User talk:Buckshot06

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AFRICOM

I am relatively new to Wikipedia, so please forgive me for not following proper editing procedures. However, I do believe that you are inaccurate to claim I am "slanting" knowledge and "removing information that does not support your [my] view".

There were two reasons why I removed the sentence about a potential AFRICOM headquarters in Ethiopia. First, it was pure speculation. There have been newspaper articles and similar projections about the headquarters being located in nearly half dozen African countries, including Liberia, Morocco, Kenya, Algeria, and Ethiopia. Thus, I felt that it would be best to wait for more concrete information and not to give one guess (out of many) credibility.

Second, the idea that a headquarters will be on the African continent seems to be outdated, at least for the foreseeable future. In a recent Voice of America news article (VOA is funded by the U.S. government), General Ward is reported to have explained that "the United States has no plans to move its headquarters to an African location once it becomes a full-fledged command in October". http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-11-voa64.cfm Jkenne10 (talk) 15:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Military reseves

I agree with your additions to the military reserves force page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_reserve_force). I feel that

i) Military reserve force should be one page and lists of reserves a different page.

ii) more work needs to be done wrt to the paragraphs on sources, employment advantages and disadvantages.

also I have rewritten the page on military reserve (the ones who are held back from a battle) here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_reserve). Your input would be very valuable.

thanks 58.65.163.248 (talk) 07:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Military District article

Do you happen to know why the Imperial Russian and Soviet districts were removed from the article, how and why? I don't seem to remember a discussion and there isn't one on the talk there--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 22:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I failed to make a note of this and just forgot, also forgetting to install a link!--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 22:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags)

I wasn't aware of this, so I guess you were right in removing them off the Army articles.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 01:37, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

reconnaissance phrasing

Is it more correct to say "air reconnaissance mission of Paris" or "air reconnaissance mission on Paris"?--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 05:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Top Ten Team

I haven't forgotten this just been monstrously busy. On top of various WP things, I have the builders in destroying about a quarter of the house. I'll formulate some ideas over the weekend. Thanks for your understanding, --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Talk:2 star rank

Of no great importance or urgency, but I saw your edit, wondered about task forces, read a number of the linked pages, thought about it, and realised that there are still gaps in my understanding. When convenient, can you enlighten me a little as to the relationship between "2 star rank" and the "National" task force? Thanks, Pdfpdf (talk) 08:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Armed Forces of Belarus

I know you have seen the official site of the Ministry, but you may not have seen the Russian version http://mod.mil.by/geraldika.html with all the new unit patches that just about gives you the entire OOB. I thought you may be interested. I had seen the Romanian OOB with the patches next to the unit name which looked nice.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 11:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the new reading glasses :-) and continued SF/SOF article planning

We all have individual quirks in our visual perception, although you are far more precise and diplomatic than the Massachusetts Motor Vehicle Registry, whose clerks seem to want to override my opthalmologist.

In the case of Wikipedia, I have a visual or mental block on effective use of categories, and much appreciate such changes as you made to FIDscraps.

Changing the subject slightly, FIDscraps has the distinction of being semi-orphaned within my userspace, yet is one example of a notable criticism of current interpretation of U.S. special operations doctrine. We have talked about the idea of having globalised articles on the concept of certain SF/SOF roles and missions, with articles on specific national doctrines. With mild amusement, I'm watching the US UW article migrate through several variations of names, and I enjoy watching because that is a process where I have mental blocks.

FIDscraps is probably not the only legitimate topic for an article on criticism of national various doctrinal concepts. Trinquier's French writings, for example, do have a systematic discussion of what he believes is a proper role for torture. There are clearly differences between British and U.S. doctrine for urban counterinsurgency, but the doctrines in the Malayan Emergency are yet another set of ideas.

Where should criticism of doctrines go? Under the same category as the national doctrine?

More seriously, at the end of the foreign internal defense article, which, in the model we have been discussing, should be restricted to U.S. doctrine for counterinsurgency, there is some material on historic British and French doctrine. Are you aware of anything that sets out SF roles and missions for British or Commonwealth SF? ISTR some discussion when 14 Intelligence Company and other units were merged into Special Reconnaissance Regiment, but I didn't have the sense of that being exhaustive. I don't read French (well, I can manage an occasional cookbook), so I don't know if they have a doctrinal model; hopefully there is something more recent and appropriate than Roger Trinquier's Modern Warfare. You mentioned, I believe, that there is a NZ term as well.

Can you make any suggestions as to moving that British and French material to possibly new national doctrinal categories? I'd also appreciate any suggestions for naming those articles. Note that there is one multinational article that I believe should stay as-is because it addresses a specific historical period, Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action. Nevertheless, that article has some bearing on these topics.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

173rd Airborne

A wuick note that the self-refs have been drastically pruned. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Boevoy Sostav

You know Buckshot06, I am learning a lot from our interaction.

The edit I made to add 42nd Army to the Narva battle and you undid pointing to the "source above", was either "Boyevoy sostav" or God.

That reference has no meaning! It is not linked, and does not specify which source of the Boyevoy sostav it refers to! However, I shall look for the right Boyevoy sostave in case you don't trust me--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Surprises with insurgency article

You might be surprised on what assumptions are made by people who aren't especially familiar with military history, even though they might be obvious to us. I have no problem with your deleting what indeed seems a silly point, but in various article discussions, I have run across:

• Saying something in our country is counter-terror means we are being included in Bush's Global War on Terror
• Insurgency is the unique term for what is being done against the Americans in Iraq

You'll see me moving things around among three articles:

• Insurgency
• Counter-insurgency
• Foreign internal defense

which is quite separate from the UW work (other than UW should point to insurgency). The models should no longer be in FID, just the US doctrinal response to a model dynamic. The current counter-insurgency needs to get some material into it, point to the models, and have lots of orphaned citations either put inline or deleted.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Laughable may be the right term, but it's amazing how confused people get from listening to talking heads. My all-time favorite is the first-time "foreign correspondent" for a U.S. television station, who blurted, from Belgrade, "The former Yugoslavia is becoming balkanized!"

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Doctrine

I've withdrawn the nomination of Category:United States Department of Defense doctrine over the "doctrine" vs. "doctrines" issue. Thanks for your input; it was helpful. I think I must have missed your comments on the initial nomination (I was away for 2 days or so in between the nomination being placed and the new category being created), so I'm sorry to have made you be repetitive. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Cat changes

• this is Mr. Clark, borrowing my human's fingers*

What do you mean, "cat change"? Rhonda and I are the same felines we've always been, as are the other 13 resident cats, 2 kittens to be adopted, and four dogs and a squirrel who believe they are cats.

• returning control*

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

MeeeOOOWWW! Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Russian Army

Hi Buckshot, I have some days off now - so what structure graphic is next? is the Baltic Fleet data you posted on my talkpage still correct? --noclador (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Naming of operations

• Illythr - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Illythr#Naming_of_campaigns_on_the_Eastern_Front
• common name
• WP:OR
• 'As for the rest - note the trend: the GSE, a "general" encyclopedia uses the common name, whereas the SMED, a "specialist" dictionary, uses the long one. This is probably the main point of contention here - Wikipedia is "generalist", that is, it aims for the broadest range of readers possible, and thus prefers popular names to "specialist" ones, even is the latter are more precise. Your last sentence applies 100% to the situation when common names are used as article names as well, as long as the full name used by specialists is mentioned in the first sentence of the lead section. --Illythr (talk) 00:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)'

Test User:Buckshot06(prof) 00:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC) Test2 Buckshot06(prof) 00:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The NATO Barnstar

		The NATO Barnstar
		For some excellent and much needed work on the NATO article and your creation of the Enlargement of NATO article. Not finding an appropriate award, I'm presenting you with the first ever NATO barnstar. Hopefully it'll help encourage good editing like your own in the future.--Patrick Ѻ 14:08, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

35th Iraqi Army brigade - Battle of Basra OOB

Hi, just a quick comment on your addition to the Battle of Basra (2008) participating units section. It was my understanding that the Iraqi Army had renumbered all of their brigades so that the 3rd Brigade of the 9th (Armored) Division is actually the 35th Brigade. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with my original addition that the 35th brigade is armored but the 3rd brigade is motorised. I think it could be that the "3rd motorised brigade" you're referring to is the 3rd brigade of the 1st QRF Division which was sent to Basra from Al-Anbar at the end of March, beginning of April... if that's the case, I think the 3rd brigade should be listed under the 1st Division (and replace the 1st brigade which is currently listed which would seem to be incorrect). Please double check your sources and I'll do the same. Just FYI, I'm using MNF-I/MNF-W press releases (The USMC has a number of useful releases about the 1st QRF) and the Long War Journal Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle. Lawrencema (talk) 04:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Russian Military Directory

Frankly, I've not seen them myself, and I'm not sure there are any other volumes than those two. Last I heard, Harriet was working on family genealogy projects, and I thought Bill had passed on some time ago. I'm wondering if these might not be reprints of their 1979 work The Armed Forces of the USSR; Westview Press (their old publisher) doesn't list them, so any independent republishing would likely have required a title change. I don't follow Sovietology like I used to. After the fall of the USSR, general interest in its military history has likewise fallen off. Even well-respected and popular writers like Glantz have seen falling remuneration from their work; in fact, I've heard that he's starting up his own website for self-publishing and sales purposes. Specialist publications have become pricier as a consequence of ever smaller print runs. Your best bet would be to work with a good research librarian. I tried running down a publisher on the Net and couldn't find a reference to one. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

General of Army Baluyevsky

Have you seen anything more on the conflict between Baluyevsky and the Minister for Defence RF?--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 01:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, there is too much to translate today, but the gist of this http://nvo.ng.ru/forces/2008-03-28/1_afront.html is that the Minister ordered the transfer of the HQ of the RF Naval Forces to St Petersburg. The Chief of General Staff said in a public forum that this is unnecessary. The costly transfer is unwanted in the GS, and it had been passed to Putin, and remains unresolved now that Medvedev is in. It is particularly unwelcome as far as the Black Sea and Pacific Ocean Fleets are concerned.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 06:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Template Problem!

I am now! ;-) Kirill ^(prof) 00:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

HMS Cardiff

It's come up before, here's a list of all the online refs I could find for her. Unfortunately most of the '82 crew left after the war (a common occurence I hear), the one particluar veteran I speak to went to HMS Invincible. All I know is that she had a couple of weapons upgrades... Ryan4314 (talk) 06:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

At a quick glance I found some minor stuff, some guy died onboard on 83 (don't know how), and there may have been some sort of tribunal over the friendly fire incident in 86 (that'd be true, originally they thought the helo had just crashed), but I'm worried these sources aren't up to FA standard. Ryan4314 (talk) 07:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I am UK based, but not anywhere near Wales, I could try my public library anyway though. Ryan4314 (talk) 08:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

OIC, like sources in books n stuff? Ryan4314 (talk) 09:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

17th Airborne Division

Hi there! Thanks for all the help on the article's project page. I think I've done all you asked, so I was wondering if you might give it a look over and see if it was up to B-Class status? Many thanks, Skinny87 (talk) 16:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Cheers for the comment, I've added the Divisional Order of Battle and properly cited it (Well, I hope) Skinny87 (talk) 09:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Professionalism essay link

I'm using "Raw Signature" with [[User:Kirill Lokshin|Kirill]] <sup><small>([[User:Kirill Lokshin/Professionalism|prof]])</small></sup> as the signature itself; you should be able to do pretty much the same thing by changing the links & formatting around. Kirill ^(prof) 00:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Special Projects Dept

Well, having resisted the temptation to call it Baron von Nuckshot's Flying Circus, it looks like "Special Projects Dept" is finally up and running. I'll probably create the home page late this arvo (UTC). Say, here Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Special projects with shortcuts of WP:MHSP and WT:MHSP. There's been little discussion of the mechanics so input from you would be helpful. Anyway, in the meantime, here's something for you. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 12:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For not one but two brilliant ideas resulting in the creation of the Milhist Special projects dept, please accept this What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Distance in military affairs

Yes, it definitely does need some cleanup. I suspect there's a valid topic hidden under there somewhere. Perhaps Hcberkowitz would have a better idea of what to do about it. Kirill ^(prof) 13:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

First, it's confused about presenting a U.S. or global view. Even if it's globalised, there still has to be a question of whether "distance" is regional or worldwide. For the latter, a country is going to need amphibious forces and at least S/VTOL carrier, or perhaps experienced air-refueled bombers, and transports for paratroops. How many countries can say they have this? Demonstrated capability: US and UK. Potential capability for at least brigade/regiment operations: France, Russia, India, (not sure about status of amphibs and aviation vessels for Spain and Italy), Japan if they build the ships and the political will, and, maybe for smaller units, Israel.

There are some fairly clear U.S. doctrines, such as Global Reach from the Air Force, From the Sea as the Navy contribution; and mundane but important things like the prepositioning ships at bases around the world.

I'm not sure where to start. To be honest, I'm in something of a partial Wikibreak, exploring Citizendium a bit. I've gotten very tired of the vandalism, the inability to use expertise, the POV wars and incivility. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as the distance article, I'd like to say something like delete if and only if no revision. It's the sort of thing that I'd be interested to see at CZ, where, as I understand, a capital-E Editor posts to the talk page, "this needs to be fixed. Here are some suggestions." Now, if they are ignored, there might be a reluctant deletion, or maybe some very significant rewrite if it interested the Editor.

I have a great deal of distaste for the PROD and even worse Speedy Delete at WP. Several times, I've been nominated either by a bot, or even instantly deleted by an admin with fairly obvious lack of subject matter knowledge (i.e., if you can't be more specific than "cruft" as why you deleted without even discussing...). In every case, I've survived the deletion, often without a rewrite but with giving context to why the article is there.

Unfortunately, I've gathered momentum. I'd like to take all of the article-wide-scope templates of disapproval, and, if the editor who put them there does not have the gonads to make constructive comments on fixing or the brain to say why it is an inappropriate article, I would be inclined to print the article on heavy paper, fold it until it is all corners, and present it, along with appropriate lubricants, to the author thereof.

As I mentioned here, there is a kernel of value to the article---you can see that I was able to scope the problem and give some suggestions for improvement just above.

With respect to Congo, I didn't create that article. Ernxmedia decided not enough was being done at the regional level. He asked me what I thought, and I said that it certainly made sense, within the context of the regional articles, to have sub-articles for individual countries that had entries that were far too long to be in the main article.

Other than for that case, I preferred, especially for the less extensive country entries, to leave them at regional level, for several reasons. Remember, this is not generally about the country, but about CIA and the country. Often, in the third world, there are regional intelligence reports that should stay near the countries, if for no other reason than ease of crosslinking. In other cases, while there are no explicit regional reports, there are border disputes and transborder issues (e.g., Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia) that make more sense when you can glance back and forth in the same article.

As far as I'm concerned, I never suggested, agreed to, or thought it would be a good idea to take 100% of the countries down to country article, linked from the regional article. Once he did it, bluntly, I didn't care enough to go back and restore to the way it ought to be. I'm sick and tired of individuals making sweeping changes to large articles without any real attempt to gain clear consensus about what was planned.

Congo-CIA, in the context of CIA-Africa, made sense. As you point out, there is not really enough content to justify an article, but if it is folded into Congo Crisis, the idea of having a clear CIA hierarchy starts to break down. I'm at the antithesis of WP:OWN; I don't think that it's possible to have a comprehensive set of any fairly worldwide topic at Wikipedia. I may stop fixing vandalism to the main CIA article very soon; I just don't see it as worth the effort.

Please believe I'm not angry with you, but I had gone to regional level, and not lower, for a reason. Someone decided it was better to fix every pipe in the plumbing system, when there was only a few leaks. I just don't much care what happens here. If people start folding stub-level country articles into other articles, I'll just back away from CIA, because I'm certainly not motivated to try to restore the regional system, for which I agreed fully that complex country sections, and only complex sections, needed to be broken down to country level. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Shaulay

It is the English transliteration of the Russian transliteration of Luthuanian city Šiauliai Bogomolov.PL (talk) 10:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Special projects

Your last edit on special projects isn't very professional. I deleted it for that reason. Affiliation is a clearly defined English word. Regards Wandalstouring (talk) 12:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I had an old version, good you removed it yourself. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Intelligence and related acronyms

I don't know if New Zealand has cockroaches as its particular annoying insect pest, but I believe someone in the U.S. government decided that if enough acronyms could be generated, it would keep out the roaches.

NOIWON is not strictly intelligence: National Operations and Intelligence Watch Officer Network. In the past, it was a voice teleconferencing link; might have video now. In addition to the 24/7 watch centers at various intelligence agencies, it has operators such as the duty officer at the White House Situation Room, and, depending on the particular Situation, they may include the duty officer at the appropriate regional or functional (Space, Strategic, Transportation, Special Operations) Unified Combat Command.

Just from memory, there's a description of its use in the book MiG Pilot by John Barron, which describes how NOIWON was used to coordinate U.S. response to Belenko's defection with a MiG-25. I can probaby dig up some more formal references. It's just a dedicated communications link, new only if you were not aware of the watch centers. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Tag and Assess 2008

Thank you sir for your help. Still I have more dout but my engineering exam is from 20 may upto 21 june so i will be away from wikipedia. So I will clear my dout when I will return .I am on a wikibreak :-(--Suyogaerospace^{talk to me!} 12:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Belgrade offensive

You know, I really do not have a clue what you are talking about in your comments "on nothing like 'supporting' an Army Group was stated". I reverted that because the order of the words was reversed by DIREKTOR from my original. The fact is that all of Army Group E was trying to escape being cut off by the 3rd Ukrainian Front. In the "hew" version of history it is the two Red Army Fronts that are supporting the Yugoslav Army Group that was WAY off to the northwest, with only two of its Corps in the immediate proximity of the major part of the offensive until late in the operation when a third Corps joined in. Its the "tail wagging the dog", and you have just helped rewrite a little piece of history without so much as looking at the map just like the DIRECKTOR.
In any case, I am surprised by your attitude since it was you who once rebuked me for not referencing stubs, and here you are encouraging an editor of all of 1 month in completely changing the structure of a large article based on nothing better then a completely unreferenced, and seeming game dedicated online site. Whatever happened to your academic training? Then again, supporting "sources" like those of David Irving in the "Second Battle of Kharkov" probably have contributed to your perception of my trying to Russify English Wikipedia. I am quite frankly dismayed by the approach you take in regards to my editing as opposed to your own, however, what's new. You may as well also call in an admin because I will be reverting anything that is added to Belgrade Offensive by DIREKTOR which is not adequately referenced. You may also want to look at his editing history. Much "interesting" stuff here--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 23:12, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

You are now aiding in possible copyright violation--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 23:48, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Selective reading

As someone pointed out in an unrelated case, the guideline is "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Seeing how your moto is "anything goes" I will check your sources more carefully in future--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 10:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Tags

I did a few articles with simple tags to see if the bot that takes project tags off if there is no talk is still running. If it is not running within the next month I will start retagging all the other articles that have been removed from the project (that I know of)--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 09:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You're in Military Technology's World Defence Almanac 2008

Oh dear, another one... Thank you very much for the information - and yes, you can help: first I need to know who is the publisher (I think it is Mönch Publishing Group from Germany: http://www.monch.com/index.php ) second I would be extremely helpful if you could scan the page and email it to me. I emailed you my email address through wikimail. Once again- thank you very much, --noclador (talk) 09:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm a German-Italian, living most of the time in Austria... also I will write them in German - the Mönch Publishing Group is well known and more important German companies react much more sensitive to copyright issues than Italian companies (bless the swift German courts ;-). as for the scan: I emailed you my Austrian email address through the wikipedia option "E-mail this user", but if my email doesn't reach you this way: my wikipedia username noclador is also my email address @hotmail.com (I will not put the two parts of my email together, as I do not want automatic spam programs to find it ;-) thanks, --noclador (talk) 09:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Library of Congress

Citizendium allows verifiable expertise as well as citations -- I was an employee of the Library of Congress for over three years, and was the network architect so actually was aware of connections to other libraries. IIRC, the British Museum may not be even #2; Harvard University Library is in the top 5. Don't have an immediate citation.

For something like this, CZ accepts the detail if supported by my verifiable resume, which they have for my editor status. I started off on MARC standards; Henriette Avram was my second-level boss, and I even taught Daniel Boorstin how to use our databases. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Not sure of the list. Offhand, Library of Congress, British Museum, and Harvard University are up there. Johns Hopkins and Princeton Universities are very large. I can't speak to the size of the New York City public library system, but I know when the people at the Library of Congress didn't have something, that was one of the first places they look. LC, incidentally, maintains something called, IIRC, the National Union Catalog, which is a catalog of the things they do not have. Contrary to urban legend, LC does not retain a copy of every book copyrighted; they take about 20% of the material from the Copyright Office, and then various other institutions can have the leftovers. There is a significant cost in cataloging and other accession activities for individual books; in the mid-seventies, the average book cost about USD $50 in salary to catalog. They tended not to retain paperbacks, but if something went into the collection, it was put into a durable binding -- if they thought it had serious long-term value, they'd acid-neutralize the paper unless it was already archival quality.

There's also a question on whether you are measuring total number of items in the collections, total number of books, or of documents. Especially if the latter, while the Library of Congress has a large document collection, I have little doubt that in the U.S., the National Archives have more cataloged documents -- but do you count them as a library? While there are probably rather interesting things in the Vatican Library, I'm not sure how much physical space they have.

One oddity is that the Library of Congress isn't officially the U.S. national library; there are only national libraries in Medicine and Agriculture. Do you compare specialized libraries?Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:17, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Peoples' Militia

Why can't you just stick to editing something you know about?! You do not know Russian, you do not know Russian military history and yet you challenge me at every article! Народ (narod), the root of Narod-noye, means a single nation, and refers only to Russians. Therefore it is incorrect to translate it into either Peoples' or People's militia, because in the first case, in English, it means a militia of a "people" left undefined, and in the second case is equally incomprehensible.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 09:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Current senior Australian Defence Organisation personnel

I've just added my vote to keep this page. - Thank you. (Most appreciated.)

You don't seem to list 2-star reserve officers at all, as Cdr 2 Div isn't there. - True. I had difficulty finding out who Cdr 1 Div is. (Wilson has been in situ for nearly a year now, and many sources still say it's Ash Power in that position.) To date, I haven't been able to track down reliable info about Cdr 2 Div.
Incidently, although I think I've now got all the 3-stars, I know there are some 2-star positions that I can't find any incumbent info about (i.e. the known unknowns), and I still keep finding 2-stars I wasn't aware of (i.e. the unknown unknowns).

I don't know whether this is intentional or not ... - It isn't. I just haven't found reliable information. (Yet.)

Great work overall on the page; I hope people start copying the format; I'd love to see a similar page for the US, or UK, or China or Russia or France etc. Best regards Buckshot06(prof) 10:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Well thank you! Pdfpdf (talk) 12:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Please add "place-keeper" rows to the table for positions that you know are missing. (That way the unknown unknowns become known unknowns.) Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a thought. I'll look into it. Thanks, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Counterproliferation

(We are going through some halfway sane approaches on things such as counterproliferation and counter-proliferation, Cuban Missile Crisis and Cuban Missile crisis, etc.) Rather than argue the ambiguities, pick one and redirect the rest. We did pick transnational over trans-national to follow the actual CIA office designation).

As to China, I started working on the counterproliferation article yesterday, which I think was the last transnational article. Under the expertise model there, I did put in some observations about Chinese/Korean BW--it's nice when you know something is finally declassified and you can put some pieces together. The observation about Chinese beliefs, whether rational or not, about BW, I believe, is very much affected by WWII Japan.

I'll have to look to see if the repetition was still there; I was doing various cleanup.

There was some material I yanked about Russian chemical warfare -- there was only one part that had anything to do with CIA, as opposed to a Wall Street Journal rant about Bill Clinton. My yanking, however, was, again, expert opinion on CBR. First, the reporter seemed to think binary weapons are more horrible, when they are both safer in handling and easier to predict the delivered concentration -- but offer disadvantages for IEDs and the like. Second, given the Russian budget problems, I am hard pressed to see why they would be investing scarce resources in CW. Against who are they going to use these agents, which, in many cases, are less effective on the battlefield, per unit of weight, than PGMs in general and cluster munitions (about the latter, I tend more to the fix rather than ban totally, especially since the banning movement seems to have trouble distinguishing between antipersonnel and anything else that comes out of a dispenser). It's really amazing to find the amount of essentially irrational cruft that thing picked up at what I call The Other Place. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 13:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Edward Steptoe notability

Please consider removing the notability template you placed on the Edward Steptoe article. The other tags are perfectly appropriate (needs to be expanded and needs attention by an expert). It doesn't appear that you do much editing in the field of the late 19th century Indian Wars in the western United States territories. The Steptoe story, coupled with the Battle of Pine Creek (which needs an article) was a national story at the time. The following biographical sources have entries on Steptoe:

Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States. During its first century; from original and official sources. By Charles Lanman. Washington, DC: James Anglim, 1876.

Drake's Dictionary of American Biography. Including men of the time, containing nearly 10,000 notices of persons of both sexes, of native and foreign birth, who have been remarkable, or prominently connected with the arts, sciences, literature, politics, or history, of the American continent. By Francis S. Drake. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1872.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890. By Jerry Keenan. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997.

Also, you might want to read the main source cited in the stub:

• Johnson, Randall A., May 17, 1858. The Ordeal of the Steptoe Command (HistoryLink.org essay No. 8123)

I am totally unaffiliated and unrelated to the Steptoe line and am thus not personally invested in the gentleman. However, I regularly edit and update other articles specifically on the Native Americans and the so-called Indian Wars in that part of the country. In time, the Steptoe article will get my attention, but there are others who work in this same area who might be stimulated to get to this, hence, the creation of the original stub and the placement of useful sources to flesh out the article.

Thank you for considering my request. -- Quartermaster (talk) 03:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI. I went ahead and expanded the article (it's still brief) and included a portrait. I've deleted the existing notability, expand, and expert templates, but feel free to put one or all back. It should be more inherently obvious now why Steptoe is notable. Not that he's this huge figure in history, but he does appear in various sources (see above) and President Pierce did offer him the governorship of the Utah Territory to replace Brigham Young (see the article). -- Quartermaster (talk) 14:54, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Aircraft of the Indian Navy

Hi there

You've hit the nail on the head. I was just speaking with a couple other users and admins about doing exactly what you propose and upgrading the scope of this article to cover the entire Naval Air Arm. Will work on it this weekend. Marathi_Mulgaa (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for making the edit to the article name. Marathi_Mulgaa (talk) 00:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

RE:Discussion and categories

I agree with your recent musings on the category subpage, I think they are sensible. I agree with Roger however that you shouldn't reply point by point to Mrg, that just leads down a bad road, one that has been well trodden before! Get your point across, then leave, it seems the most sensible approach. If consensus cannot be reached, and several editors continue to disagree, then yes anyone going against consensus would be blocked and reverted. We have already had enough hot air over this. Personally, I haven't made one substantial mainspace edit in the whole week because of the time-sink that this discussion has become.

On another point, this talkpage really needs to be archived, 186kb? Wow! ;) Best regards. Woody (talk) 00:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Belgrade Offensive

My apologies. I HAD reverted your edits believing they were simply reverts of DIRECTOR. I will replace them in a couple of minutes--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 23:31, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Governmental impact on science during WWII

Please do not delete this article. It is an excellent platform for developing a very good general article that has the potential to tie up several areas in the scope of the Second World War. The article was referenced, but needed a reflist template. I gave it some structure by rearranging the text blocks; just like helping 1st year undergrads with essays--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 03:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

re

I've stated my opinion on the RfC, one would be hard-pressed to find a simpler name for a military organization. There are, as always, nuances in translation, but these are simply minor differences. "National" is never used to translate "narodnoe" in USSR military use, "People's" is always used. As we all know, English is a language with very many synonyms and "narodnoe" can have both meanaings, but in this context there can be no doubt that "People's" would be the far better translation. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 00:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

you may want to chime in at

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#"Unrealiable prodders". --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 16:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Special projects

How's it going? Satisfied with progress? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

PS: Think of archiving this page? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

WWII vision

Howdy Buckshot06. I'm actually just putting the finishing on the article to get it to my/our vision (need to get the last section approved). After that, what I think it'll need is another peer-review before I try to get it FA'd. Essentially, I've nearly got the framework and content, but I need some extra eyes and opinons. Oberiko (talk) 11:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikichevrons with oak leaves

For your consistently excellent edits and your continued commitment and tireless efforts towards improving the quality of articles pertaining to military history, and in recognition of your efforts towards maintaining the military history project, by order of the coordinators of the Military history WikiProject, you are hereby awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves, Woody (talk) 21:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)