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🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Africa 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Islands 🔗 British Overseas Territories 🔗 Aviation/airport 🔗 Asia 🔗 Asia/British Indian Ocean Territory 🔗 Africa/Mauritius

Diego Garcia () is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago. It has been used as a joint UK–U.S. military base since the 1970s, following the expulsion of the Chagossians by the UK government. The Chagos Islands are a British overseas territory, though a treaty to transfer sovereignty from the UK to Mauritius was signed on 22 May 2025, with a provision that the military base at the island would remain under British control for at least 99 years. The agreement may be renewed for an additional 40 years after the initial 99-year period, and for an additional period thereafter. The UK government expected the treaty to be ratified sometime in 2026. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed "deep concern" at the terms of the deal.

Located just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia lies 3,535 km (2,197 mi) east of Tanzania, 2,984 km (1,854 mi) east-southeast of Somalia, 726 km (451 mi) south of the Maldives, 1,796 km (1,116 mi) southwest of India, 2,877 km (1,788 mi) west-southwest of Sumatra, 4,723 km (2,935 mi) northwest of Australia, and 2,112 km (1,312 mi) northeast of Mauritius Island. Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, an underwater mountain range that includes the Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the other 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. The island observes UTC+6 year-round.

Diego Garcia was discovered by Portuguese sailors in 1512 and remained uninhabited until the French began using it as a leper colony and for coconut plantations in the late 18th century. After the Napoleonic Wars, the island was transferred to British control. It remained part of Mauritius until 1965, when it became part of the newly formed British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

In 1966, Diego Garcia had a population of 924, mostly contract workers employed in coconut plantations. However, between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossian inhabitants were forcibly removed to make way for the military base. In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding advisory opinion that the decolonisation of Mauritius had not been lawfully completed when it gained independence in 1968, and that the UK was "under an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible". The United Nations General Assembly later voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution endorsing this opinion and calling on the UK to end its administration, though the UK has dismissed the ruling as non-binding.

Until the resettlement of Île du Coin, Diego Garcia remained the only inhabited island of the BIOT, with a population of around 4,000 consisting predominantly of military personnel. It is one of two critical U.S. bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific region, alongside Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. It is nicknamed the "Footprint of Freedom" by the U.S. Navy due to its shape and strategic location in the Indian Ocean.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Cold War

The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), originally referred to as the Manned Orbital Laboratory, was a never-flown part of the United States Air Force's human spaceflight program, a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane project. The project was developed from several early Air Force and NASA concepts of crewed space stations to be used for reconnaissance purposes. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, with which crews would be launched on 40-day missions and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft, derived from NASA's Project Gemini.

The MOL program was announced to the public on 10 December 1963 as an inhabited platform to prove the utility of putting people in space for military missions. Astronauts selected for the program were later told of the reconnaissance mission for the program. The contractor for the MOL was the Douglas Aircraft Company. The Gemini B was externally similar to NASA's Gemini spacecraft, although it underwent several modifications, including the addition of a circular hatch through the heat shield, which allowed passage between the spacecraft and the laboratory.

MOL was canceled in 1969, during the height of the Apollo program, when it was shown that uncrewed reconnaissance satellites could achieve the same objectives much more cost-effectively. U.S. space station development was instead pursued with the civilian NASA Skylab (Apollo Applications Program) which flew in the mid-1970s.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union launched three Almaz military space stations, similar in intent to the MOL, but cancelled the program in 1977 for the same reasons.

There is a MOL space suit on display at the Oklahoma City Science Museum, presumably never used.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Conservatism 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 United States/United States Presidents

"We begin bombing in five minutes" is the last sentence of a controversial, off-the-record joke made by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984, during the Cold War.

While preparing for a scheduled radio address from his vacation home in California, President Reagan joked with those present about outlawing and bombing Russia. This joke was not broadcast live, but was recorded and later leaked to the public. The Soviet Union criticized the president's joke, as did Reagan's opponent in the 1984 United States presidential election, Walter Mondale.

🔗 United States 🔗 Politics 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Vietnam

The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon and his administration, who tried to make the leaders of hostile communist bloc countries think Nixon was irrational and volatile so that they would avoid provoking the U.S. in fear of an unpredictable response.

The premise of madman theory is that it makes seemingly incredible threats seem credible. For instance, in an era of mutually assured destruction, threats by a rational leader to escalate a dispute may seem suicidal and thus easily dismissible by adversaries. However, a leader's suicidal threats may seem credible if the leader is believed to be irrational.

International relations scholars have been skeptical of madman theory as a strategy for success in coercive bargaining. Prominent "madmen", such as Nixon, Nikita Khrushchev, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi failed to win coercive disputes. One difficulty is making others believe you are genuinely a madman. Another difficulty is the inability of a madman to assure others that they will not be punished even if they yield to a particular demand. One study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be effective under certain conditions. Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Cold War 🔗 NATO

Link 16 is a military tactical data link network used by NATO and nations allowed by the MIDS International Program Office (IPO). Its specification is part of the family of Tactical Data Links.

With Link 16, military aircraft as well as ships and ground forces may exchange their tactical picture in near-real time. Link 16 also supports the exchange of text messages, imagery data and provides two channels of digital voice (2.4 kbit/s or 16 kbit/s in any combination). Link 16 is defined as one of the digital services of the JTIDS / MIDS in NATO's Standardization Agreement STANAG 5516. MIL-STD-6016 is the related United States Department of Defense Link 16 MIL-STD.

🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Russia 🔗 History 🔗 Germany 🔗 Politics 🔗 Cold War 🔗 European history

The Stalin Note, also known as the March Note, was a document delivered to the representatives of the Western Allies (the United Kingdom, France, and the United States) from the Soviet Union in Germany on 10 March 1952. Soviet general secretary and premier Joseph Stalin put forth a proposal for a German reunification and neutralisation with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations.

James Warburg, a member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, testified before the committee on 28 March 1952 and observed that the Soviet proposal might be a bluff, but he thought that it seemed "that our government is afraid to call the bluff for the fear that it may not be a bluff at all" and might lead to "a free, neutral, and demilitarised Germany", which might be "subverted into Soviet orbit". That led to an exchange of notes between the West and the Soviet Union, which eventually ended after the West had insistence for a unified Germany to be free to join the European Defence Community and to be rearmed, demands that Stalin rejected.

West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Western Allies characterised Stalin's move as an aggressive action that attempted to stall the reintegration of West Germany. However, there was later a debate on whether a chance for reunification had been missed. Six years after the exchange, two West German ministers, Thomas Dehler and Gustav Heinemann, blamed Adenauer for not having explored the chance of reunification.