of mass destruction
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The figures are, by necessity, only estimates because the exact number of nuclear weapons in each countrys possession is a closely held national secret. In addition to weapons, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons in 1997. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol on April 5,1928 with reservations, the reservations were later dropped on January 18,2001. Russia is also party to the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Soviet Union had a peak stockpile of 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1988. It is estimated that from 1949 to 1991 the Soviet Union produced approximately 55,000 nuclear warheads, at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons were deployed in four of the new republics, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Ukraine agreed to give up its weapons to Russia, in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian territory from Russia, the UK, China and France also made statements in support of the memorandum. The exact number of warheads is a state secret and is therefore a matter of guesswork. According to 2016 data from the New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms facts sheet, on the other hand, Russia is estimated to have roughly 1,500 tactical nuclear weapons, all of which are declared to be in central storage. S. In 2015, informations emerged that Russia may be developing a new up to 100 megatons nuclear torpedo, two potential carrier submarines, the Project 09852 Belgorod, and the Project 09851 Khabarovsk, are new boats laid down in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Status 6 appears to be a deterrent weapon of last resort and it appears to be a torpedo-shaped robotic mini-submarine, that can travel at speeds of 185 km/h. More recent information suggests a top speed of 100 km/h, with a range of 10,000 km and this underwater drone is cloaked by stealth technology to elude acoustic tracking devices. After the Korean War, the Soviet Union transferred nuclear technology and weapons to the Peoples Republic of China as an adversary of the United States, subsequently, the Soviet Union built all the essentials of China’s new military nuclear industry. Russia is one of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of Soviet-era nuclear warheads remained on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. It is estimated that the Soviet Union had approximately 45,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse, the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed for a warming of relations with NATO. Fears of a nuclear holocaust lessened, in September 1997, the former secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Lebed claimed 100 suitcase sized nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. He said he was attempting to inventory the weapons when he was fired by President Boris Yeltsin in October 1996, in 2005, Sergey Sinchenko, a legislator from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, said 250 nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. When comparing documents of nuclear weapons transferred from Ukraine to weapons received by Russia, indeed, several US politicians have expressed worries and promised legislation addressing the threat. In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their stockpiles to not more than 2,700 warheads each in the SORT treaty, in 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce each nations nuclear stockpiles to 1,500
14.
Nuclear weapons of the United States
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Before and during the Cold War, it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems. It is estimated that, since 1945, the United States produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, until November 1962, the vast majority of U. S. nuclear tests were aboveground. After the acceptance of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, all testing was relegated underground, under the direction of General Leslie Groves, over thirty different sites were constructed for the research, production, and testing of components related to bomb making. The Trinity test was a plutonium implosion-design weapon tested on 16 July 1945, faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese home islands and with Japan not surrendering, President Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic raids on enemy cities. Between 1945 and 1990, more than 70,000 total warheads were developed, in over 65 different varieties, between 1940 and 1996, the U. S. spent at least $8.89 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons development. Over half was spent on building delivery mechanisms for the weapon, $557 billion in present-day terms was spent on nuclear waste management and environmental remediation. Richland, Washington was the first city established to support production at the nearby Hanford nuclear site. It produced plutonium for use in cold war atomic bombs, after the end of the Cold War following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U. S. Many of its nuclear facilities were shut down, and their sites became targets of extensive environmental remediation. In 1998, the country spent a total of $35.1 billion on its nuclear weapons. According to Brown, the plants at Hanford, over a period of four decades, even today, as pollution threats to health and the environment persist, the government keeps knowledge about the associated risks from the public. Statements by the U. S. government in 2004, however, according to recent reports, much of that reduction was already accomplished by January 2008. Between 16 July 1945 and 23 September 1992, the United States maintained a program of nuclear testing. The U. S. program of nuclear testing exposed a number of the population to the hazards of fallout. The passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allowed for a filing of compensation claims in relation to testing as well as those employed at nuclear weapons facilities. By June 2009 over $1.4 billion total has been given in compensation, a few notable U. S. nuclear tests include, Trinity test on 16 July 1945, was the worlds first test of a nuclear weapon. Operation Crossroads series in July 1946, was the first postwar test series, Operation Greenhouse shots of May 1951 included the first boosted fission weapon test and a scientific test that proved the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons. Ivy Mike shot of 1 November 1952, was the first full test of a Teller-Ulam design staged hydrogen bomb and it was not a deployable weapon, however—with its full cryogenic equipment it weighed some 82 tons
15.
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
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The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is a multilateral treaty that bans all nuclear explosions, for both civilian and military purposes, in all environments. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 September 1996 but has not entered into force as eight specific states have not ratified the treaty. The movement for control of nuclear weapons began in 1945, with a call from Canada. The plan, which would serve as the basis for United States nuclear policy into the 1950s, was rejected by the Soviet Union as a US ploy to cement its nuclear dominance. Between the Trinity nuclear test of 16 July 1945 and the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty on 5 August 1963,499 nuclear tests were conducted. Between 1945 and 1963, the US conducted 215 atmospheric tests, the Soviet Union conducted 219, the UK conducted 21, and France conducted three. In 1954, following the Castle Bravo test, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India issued the first appeal for an agreement on testing. Negotiations on a comprehensive test ban, primarily involved the US, UK, of primary concern throughout the negotiations, which would stretch with some interruptions to July 1963, was the system of verifying compliance with the test ban and detecting illicit tests. On the Western side, there were concerns that the Soviet Union would be able to circumvent any test ban and these fears were amplified following the US Rainier shot of 19 September 1957, which was the first contained underground test of a nuclear weapon. On the Soviet side, conversely, the on-site compliance inspections demanded by the US, disagreement over verification would lead to the Anglo-American and Soviet negotiators abandoning a comprehensive test ban in favor of a partial ban, which would be finalized on 25 July 1963. The PTBT, joined by 123 states following the three parties, banned detonations for military and civilian purposes underwater, in the atmosphere. On the one hand, enactment of the treaty was followed by a drop in the atmospheric concentration of radioactive particles. On the other hand, nuclear proliferation was not halted entirely, compared to the 499 tests from 1945 to the signing of the PTBT,436 tests were conducted over the ten years following the PTBT. Furthermore, US and Soviet underground testing continued venting radioactive gas into the atmosphere, additionally, though underground testing was generally safer than above-ground testing, underground tests continued to risk the leaking of radionuclides, including plutonium, into the ground. From 1964 through 1996, the year of the CTBTs adoption, the final non-underground test was conducted by China in 1980. The PTBT has been seen as a step towards the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968, under the NPT, non-nuclear weapon states were prohibited from possessing, manufacturing, and acquiring nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. All signatories, including nuclear weapon states, were committed to the goal of nuclear disarmament. In 1974, a step towards a comprehensive test ban was made with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, ratified by the US and Soviet Union, which banned underground tests with yields above 150 kilotons
16.
President of France
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The President of the French Republic, is the executive head of state of the French Fifth Republic. The powers, functions and duties of prior presidential offices, and their relation with the prime minister, the current President of France is François Hollande, who took office on 15 May 2012. Hollande has announced that he stand down in the upcoming 2017 French presidential election. President Chirac was first elected in 1995 and again in 2002, at that time, there was no limit on the number of terms, so Chirac could have run again, but chose not to. He was succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy on 16 May 2007, following a further change, the Constitutional law on the Modernisation of the Institutions of the Fifth Republic,2008, a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac are the only Presidents to date who have served a two terms. In order to be admitted as a candidate, potential candidates must receive signed nominations from more than 500 elected officials. These officials must be from at least 30 départements or overseas collectivities, furthermore, each official may nominate only one candidate. There are exactly 45,543 elected officials, including 33,872 mayors, spending and financing of campaigns and political parties are highly regulated. There is a cap on spending, at approximately 20 million euros, if the candidate receives less than 5% of the vote, the government funds €8,000,000 to the party. Advertising on TV is forbidden but official time is given to candidates on public TV, an independent agency regulates election and party financing. After the president is elected, he or she goes through an investiture ceremony called a passation des pouvoirs. The French Fifth Republic is a semi-presidential system, unlike many other European presidents, the French President is quite powerful. The president holds the nations most senior office, and outranks all other politicians, the presidents greatest power is his/her ability to choose the prime minister. When the majority of the Assembly has opposite political views to that of the president, when the majority of the Assembly sides with them, the President can take a more active role and may, in effect, direct government policy. The prime minister is then the choice of the President. This device has been used in recent years by François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, since 2002, the mandate of the president and the Assembly are both 5 years and the two elections are close to each other. Therefore, the likelihood of a cohabitation is lower, among the powers of the government, The president promulgates laws
17.
Nicolas Sarkozy
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Nicolas Sarkozy is a French politician who served as the President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012. Before his presidency, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement party, during Jacques Chiracs second presidential term he served as Minister of the Interior except between March 2004 and May 2005 when he was minister of Finances. Sarkozy was also mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France and he was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur during François Mitterrands last term. During his term, he faced the late-2000s financial crisis and the Arab Spring and he married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. In foreign affairs, Sarkozy promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom, in the 2012 election, the Socialist François Hollande defeated Sarkozy by 3. 2%. After leaving the Presidential office, Sarkozy vowed to retire from public life before coming back in September 2014, on 2 July 2014, Sarkozy was charged with corruption by French prosecutors. In 2016, he ran in the Republican presidential primary, and was eliminated in the first round of voting and they were married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church, 17th arrondissement of Paris, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959. During Sarkozys childhood, his father founded his own advertising agency, the family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozys maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of Paris, according to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today and he also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood, Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a well regarded public middle and high school in Paris 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. Sarkozy enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an M. A. in private law and, later, Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May 68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student organization. He completed his service as a part-time Air Force cleaner. After graduating from university, Sarkozy entered Sciences Po, where he studied between 1979 and 1981, but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language. After passing the bar, Sarkozy became a lawyer specializing in business and they had two sons, Pierre, now a hip-hop producer, and Jean now a local politician in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine where Sarkozy started his own political career. Sarkozys best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent, Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, after they had been separated for several years. As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
18.
France and weapons of mass destruction
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France is one of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is not known to possess or develop any chemical or biological weapons. France was the country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon in 1960. France denies currently having chemical weapons, ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1995, France had also ratified the Geneva Protocol in 1926. France was one of the pioneers, going back to the work of Marie Skłodowska Curie. Curie’s last assistant Bertrand Goldschmidt became the father of the French Bomb, after World War II Frances former position of leadership suffered greatly because of the instability of the Fourth Republic, and the lack of finance available. During the Second World War Goldschmidt invented the method for extracting plutonium while working as part of the British/Canadian team participating in the Manhattan Project. But after the Liberation in 1945, France had to start its own program almost from scratch, nevertheless, the first French reactor went critical in 1948 and small amounts of plutonium were extracted in 1949. There was no commitment to a nuclear weapons program at that time. However, in the 1950s a civilian nuclear program was started. In 1956 a secret Committee for the Military Applications of Atomic Energy was formed, the intervention of the United States in the Suez Crisis that year is credited with convincing France that it needed to accelerate its own nuclear weapons program to remain a global power. With the return of Charles de Gaulle to the presidency of France in the midst of the May 1958 crisis, the decisions to build an atomic bomb were taken. According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D, progress in nuclear science and technology in France and Israel remained closely linked throughout the early fifties. Israeli scientists probably helped construct the G-1 plutonium production reactor and UP-1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule, in 1957 Euratom was created, and under cover of the peaceful use of nuclear power the French signed deals with Germany and Italy to work together on nuclear weapons development. The West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told his cabinet that he wanted to achieve, through EURATOM, as quickly as possible, in 1958 de Gaulle became President and Germany and Italy were excluded. France developed its nuclear and thermonuclear bombs without outside assistance, the United States, however, began providing technical assistance in the early 1970s through the 1980s. The aid was secret, unlike the relationship with the British nuclear program, areas in which the French received help included MIRV, radiation hardening, missile design, intelligence on Soviet anti-missile defences, and advanced computer technology. Because the French program attracted the best brains of the nation, France is understood to have tested neutron or enhanced radiation bombs in the past, apparently leading the field with an early test of the technology in 1967 and an actual neutron bomb in 1980. There were 210 French nuclear tests from 1960 through 1995, seventeen of them were done in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, starting in the middle of the Algerian War
19.
French Fourth Republic
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The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II. France adopted the constitution of the Fourth Republic on 13 October 1946, the greatest accomplishments of the Fourth Republic were in social reform and economic development. In 1946, the government established a social security system that assured unemployment insurance, disability and old-age pensions. Moreover, the government proved unable to make decisions regarding decolonization of the numerous remaining French colonies. After a series of crises, most importantly the Algerian crisis of 1958, wartime leader Charles de Gaulle returned from retirement to preside over a transitional administration which was empowered to design a new French constitution. The Fourth Republic was dissolved by a referendum on 5 October 1958 which established the modern-day Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency. After the liberation of France in 1944, the Vichy government was dissolved, Charles de Gaulle led the GPRF from 1944 to 1946. Meanwhile, negotiations took place over the new constitution, which was to be put to a referendum. De Gaulle advocated a system of government, and criticized the reinstatement of what he pejoratively called the parties system. He resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Félix Gouin, the new constituent assembly included 166 MRP deputies,153 PCF deputies and 128 SFIO deputies, giving the tripartite alliance an absolute majority. Georges Bidault replaced Félix Gouin as the head of government, a new draft of the Constitution was written, which this time proposed the establishment of a bicameral form of government. Léon Blum headed the GPRF from 1946 to 1947, after a new legislative election in June 1946, the Christian democrat Georges Bidault assumed leadership of the Cabinet. This culminated in the establishment in the year of the Fourth Republic. The President of the Republic was given a symbolic role, although he remained chief of the French Army. The wartime damage was extensive and expectations of large reparations from defeated Germany largely failed, the United States helped revive the French economy with the Marshall Plan, 1948-1951, whereby it gave France $2.3 billion with no repayment. France was the second largest recipient after Britain, the total of all American grants and credits to France from 1946 to 1953, amounted to $4.9 billion. The terms of the Marshall Plan required a modernization of French industrial and managerial systems, free trade, after the expulsion of the Communists from the governing coalition, France joined the Cold War against Stalin, as expressed by becoming a founding member of NATO in April 1949
20.
Charles de Gaulle
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Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman. He was the leader of Free France and the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, in 1958, he founded the Fifth Republic and was elected as the 18th President of France, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. He was the dominant figure of France during the Cold War era, born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1912. He was an officer of the First World War, wounded several times. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions, during the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured division which counterattacked the invaders, he was then appointed Under-Secretary for War. Refusing to accept his governments armistice with Nazi Germany, de Gaulle exhorted the French population to resist occupation and he led a government in exile and the Free French Forces against the Axis. Despite frosty relations with Britain and especially the United States, he emerged as the leader of the French resistance. He became Head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic in June 1944, frustrated by the return of petty partisanship in the new Fourth Republic, he resigned in early 1946 but continued to be politically active as founder of the RPF party. He retired in the early 1950s and wrote his War Memoirs, when the Algerian War was ripping apart the unstable Fourth Republic, the National Assembly brought him back to power during the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic with a presidency. He granted independence to Algeria and progressively to other French colonies and he restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a European counterweight between the Anglo-American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring a Europe of sovereign nations, De Gaulle openly criticised the US intervention in Vietnam and the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar. In his later years, his support for an independent Quebec, De Gaulle resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed more decentralization. He died a year later at his residence in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, leaving his Presidential memoirs unfinished, many French political parties and figures claim the Gaullist legacy. De Gaulle was ranked as Le Plus Grand Français de tous les temps, De Gaulle was born in the industrial region of Lille in the Nord departement, the third of five children. He was raised in a devoutly Catholic and traditional family and his father, Henri de Gaulle, was a professor of history and literature at a Jesuit college who eventually founded his own school. Henri de Gaulle came from a line of parliamentary gentry from Normandy and Burgundy. De Gaulles mother, Jeanne, descended from a family of entrepreneurs from Lille
21.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
22.
NATO
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party, three NATO members are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and are officially nuclear-weapon states. NATOs headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons. NATO is an Alliance that consists of 28 independent member countries across North America and Europe, an additional 22 countries participate in NATOs Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the global total, Members defence spending is supposed to amount to 2% of GDP. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004. N. The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Unions Defence Organization in September 1948. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism. He got a hearing, especially considering American anxiety over Italy. In 1948 European leaders met with U. S. defense, military and diplomatic officials at the Pentagon, marshalls orders, exploring a framework for a new and unprecedented association. Talks for a new military alliance resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty and it included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the goal was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in. Popular support for the Treaty was not unanimous, and some Icelanders participated in a pro-neutrality, the creation of NATO can be seen as the primary institutional consequence of a school of thought called Atlanticism which stressed the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation. The members agreed that an attack against any one of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all. The treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor, although obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so. This differs from Article IV of the Treaty of Brussels, which states that the response will be military in nature. It is nonetheless assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily, the treaty was later clarified to include both the members territory and their vessels, forces or aircraft above the Tropic of Cancer, including some Overseas departments of France. The creation of NATO brought about some standardization of allied military terminology, procedures, and technology, the roughly 1300 Standardization Agreements codified many of the common practices that NATO has achieved
23.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
24.
Vietnam War
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It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war. As the war continued, the actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role. U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, in the course of the war, the U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam and they viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U. S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and this was part the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, U. S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U. S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965, despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U. S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973, the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240, 000–300,000 Cambodians,20, 000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict. Various names have applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English and it has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ. It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam, France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the seven decades
25.
Western Europe
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Western Europe, or West Europe, is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Below, some different geographic and geopolitical definitions of the term are outlined, prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. This cultural and linguistic division was reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The division between these two was enhanced during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived, in East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the Far West. The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In his writings, Ricci referred to himself as Matteo of the Far West, the term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Post-war Europe would be divided into two spheres, the West, influenced by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Although some countries were neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political. This division largely defined the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe, the world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had part of the Soviet Union regained full independence. Although the term Western Europe was more prominent during the Cold War, it remains much in use, in 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference, when the Western European Union was established and it was declared defunct in 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries, six member countries, five observer countries. The CIA divides Western Europe into two smaller subregions, regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe, some Western and Northern European countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of EFTA, though cooperating to varying degree with the European Union
26.
Mutual assured destruction
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It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemys use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, the expected result is an immediate, irreversible escalation of hostilities resulting in both combatants mutual, total, and assured destruction. The doctrine requires that neither side construct shelters on a massive scale, if one side constructed a similar system of shelters, it would violate the MAD doctrine and destabilize the situation, because it would not have to fear the consequences of a second strike. The same principle is invoked against missile defense, the payoff of the MAD doctrine was and still is expected to be a tense but stable global peace. It was also responsible for the race, as both nations struggled to keep nuclear parity, or at least retain second-strike capability. Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the MAD doctrine continues to be applied, since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use. In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to defend itself against the others nuclear missiles. This led both to the hardening and diversification of nuclear systems and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This MAD scenario is often referred to as nuclear deterrence, the term deterrence was first used in this context after World War II, prior to that time, its use was limited to legal terminology. Richard Jordan Gatling patented his namesake rotary gun in 1862 with the intention of illustrating the futility of war. No decisive war is possible that will not entail even upon the victorious Power, the destruction of its resources, War has therefore become impossible, except at the price of suicide. In 1937, Nikola Tesla published The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, Tesla described his device as a superweapon that would put an end to all war. In March 1940, the Frisch–Peierls memorandum anticipated deterrence as the means of combating an enemy with nuclear weapons. In August 1945, the United States accepted the surrender of Japan after the attacks on Hiroshima. Four years later, on August 29,1949, the Soviet Union detonated its own nuclear device, at the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use nuclear devices against each other. The official nuclear policy of the United States became one of massive retaliation, the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction and the acronym MAD are due to John von Neumann and his taste for humorous acronyms, another example being his MANIAC computer. He was, among other things, an inventor of theory, a cold war strategist. The RAND corporation futurist and cold war strategist Herman Kahn believed that although MAD was useful as a metaphor, when pushed to its logical conclusion it became absurd
27.
First strike
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In nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. The preferred methodology is to attack the strategic nuclear weapon facilities, command and control sites. During the Cold War period, both superpowers, NATO and the Eastern Bloc, built massive nuclear arsenals, aimed, to a large extent, therefore, at times, both sides refrained from deploying systems capable of unanswerable nuclear strikes against either side. In addition, each side doubted the other sides commitment to not deploy first-strike weapons, or even in the event of their deployment, some first-strike weapons were deployed, however like most nuclear weapons, they were never used. Of the nuclear powers, only the Peoples Republic of China and India have declarative, unqualified, unconditional no-first-use policies. In 1982, at a session of the General Assembly of United Nations. This pledge was abandoned by post-Soviet Russia to compensate the overwhelming conventional weapon superiority enjoyed by NATO. The United States has a partial, qualified no-first-use policy, stating that they not use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Large-scale missile defense systems are not first-strike weapons, but certain critics view them as first-strike enabling weapons and these proposed defense systems, intended to lessen the risk of devastating nuclear war, would lead to it, according to these critics. Indeed, according to theory, the side not building large-scale missile defenses would have an incentive to launch a pre-emptive first strike while such a strike could still get through. First-strike attack, the use of a nuclear first strike capability, was feared during the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Bloc. At various points, fear of a first strike attack existed on both sides, misunderstood changes in posture and well understood changes in technology used by either side often led to speculation regarding the enemys intentions. The USSR countered by developing their own nuclear weapons, surprising the US with their first test in 1949. The 1960 U-2 incident, involving Francis Gary Powers, as well as the Berlin Crisis, along with the test of the Tsar Bomba and this escalating situation came to a head with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other, the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in Khrushchev publicly agreeing to remove the missiles from Cuba, while Kennedy secretly agreed to remove his countrys missiles from Turkey. Both sides in the Cold War realized how close they came to war over Cuba. Nonetheless, this reduction of tensions only applied to the US, the Soviet Union, in response, sent experts to spell out for Castro the ecological consequences for Cuba of nuclear strikes on the United States. Castro, according to the General, quickly became convinced of the undesirability of such outcomes. S, president Ronald Reagans talk of limited nuclear war
28.
Gerboise Bleue
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Gerboise Bleue was the name of the first French nuclear test. It was a bomb detonated near Reggane, in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert on 13 February 1960. The second and third bombs were named respectively white and red, with Gerboise Bleue, France became the fourth nuclear power, after the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. Gerboise Bleue was by far the largest first test bomb up to date, larger than the American Trinity. The yield was 70 kilotons, bigger than these three bombs put together, president De Gaulle stated, In comparison, Fat Man, the Nagasaki bomb, was 22 kilotons, one-third as powerful. Only two other A-bombs tested in the Sahara facilities were more powerful, Rubis, and Saphir, both were detonated underground at the Tan Afella facility. All other French atomic-bomb tests, including Canopus, were carried out in French Polynesia from 1966 to 1996, the last bomb, Xouthos, was detonated on 27 January 1996. As the atomic yield of a new design cannot be precisely predicted. Gerboise Bleue was a success, yielding the full designed power. Furthermore, according to Farr, There were several Israeli observers at the French nuclear tests, from February 1960 to April 1961, France tested a limited number of atmospheric bombs in Reggane facilitys C. S. E. M. Three of them were only engins de secours, with yields deliberately reduced to less than 5 kilotons, with the underground tests the sequence designation was changed to jewel names, starting in November 1961 with Agathe. On 1 May 1962, during the second test, the Beryl incident occurred, five months after the last Gerboise A-bomb, the Soviet Union responded by breaking its atmospheric tests moratorium, settled de facto since late 1958 with the United States and the United Kingdom. The USSR conducted many improvement tests, starting in September 1961 with a series of 136 large H-bombs, the series included the most powerful bomb ever tested, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which was detonated over Novaya Zemlya. Following the USSR, the United States reactivated its own atmospheric test program with a series of 40 explosions from April 1962 to November 1962 and this series included two powerful H-bombs topping 7.45 Mt and 8.3 Mt. China also launched its own program, resulting in the A-bomb 596 tested on 16 October 1964. In 1968, France detonated its first thermonuclear weapon, Canopus, at the new facility at Fangataufa, Gerboise Verte was intended to yield between 6 and 18 kilotonnes, but effectively yielded less than 1. Like Gerboise Rouge, it was followed by a joint exercise in the contaminated area, the test had been patched up hastily and fired prematurely because of the Algiers putsch, as it was feared that the nuclear bomb could fall in the hands of seditious elements
29.
Algeria
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Algeria, officially the Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a sovereign state in North Africa on the Mediterranean coast. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres, Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, the country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes. Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been President since 1999, Berbers are the indigenous inhabitants of Algeria. Algeria is a regional and middle power, the North African country supplies large amounts of natural gas to Europe, and energy exports are the backbone of the economy. According to OPEC Algeria has the 16th largest oil reserves in the world, Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa. Algeria has one of the largest militaries in Africa and the largest defence budget on the continent, most of Algerias weapons are imported from Russia, with whom they are a close ally. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC, the countrys name derives from the city of Algiers. The citys name in turn derives from the Arabic al-Jazāir, a form of the older Jazāir Banī Mazghanna. In the region of Ain Hanech, early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa were found, neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles similar to those in the Levant. Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques, tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian. The earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian and this industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. Neolithic civilization developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb perhaps as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC and this life, richly depicted in the Tassili nAjjer paintings, predominated in Algeria until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a native population that came to be called Berbers. These settlements served as market towns as well as anchorages, as Carthaginian power grew, its impact on the indigenous population increased dramatically. Berber civilization was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, by the early 4th century BC, Berbers formed the single largest element of the Carthaginian army. In the Revolt of the Mercenaries, Berber soldiers rebelled from 241 to 238 BC after being unpaid following the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War. They succeeded in obtaining control of much of Carthages North African territory, the Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars
30.
Thermonuclear weapon
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A thermonuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon that uses the energy from a primary nuclear fission reaction to compress and ignite a secondary nuclear fusion reaction. The result is greatly increased power when compared to single-stage fission weapons. It is colloquially referred to as a bomb or an H-bomb because it employs the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen. The first full scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952, similar devices were developed by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, China, and France. The radiation implosion mechanism is an engine that exploits the temperature difference between the secondary stages hot, surrounding radiation channel and its relatively cool interior. This temperature difference is maintained by a massive heat barrier called the pusher. If made of uranium, as is almost always the case, it can capture neutrons produced by the reaction and undergo fission itself. In many Teller–Ulam weapons, fission of the pusher dominates the explosion, detailed knowledge of fission and fusion weapons is classified to some degree in virtually every industrialized nation. Born secret is rarely invoked for cases of private speculation, in a small number of prior cases, the U. S. government has attempted to censor weapons information in the public press, with limited success. According to the New York Times, physicist Kenneth Ford defied government orders to remove classified information from his new book, Building the H Bomb, the state of public knowledge about the Teller–Ulam design has been mostly shaped from a few specific incidents outlined in a section below. At a bare minimum, this implies a primary section consists of an implosion-type fission bomb. The energy released by the primary compresses the secondary through a process called radiation implosion, at which point it is heated, surrounding the other components is a hohlraum or radiation case, a container that traps the first stage or primarys energy inside temporarily. The outside of this case, which is also normally the outside casing of the bomb, is the only direct visual evidence publicly available of any thermonuclear bomb components configuration. Numerous photographs of various thermonuclear bomb exteriors have been declassified, generally, a research program with the capacity to create a thermonuclear bomb has already mastered the ability to engineer boosted fission. The secondary is usually shown as a column of fusion fuel, around the column is first a pusher-tamper, a heavy layer of uranium-238 or lead that serves to help compress the fusion fuel. Inside this is the fuel itself, usually a form of lithium deuteride. This dry fuel, when bombarded by neutrons, produces tritium, inside the layer of fuel is the spark plug, a hollow column of fissile material that, when compressed, can itself undergo nuclear fission. The tertiary, if one is present, would be set below the secondary, separating the secondary from the primary is the interstage
31.
South Seas
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
32.
Strategic Air Forces Command
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The Strategic Air Forces Command is a command of the French Air Force. It was created on 14 January 1964 and is responsible for the use of nuclear weapons, the headquarters was formerly at Taverny Air Base, but has now moved to Vélizy – Villacoublay Air Base. Général de corps aérien Patrick Charaix is the current commander and this is the equivalent of a lieutenant-generals position. He took command in 2012, after a year as the deputy commander and he took over from General Paul Fouilland, in command from 2007-2012. The first nuclear alert by a Dassault Mirage IV, supported by a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker tanker took place on 8 October 1964 and this date marks the beginning of the operational duty of the French Force de Frappe. It was planned between 1958 and 1961 that the aircraft carrier Verdun be built to deploy bombers at sea, initially, the Force de Frappe consisted of only of the 92 Bombardment Wing, established in 1955 and operating 40 Sud Aviation Vautour IIB bombers. These were considered marginal for a strategic role and work began almost immediately on a replacement. It has been modernized since then, the Mirage IV-P version armed with the ASMP-A missile entered service in 1986. All bomber versions of the Mirage IV retired in 1996 and replaced by Mirage 2000N, in May 1964, Genéral Marie, FAS commander, was replaced by Général Philippe Maurin, former commander of the Tactical Air Forces and French Air Force chief of staff in 1967. In 1968, CFAS headquarters was located at Taverny Air Base under the Montmorency Forest, the base had a fallout shelter. Headquarters was moved on 26 September 2007 to Air Base 942 Lyon – Mont Verdun under Mount Verdun, in 1968, the command included at least 62 Mirage IVs. Eighteen were on alert at under 15 minutes readiness, from 1964 to 1990. Disbanded in July 1966 EB 3/91 Beauvaisis formed 1 June 1965 at Creil Air Base, disbanded 30 June 1976 EB 3/93 Sambre le 6 July 1965 at Cambrai Air Base at Cambrai. Dissolved 30 June 1976 EB 2/93 Cévennes formed 31 July 1965 at BA115 at Orange, later redesignated EB 3/91 Cévennes, the squadron was dissolved in 1983 EB 1/93 Guyenne le 15 October 1965 at Istres-Le Tube Air Base at Istres. Redesignated EB 1/94 on 30 June 1976 and transferréd to Avord Air Base, EB 1/94 « Bourbonnais » on 1 March 1966 at Avord Air Base at Avord. Later became ERV 4/94 Bretagne ERV 4/94 « Sologne » created on 15 April 1966 at Avord Air Base at Avord, finally the command also included, Apt-Saint-Christol Air Base, created in April 1967 under the Plateau dAlbion. This unit parented two squadrons of S-3 intermediate range ballistic missiles, EC 2/4, equipped with the Mirage 2000N, was operational with the ASMP-A since 1 October 2009. Embassy of France in India, Strategic force projection of Rafales
33.
Sud Aviation Vautour
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The Sud-Ouest Aviation S. O.4050 Vautour II was a French bomber, interceptor, and attack aircraft used by the Armée de lAir. Later,28 of these aircraft were used by the Israeli Air Force, Vautour is the French word for vulture. In June 1951 the French Armée de lAir issued a requirement for a jet capable of acting as a bomber. SNCASO adapted its existing S. O.4000 for this purpose, subsequently named Vautour II, the aircraft was built in three versions. It entered service with the AdA in 1958, with the last French aircraft leaving frontline service in 1979, a few soldiered on in various duties into the early 1980s. The Vautour saw no combat in French service, and for much of its AdA service life it was maligned as obsolete, although a moderately good aircraft when originally produced, it never received sufficiently powerful engines. As an interceptor it was outclassed by the Dassault Mirage III, the only export customer for the Vautour was Israel, which purchased 28 for the IDF/AF. The Israeli Vautours also entered service in 1958 and they saw combat against Egypt beginning the following year and in a series of actions through the Six Day War and War of Attrition. The Israeli Vautours took part in bombing, strafing and air-to-air engagements, in the Six Day War, over three days Vautours fought repeated combats with Iraqi Air Force fighters while raiding H-3 airfield in Western Iraq. On June 6,1967, Captain Ben-Zion Zohar scored the only aerial victory when he downed an Iraqi Hawker Hunter. In all 15 Vautours were lost and they were retired in 1971 in favor of the A-4 Skyhawk, and the last aircraft left service in March 1972, serving as decoys in the Sinai. The Israelis were pleased with the Vautours range and versatility, the Vautour was a shoulder-wing monoplane with a 35° swept wing and a flying tail. Two SNECMA Atar 101 turbojet engines were carried in pods in the wings and it had bicycle-type landing gear, with the main units in the fore and aft fuselage and smaller stabilizing gear in the engine pods. The central fuselage carried a large 5.0 meter weapons bay, both the IIB and IIA were limited to clear-weather operations in daylight only. The IIN interceptor had some capacity for night and adverse weather though the use of its radar, a fleet of 40 Vautour IIBs constituted the original air-based component of the French force de frappe, the Commandement des Forces Aériennes Stratégiques of the French Air Force, established in 1955. Their performance were considered marginal for the bomber role, thus. This unbuilt variant would have had a radius of 1,700 miles while travelling at a speed of Mach 0.9. 4050-01, Two-seat all-weather fighter prototype, powered by two 23. 5-kN Atar 101B turbojet engines, first flew on 16 October 1952
34.
Dassault Mirage III
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The Dassault Mirage III is a family of single-seat, single-engine, fighter aircraft produced by Dassault Aviation for the French Air Force and widely exported. Prominent operators included Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and Israel, though an older design, the second-generation fighter is a fairly maneuverable aircraft and an effective opponent in close-range dogfighting. In French service it was armed with air-to-ground ordnance or R.550 Magic air-to-air missiles, the versatility of the design enabled production of trainer, reconnaissance and ground-attack versions, as well as the Dassault Mirage 5, Dassault Mirage IIIV and Atlas Cheetah variants. A Mirage III was the first Western European combat aircraft to exceed Mach 2 in horizontal flight.3 in level flight, the aircraft had a tailless delta configuration, with 5% thickness and 60° sweep. The tailless delta configuration has a number of limitations, the lack of a horizontal stabilizer meant that flaps cannot be used, resulting in a long takeoff run and a high landing speed. The delta wing itself limits maneuverability and suffers from buffeting at low altitude due to the wing area. However, the delta is a simple and pleasing design, easily built and robust, capable of speed in a straight line. The first prototype of the Mystère-Delta, without afterburning engines or rocket motor and with a large vertical stabilizer. After a redesign, the stabilizer was reduced in size, afterburners. In late 1955, the prototype attained Mach 1.3 in level flight without rocket assist, the small size of the Mirage I restricted its armament to a single air-to-air missile, and it was decided during flight trials that it was too small for a useful armament load. After trials, the Mirage I prototype was eventually scrapped.2 kN, the Atar was an axial-flow turbojet, derived from the German World War II BMW003 design. The new fighter was named the Mirage III, like the Mirage I, the Mirage III had provision for a booster rocket engine. The success of the Mirage III prototype resulted in an order for 10 pre-production Mirage IIIA fighters. These were almost 2 meters longer than the Mirage III prototype, had a wing with 17. 3% more area, a chord reduced to 4. 5%, and an Atar 09B turbojet with afterburning thrust of 58.9 kN. The SEPR841 rocket engine was retained, it was fitted with Thomson-CSF Cyrano Ibis air intercept radar, operational avionics. The first Mirage IIIA flew in May 1958 and eventually was clocked at Mach 2.2, the tenth IIIA was rolled out in December 1959. One was fitted with a Rolls-Royce Avon 67 engine with thrust of 71.1 kN as a test model for Australian evaluation and this variant flew in February 1961, but the Avon powerplant was not adopted. The first major production model, the Mirage IIIC, first flew in October 1960, the IIIC was largely similar to the IIIA, being less than a half meter longer and having a full operational fit
35.
Dassault Mirage IV
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The Dassault Mirage IV was a French jet-propelled supersonic strategic bomber and deep-reconnaissance aircraft. Developed by Dassault Aviation, the entered service with the French Air Force in October 1964. For many years it was a part of the nuclear triad of the Force de Frappe. The Mirage IV was retired from the strike role in 1996. The Mirage IV was ultimately not adopted by any other operators beyond the French Air Force, thus, the development of a supersonic bomber designed to carry out the delivery mission started in 1956 as a part of the wider development of Frances independent nuclear deterrent. In May 1956, the Guy Mollet government drew up a specification for a supersonic bomber capable of carrying a 3-metric-ton,5. 2-meter-long nuclear bomb 2,000 km. According to aviation authors Bill Gunston and Peter Gilchrist, the inclusion of supersonic speed was surprising to many at the time. The final specifications, jointly defined by government authorities and Dassault staff, were approved on 20 March 1957.9, in April 1957, Dassault were informed that they had won the design competition. Dassaults resulting prototype, dubbed Mirage IV01, looked a lot like the Mirage IIIA, even though it had double the wing surface, the Mirage IV also carried three times more internal fuel than the Mirage III. The aircrafts aerodynamic features were similar to the IIIs but required an entirely new structure. This prototype was 20 metres long, had a 11 metres wingspan,62 square metres of wing area, the 01 was an experimental prototype built to explore and solve the problems stemming from prolonged supersonic flight. The sizable technological and operational uncertainties were only one part of the problem, the weapon-related issues were the other. It took 18 months to build the 01 in Dassaults Saint-Cloud plant near Paris, in late 1958, the aircraft was transferred to the Melun-Villaroche flight testing area for finishing touches and ground tests. On 17 June 1959, French General Roland Glavany, on a leave from the French Air Force since 1954. For its third flight, on 20 June 1959, the 01 was authorized to fly over the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport in front of Frances President Charles de Gaulle. On 19 September 1960, René Bigand increased the record for speed on a 1000-kilometre closed circuit to 1,822 km/h around Paris. Flight 138, on 23 September, corroborated the initial performance and pushed the record on a 500 km closed circuit to an average of 1,972 km/h, flying between Mach 2.08 and Mach 2.14. The Mirage IV01 prototype underwent minor modifications during testing in the autumn of 1959, most noticeably, the tail was enlarged.4, the Mirage IVB proposal had been instigated as a response to interest by Charles de Gaulle in ensuring that two-way strike missions could be flown
36.
AN-11 bomb
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The AN-11 was Frances first nuclear weapon, developed to arm the Force de frappe. The AN-11s development began in the late 1950s, an early version was used in Frances first nuclear test, Gerboise Bleue, on 13 February 1960. The first AN-11 prototype was tested 1 May 1962, and it entered service in 1964, the AN-11 was a pure fission weapon, a plutonium implosion type. It was a bomb intended to be dropped from high-altitude bombers. The explosive Nuclear weapon yield was about 60 kt, about 40 AN-11s were produced between 1963 and 1968. The carrier was the Dassault Mirage IV, although some reports suggest the Sud Aviation Vautour could also carry this bomb, beginning in 1967 it was replaced by the more advanced AN-22 bomb
37.
Unguided bomb
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This described all aircraft bombs in general service until the latter half of World War II, and the vast majority until the late 1980s. Then, with the increased use of precision-guided munitions, a retronym was needed to separate smart bombs from free-fall bombs. Dumb bomb was used for a time, but many military circles felt it sounded too trite, previously, they were also referred to as iron bombs. Unguided bombs typically use a contact fuse for detonation upon impact, one alternative is a fuse with an altimeter, to cause an air burst at the desired altitude. The retarded bomb uses a method of creating increased aerodynamic drag, such as a parachute, ballute. However, these bombs are less accurate than conventional free-fall bombs, generally the high-drag tail replaces the low-drag so that the same bomb can be configured for either mode of attack during weapons preparation. High-drag bombs can also be dropped in low-drag mode if the pilot selects this option in the weapon system
38.
SEPECAT Jaguar
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A carrier-based variant was also planned for French service, but this was cancelled in favour of the cheaper Dassault Super Étendard. The airframes were manufactured by SEPECAT, a joint venture between Breguet and the British Aircraft Corporation, one of the first major joint-Anglo-French military aircraft programs, the Jaguar was exported to India, Oman, Ecuador and Nigeria. In the Gulf War, the Jaguar was praised for its reliability and was a valuable coalition resource, the aircraft served with the French Air Force as the main strike/attack aircraft until 1 July 2005, and with the Royal Air Force until the end of April 2007. It was replaced by the Panavia Tornado and the Eurofighter Typhoon in the RAF, in both countries several companies tendered designs, BAC, Hunting, Hawker Siddeley and Folland in Britain, Breguet, Potez, Sud-Aviation, Nord, and Dassault from France. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in May 1965 for the two countries to two aircraft, a trainer based on the ECAT, and the larger AFVG. Cross-channel negotiations led to the formation of SEPECAT in 1966 as a joint venture between Breguet and the British Aircraft Corporation to produce the airframe. As a result, the initial Br.121 design needed a thinner wing, redesigned fuselage, a rear cockpit. A separate partnership was formed between Rolls-Royce and Turbomeca to develop the Adour afterburning turbofan engine, the Br.121 was proposed with Turbomecas Tourmalet engine for ECAT but Breguet preferred the RR RB.172 and their joint venture would use elements of both. The new engine, which would be used for the AFVG as well, would be built in Derby, Dassault favoured its own Mirage G aircraft above the collaborative AFVG, and in June 1967, France cancelled the AFVG on cost grounds. The RAF had initially planned on a buy of 150 trainers, however, the RAFs strike line-up was at this point intended to consist of American F-111s plus the AFVG for lighter strike purposes. While the RAF had initially planned to buy 150 trainers, the TSR2, as a result, by October 1970, the RAFs requirements had changed to 165 single-seat strike aircraft and 35 trainers. The Jaguar was to replace the McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR2 in the air support, tactical reconnaissance and tactical strike roles. Both the French and British trainer requirements had developed significantly, and were eventually fulfilled instead by the Alpha Jet, from these apparently disparate aims would come a single and entirely different aircraft, relatively high-tech, supersonic, and optimised for ground-attack in a high-threat environment. The first of eight prototypes flew on 8 September 1968, a two-seat design fitted with the first production model Adour engine and this aircraft later went supersonic on its third flight but was lost on landing on 26 March 1970 following an engine fire. The second prototype flew in February 1969, a total of three prototypes appeared in flight at the Paris Air Show that year, the first French A prototype flew in March 1969. In October a British S conducted its first flight, an M prototype flew in November 1969. The M had an airframe, an arrestor hook and different undercarriage, twin nosewheel. After testing in France it went to RAE at Thurleigh for carrier landing trials from their land based catapult, in July 1970 it made real take offs and landings from the French carrier Clemenceau
39.
Dassault Mirage 2000N/2000D
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The Dassault Mirage 2000N is a variant of the Mirage 2000 designed for nuclear strike. It forms the core of the French air-based tactical nuclear deterrent, the Mirage 2000D is its conventional attack counterpart. The Mirage 2000N was designed to French requirements for an aircraft to replace the older Mirage IVP. Dassault received a contract to two prototypes. The aircraft first flew on 3 February 1986, seventy four were built up to 1993. The Mirage 2000N is based on the Mirage 2000B two-seat trainer, the airframe was strengthened for low-level flight and fitted with an Antilope 5 radar, which is used for terrain following, navigation and ground mapping, and which can follow terrain at 1,112 km/h. Other avionic features are twin INS units and moving map displays for both the pilot and weapon systems officer, the Mirage 2000N can carry one ASMP medium-range nuclear missile, and can also carry two MATRA Magic AAMs for self-defence. Other protection features include the Sabre jamming system and the Spirale chaff system, because the extra seat decreases range, a pair of drop tanks are carried. These did not have the Spirale chaff system, and carried a pair of AN.52 free-fall nuclear bombs before the ASMP was ready, the later batch of 44 aircraft were designated Mirage 2000N-K2. These had both a nuclear and conventional capability, and a defensive fit. The K1 aircraft now have a conventional attack capability. Dassault has also developed the Mirage 2000D, which is a development of the Mirage 2000N designed for precision strikes with conventional weapons. This aircraft is exactly the same as the Mirage 2000N, but introduces support for conventional attack missiles such as the Apache and Scalp missiles, as well as the AASM weapons. The first aircraft, converted from the Mirage 2000N prototype, flew on 19 February 1991, the Mirage 2000N is not licensed for export. The French Air Force has 62 in its inventory, like the Mirage 2000N, the Mirage 2000D had variants. French Mirage 2000s were prominent participants in UN and NATO air operations over the former Yugoslavia, adA Mirage 2000Ds served in the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001–2002, operating in close conjunction with international forces and performing precision attacks with LGBs. The French Air Force deployed the Mirage 2000D to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan from 2002 to 2004 to support forces in Afghanistan. Then from 2004 to 2007, they stayed at Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in summer 2007, after the Rafale fighters have been removed from the theater of operations,3 French Mirage 2000s were deployed to Afghanistan in support of NATO troops. To shorten the time to support NATO ISAF troops in southern Afghanistan
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