The F-22 Raptor versus the Eurofighter Typhoon: And the winner is…

The F-22 Raptor fifth generation stealth air superiority fighter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, that depends.  ABC News reports today that America’s incredibly expensive F-22 Raptor has been pitted against Europe’s Typhoon in combat simulations (simulations involving real flying, real pilots, and real aircraft, just not real missiles or bullets) and has found that the results are mixed, though not surprisingly so.

In the ways the F-22 was designed to be superior, apparently it was handily so: super stealthy and the most powerful thing in the air for the long-distance attacks that are the new norm in modern air-based warfare. On this level, the F-22 is apparently everything it is designed to be, as reported by those who “fought” against it:

Two other German officers, Col. Andreas Pfeiffer and Maj. Marco Gumbrecht, noted in the same report that the F-22’s capabilities are “overwhelming” when it comes to modern, long-range combat as the stealth fighter is designed to engage multiple enemies well-beyond the pilot’s natural field of vision – mostly while the F-22 is still out of the other plane’s range. Grumbrecht said that even if his planes did everything right, they weren’t able to get within 20 miles of the next-generation jets before being targeted.

That is pretty amazing.

[Note: I don’t know which last name the reporter spelled correctly: “Gumbrecht” or “Grumbrecht” but the mistake is in the original article.]

But in close combat, one-on-one dogfighting, the F-22 apparently has no particular advantage over its European counterpart:

“But as soon as you get to the merge…” Pfeiffer said, referring to the point at which fighters engage in close-up dog fighting, “in that area, at least, the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22 in all aspects… In the dogfight the Eurofighter is at least as capable as the F-22, with advantages in some aspects.”

The Eurofighter Typhoon is the second most expensive fighter aircraft in the world after the F-22. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Typhoon and its German pilots apparently held their own very nicely in that area. Someone should notify The Royal Guardsmen. (Raise your hand if you get that reference…)

This does not necessarily represent a failure of the F-22, which was designed to be king of the skies from the perspective of modern warfare in the air, which is increasingly considered to be a long distance affair. (I’ve seen the results spun both ways, so who knows?) However, the prospect of German pilots flying Eurofighters going up against American pilots in their newest and best was too fascinating not to post. And while, on one hand, it is easy to imagine a future match up for real given what prophecy indicates is ahead, on the other hand the more likely scenario might be F-22 versus F-22 (after all, they are currently allies, and we share when the price is right) or, more depressing, Americans in ultralights with slingshots versus the F-22’s we sold to Europe for a steal in our “Going Out of Business” garage sale.

With the way things are going, we might be grateful for a lone beagle in a Sopwith Camel. Hopefully Britain won’t have sold all of those, too.

[EDIT, 1/16/2014: As alluded to above, Bible prophecy speaks of a coming conflict of vast scope, with the United States & Great Britain on one side and Europe on the other, with Europe victorious and the US & UK crushed beyond recognition. It may be hard to see now, but prophecy is about highlighting those things that are hard to imagine now before they become easy to see. If you’re interested in putting that prophecy to the test for yourself, here are links to two free books from Tomorrow’s World that walk you through your Bible and history on the matter: The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy and The Beast of Revelation: Myth, Metaphor or Soon-Coming Reality? All the material on that website is completely free (Matt. 10:8), whether you want to read it there, download it as a PDF or e-book, or even request a physical copy or the book to be sent to you.]

   

Related articles

• F-22 Fighter Loses $79 Billion Advantage in Dogfights: Report (abcnews.go.com)

Giving Germany the empire it had long dreamed of

Will the EU ultimately achieve for Germany what it could not for itself? (Image via Wikipedia)

Due to the blog-related “thought-jam” mentioned last time, I am slow to point out this article, but — slow or not — it’s worth it. Last week the UK’s Telegraph published this blog entry by their chief political commentator Peter Oborne: “The euro crisis will give Germany the empire it’s always dreamed of” (7/21/2011).  In the article, Oborne points out concerning the recent round of European debt talks:

“Yesterday’s witching hour of the European Union means that Germany has come very close to realising Bismarck’s dream of an economic empire stretching from central Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean.”

(I couldn’t help but think of John Paul II’s comment about envisioning a United Europe stretching “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”)

It would be, indeed, ironic if the measures begun in the aftermath of WWII to dilute Germany’s power and dull the edge of its ambition, in the end, serve to enable the German preeminence they were meant to forestall.

Scripture has a lot to say about the rise of the Beast now forming in Europe, as well as about the Woman who will ride it.  If Americans aren’t taking notice, yet, they will be surprised at how, once again, events across the ocean are going to change their entire world — this time in ways most have never imagined.

“They’re beating us with one hand tied behind their back.”

It must be “Germany Day” on my blog.  I just came across this interview that some will find interesting.  It is essentially a discussion between two individuals who are clearly on the “liberal” side of the political spectrum, one of whom, Thomas Geoghegan, is the author of the book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? and is clearly a europhile.  His preference for Europe’s values and ways over America’s may ruffle a few red, white, and blue feathers among some here, but it is still an interesting read.  And it isn’t just a “left-fest.”  For instance, Geoghegan criticizes the currently reigning progressive Democrats in the U.S. for not being as “sophisticated” as their German and French counterparts for their foolish willingness to run up the national debt.

But I mention it mainly to quote this passage from the interview:

According to Geoghegan, “Since 2003, it’s not China but Germany, that colossus of European socialism, that has either led the world in export sales or at least been tied for first. Even as we in the United States fall more deeply into the clutches of our foreign creditors — China foremost among them — Germany has somehow managed to create a high-wage, unionized economy without shipping all its jobs abroad or creating a massive trade deficit, or any trade deficit at all. And even as the Germans outsell the United States, they manage to take six weeks of vacation every year. They’re beating us with one hand tied behind their back.”

The two Geoghegan quotes that wrap up the interview — “Without an industrial base a democracy dies.” & “Countries like Germany do both capitalism and socialism better than we do.” — grabbed my eye, as well.

Passed on here for your clicking consideration: “Why Germany Has It So Good–and Why America Is Going Down the Drain”

Merkel to Muslims: Learn German and adopt Christian values

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Image via Wikipedia)

Quite an article, yesterday, from the AFP by way of Yahoo: “Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed” (hat tip to JDJ for sending this one my way!).

Check it out, yourself, but keep in mind: the words “multi-cultural society” in Europe often mean specifically a society seeking to succeed with Muslims and Arabs in their midst, as the article makes clear.

And Chancellor Merkel is saying publicly that it is going horribly.  Here’s a selection:

Germany’s attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country’s immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.

Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

“Multikulti”, the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

“This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values.

“We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” said the chancellor.

“Subsidising immigrants” isn’t sufficient, Germany has the right to “make demands” on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.

Of course, Merkel is not demanding that Muslims become Christians — saying that immigrants need to adopt “Christian values” does not mean they must actually become Christian.  In fact, she also said that “Islam is a part of Germany.”  At issue is the tolerance or official “blind eye” turned to such practices as forced marriages, et al. that spring up in some Muslim communities in Europe but which Germany would not normally tolerate.  (I am reminded of the requirement made of Utah to ban polygamy before it was allowed to become a state.)  Merkel is declaring that such tolerance is not likely to continue.

So, while Merkel is not saying Muslims need to become Christians, she is saying that Muslims must become Germans in a more authentic sense, and she is saying that to become German one must adopt certain Christian values.

Of course, Chancellor Merkel is motivated by political concerns, working to keep both sides of the debate on immigration within her own party together.  Yet, it is still jarring from an American point of view to see such a statement, given that an American policital leader (at least one of any importance) who expressed similar sentiment would be excoriated.

Others of influence in Germany are making even stronger statements.  As the article mentions, a now-former German central bank member said publicly that a growing uneducated, unproductive Muslim population in the nation was making Germany “more stupid” and has published a book on the subject: Germany Does Itself In.

The book has been selling like hotcakes, apparently, because such sentiment in Germany isn’t merely concentrated on the fringes or expressed by those in ivory towers.  Again, from the article:

A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being “over-run by foreigners” and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.

Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices “significantly curbed.”

Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but “to a worrying degree at the centre of society,” the think tank said in its report.

I have wondered for some time if the threat of a rapidly growing, non-integrating Muslim culture in Europe might begin to steer the generally secular continent towards its “Christian” heritage in an effort to fight fire with fire.  Religion is destined to play a role in binding Europe together — a task that history, ancient and modern, has shown to be daunting.  The Bible, too, says of the union that will become the Beast power, that it is like “iron mixed with clay” and that it does not hold together easily (Daniel 2:41-43).  Yet returning to a historic “Chrisitan” heritage (what Pope John Paul II called Europe’s “roots”) promises something that can do the job, and it would bring with it the “benefit” of making those who are causing an increasing number of Germans and Europeans to feel uneasy — the growing, non-integrating Muslim immigrant population — to seem all the more foreign.  The more foreign they seem, the easier it is to publicly accept more drastic measures to reject them.

In that light, seeing Merkel stress that Germany has the right to “make demands” of Muslim immigrants and seeing her characterize “German values” as “Christian values” is interesting, indeed.

Related Articles

• Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed (yahoo.com)
• Merkel: Multiculturalism is a failure (hotair.com)
• Germany has ‘utterly failed’ (thesun.co.uk)
• Germany’s Merkel: Multicultural society a failure (sfgate.com)

Germany beginning to enjoy being German again

State Flag of Germany

A recent article in the New Your Times caught my eye: “German Identity, Long Dormant, Reasserts Itself” (NYT, 9/10/2010).

The nation of Germany is beginning to become filled with a generation which does not feel angst over its past and which is beginning to realize that they are the citizens of one of the great nations of planet earth.  As the article’s author, Nicholas Kulish, writes:

German pride did not die after the country’s defeat in World War II. Instead, like Sleeping Beauty in the Brothers Grimm version of the folk tale, it only fell into a deep slumber. The country has now awakened, ready to celebrate its economic ingenuity, its cultural treasures and the unsullied stretches of its history.

Of course, those of us in the Living Church of God understand the role that Germany will eventually play in the iron-and-clay European Union in the years just ahead, and a Germany that is willing to flex its muscles will need to be a big part of that.

A Banner of the Holy Roman Empire

I have a great deal of German blood in my veins through my maternal grandmother, and I remember a great-uncle of mine who despaired much due to what he remembered of World War II.  The experience brought him to a state where he could no longer believe God exists, because he could not accept that God would ever allow the things he saw in Germany during that horrible time.

The German people are a strong people, and it looks as though they are becoming more willing to admit it.  And regardless of the nation’s ultimate role in End Time events, I am reminded that Germany — modern-day Assyria — is afforded a special honor in Scripture when the days after these End Times are described and once Christ and His saints rule the world:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

~ Isaiah 19:23-25

I think that a people as marvelously industrious and productive as the German nation will take it as a beautiful and humbling compliment that the God of all Creation will claim them as the work of His hands.

Germany taking the reins?

Great video on Stratfor’s YouTube channel discussing Angela Merkel’s fiscal policy statements on Wednesday.  Essentially, she argues that (1) the Eurozone needs the ability to kick out those member states that do not follow the establish fiscal policy, and (2) Germany should not have to do things that weaken its own economy (reducing its exports) because other economies might be weakened.

This comment from Stratfor’s Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic was interesting from a prophetic perspective:

“We’re seeing Germany shedding its Cold War mentality. It’s reasserting itself as not just an economic powerhouse that writes the checks and underwrites the EU financially, but it’s also taking the reins, and that’s really what the statement is all about.”

Here’s the video:

Germany frustrated at Europe’s lack of German-ness?

Up late in the hotel tonight comparing loan offers, and it looks like we have a winner!  Tomorrow (technically “today”) we will meet with the home inspectors and I should be e-mailing scanned copies of the loan documents that I have tucked away on my iPhone.

So how to wind down from a lot of furious number-crunching?  A little late-night blogging!

I downloaded the free New York Times app onto my iPhone yesterday after hearing nice things about it and have found the nice things to be pretty accurately conveyed.  In my perusing the articles during the drive (Beautiful Wife was doing the driving, mind you), I came across this article on Germany’s position in the “Greek Tragedy” unfolding in Europe: “Euro Unity? It’s Germany That Matters” by Celestine Bohlen (3/9/2010, from Bloomberg News).

I recommend clicking through to read the entire article, but I will present the beginning and ending paragraphs here in the event that they may interest you.

Opening:

Ten years after the euro, it’s still all about Germany, which isn’t the way it was supposed to be.

In the run-up to the common currency’s debut in 1999, the air was thick with talk about harnessing Germany’s economic power, then enshrined in the mark. A failure to move toward monetary union would lead only to “a preponderant influence of Germany,” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France, said in a 1997 interview in the French daily Le Monde.

Now, as the European Union thrashes out a possible rescue plan for debt-stricken Greece, the importance of Germany has been thrown back into relief. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France can come out and pledge all the support to Greece he wants, but in the end, it’s Germany that matters.

Of course, it would, indeed, be fascinating irony if the move to a common currency was greatly (though, admittedly not completely) motivated by a desire to reduce the influence of Germany only to have the consequence of that move a decade later to be an enhancement of Germany’s influence.  Prophecy will have its way…

Closing paragraphs:

So that leaves Germany to set the example. “There is really no alternative to the path Germany has taken,” Axel Weber, president of the Bundesbank — whom some see succeeding Jean-Claude Trichet as the president of the European Central Bank — is quoted as saying in “The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency,” by David Marsh.

In other words, the Germans will be vindicated in their long-held view that for the euro to survive, other countries will have to be, well, more German.

There are the bookends — feel free to read the details in between!  As we know, it is, indeed, Germany that matters.

History flows through the channel of prophecy

My thanks to CT who, though ill and unable to attend services this past Sabbath, had sent me a wonderful link to Stratfor’s YouTube channel:

(You can click on the image to go to the page itself, where, if you have a YouTube account, you can subscribe to Stratfor’s content.)

Stratfor’s George Friedman makes a few comments and elaborates on Poland’s current dilemma, highlighted by the recent Ukrainian election, and on the “Greece crisis” in the Eurozone which is forcing Germany to take a position of power that it has, in a sense, been quite reluctant to take. Here are some quotes from the video (my own transcription):

“If the European Union bails out Greece — Spain and Portugal, as well, in some way — the leading power behind this will be Germany. And Germany will be in the forefront of setting the rules by which the Greeks, for example, behave in the coming years.”

“Whoever is chancellor of Germany will hold a decisive voice in Europe. And Germany is now at a crossroads — it has, since World War II, tried to be one European nation among many, in spite of the size of its economy and its influence, it is now emerging as a country that can no longer hide its strength.  The Greece crisis is flushing Germany out. And so the German chancellor is now going to have to take a different tone, one not so much in concert with other countries as defining the concert and dictating to other countries. This I regard as a critical historical moment.”

“From my point of view, NATO is a historical fossil. It was created to deal with the Cold War. The Cold War is over, its mission is lost. The military capability of the United States’ European allies is limited. There are very few mission that it can carry out successfully and many of the contributions of the Europeans to Afghanistan and other places are more symbolic than real, although some are substantial. NATO, itself, I think, is passe, but the need for a European defense system is NOT. I do not think the Europeans are going to create this defense system on their own — I think it will emerge out of bilateral agreements between the United States and various countries in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland.”

Again, the whole video is worth viewing — Stratfor’s comments always seem insightful and are of interest to anyone with an eye on geopolitics.

But what struck me was the way history must flow through the channel of prophecy. We in the Living Church of God do believe that Germany will lead a united Europe and that the forces of the East — Russia, et al. — will grow in power. (We believe that there will be a coalescing of power south of Jerusalem, as well.) And here we see highlighted a shifting and concentrating of powers in Europe and Asia and circumstances beyond their control beginning to place the reins of power within German hands.

The pace of the river may not always be what we would hope it to be or imagine it should be. Sometimes it seems tediously slow, other times frighteningly rapid. Sometimes it will flow in a straight and predictable direction, other times it will curve and bend more tightly than you could imagine.  Regardless, the channel determines the river’s course. And history will follow the course laid out by biblical prophecy.

(I am reminded, too, that as rivers ultimately take you to the sea, the flow of history will ultimately take everyone to one place, as well.)

We have a number of publications on prophecy.  Check them out at the Tomorrow’s World website!  In particular, consider one of these booklets:

• Armageddon and Beyond
• Fourteen Signs Announcing Christ’s Return
• Prophecy Fulfilled: God’s Hand in World Affairs
• Revelation: The Mystery Unveiled
• The Beast of Revelation: Myth, Metaphor or Soon-Coming Reality?
• The Middle East in Prophecy
• The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy
• The World Ahead: What Will It Be Like?
• Who Controls the Weather?
• Who or What Is—The Antichrist?

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Germany and Israel: Love, Tolerance, or Opposition?

What a day! With a Bible Study tonight (hello, Columbians!), a date with 700 miles of U.S. interstate tomorrow morning, and a “Must Do Today” list of 15 items that seems to be growing instead of shrinking, I’m afraid that I won’t be writing much today. We leave for Texas and then for the conference (Yay!) in Charlotte this week, and I will try to write occasionally if I have internet access.

But for today, I will just add some links that were passed on to me. For those who are interested in the state of German-Israeli relations (and prophecy students who watch for conditions related to the fulfillment of prophecies in Daniel 11 and 9), Der Spiegel has had several articles worth reading, prompted by the 60th anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel. I post just two of them, but there are others linked to on the website pages that might be worth reading as well.

• The World from Berlin: “Something is Rotten in the State of Israel”
• Israel’s 60th Anniversary: “The Poisoned Congratulations of German Know-It-Alls”

Reading these, you might get the sense that there is a bit of a case of “split personality” regarding Germany’s attitude toward Israel. And I think you would be right. I note the contrasting titles of two articles linked to at the bottom of those pages in Spiegel Online: One titled “Merkel in the Knesset: ‘We Would Never Abandon Israel’” and one titled “New Survey Undermines Official Policy: Most Germans Feel no Responsibility for Israel.”

Prophecy tells of how things will ultimately go, but even when you know you are standing at Point A and headed to Point B, the possible roads twixt here and there can still be very intriguing!