I found this after browsing on another forum and thought I’d post it here for some of the narrow minded Argies. Enjoy!

Dear Argentina…

NOW look. You’ve been whining about this since 1767 and it’s starting to get on my wick.

I’ve ignored you until now, because you’re very silly and your greatest cheerleader is Sean Penn, a man who pretends to be things he is not and once hit his then-wife Madonna with a baseball bat, tied her up for nine hours and abused her.

If he is on your side, it’s not a good side to be on.

But today you’ve written to Prime Minister Dishface demanding he enter negotiations to ‘return’ the islands we call the Falklands and you call Malvinas, 180 years after we cruelly stole them from you with our jackbooted naval officers of totalitarianism.

You were ‘forcibly stripped’ of these jewels in the South Atlantic and your people were ‘expelled’.

Only, that’s not quite what happened, is it Argentina? Someone obviously needs to remind you, and probably Mr Penn too, of the facts.

Allow me to start by saying there are probably things we can all agree on. War is bad, for example, and colonialism – aside from the roads, aqueducts, education, health reforms, economic development, culture, food, integration and innovation – tends to be a bad thing too.

We could probably avoid an argument over the fact that the Falkland Islands, in and of themselves, aren’t exactly pretty. There are no hanging gardens, no waterfalls, no exotic wildlife. They’re a windy bunch of rocks a long way from anywhere, although I grant they’re nearer to you than they are to us.

Which begs the question about why, exactly, you never bothered to settle them.

When they were first discovered by a Dutchman in 1600 there was nothing there but seabirds. No people, no cultural heritage for anyone to trample over. Just a windy bunch of rocks.

Ninety years later a British sailor was blown off course and sailed through a bit of water he named Falkland Sound, and 74 years after that the French turned up to form a colony.

WAIT! I hear you cry. The French colonised the Falklands?

Why yes, and 18th century email being what it was the British turned up two years later and built a settlement on another one of the islands and claimed the whole lot for the Crown, unaware the Frenchies were already in residence.

The French sold out to the Spaniards a year after that, who put the colony – containing French people – under control of a governor in Buenos Aires.

Three years later the Spanish picked a fight with the Brits, kicked them out and after a peace treaty let us back in. In 1774 the Brits, overstretched by the Americans kicking off, withdrew and left a plaque behind asserting their claim. Thirty two years later the Spaniards departed too, leaving another plaque, and in 1811 the last settlers threw in the towel.

We were back to empty, windy rocks known only to whalers and sealing ships, and two memorial plaques.

In 1820 an American pirate called David Jewett took shelter there, and finding the place deserted promptly claimed the islands for a union of South American provinces which later became Argentina.

You lot didn’t realise this for a year, but still didn’t settle the islands. Instead a German who pretended to be French called Luis Vernet came along, asked the Argentines and the Brits politely if they minded, and founded a little colony of his own.

It took him a few goes, but eventually he established a settlement, you named him governor and gave him the right to kill all the seals. This quite hacked off the Brits, who wanted some seals for themselves, but Vernet placated us by asking for our military protection.

It all got a bit hairy in 1831, when Vernet found some American seal ships, arrested their crews and sparked an international incident. The Americans sent a warship, blew up the settlement, and hot-headedly sent the most senior settlers to the mainland for trial for piracy.

The Argentines sent a new governor to establish a penal settlement, but he was killed in a mutiny the day he arrived. The Brits, quite reasonably, decided the whole thing was a dog’s breakfast.

And now we get to the bit you’re unhappy about Argentina, the invasion and forced expulsion.

The Brits arrived two months after this mutiny, and wrote to the chap in charge of the small Argentine garrison. The letter said:
“I have to direct you that I have received directions from His Excellency and Commander-in-Chief of His Britannic Majesty’s ships and vessels of war, South America station, in the name of His Britannic Majesty, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over these Islands.

It is my intention to hoist to-morrow the national flag of Great Britain on shore when I request you will be pleased to haul down your flag on shore and withdraw your force, taking all stores belonging to your Government.”

Now, there are many ways people can be oppressed, forced, compelled and abused – just ask Sean Penn – but a polite note is not one of them. The Argentine in charge thought briefly about resisting, but he didn’t have many soldiers and besides, most of them were British mercenaries who refused to fight. So on January 3, 1833 you left, Argentina, with wounded pride and your nose in the air.

You had never settled the islands. Never established a colony of your own. Never guarded it with a garrison of your own soldiers. They had never, ever, been yours.

And now to the matter of that expulsion. The log of an Argentine ship present at the time records the settlers were encouraged to stay, and those that left did so of their own free will and generally because they were fed up with living on some boring, windy rocks.

Eleven people left – four Argentines, three ‘foreigners’, one prisoner, a Brit and two Americans.

Twenty-two people remained – 12 Argentinians, four Uruguay Indians, two Brits, two Germans, a Frenchman and a Jamaican.

As the imposition of colonial power on an indigenous population goes, that takes some beating. And for the sake of clarity I should point out that a human melting pot like that makes the place about as British as you can be.

A few months later HMS Beagle, taking Charles Darwin to the Galapagos for a long think, popped in and found the settlement half-ruined and the residents lawless. There were several murders, some looting, and in 1834 the exasperated British sent Lieutenant Henry Smith to run the place.

The islands have been ours ever since, and is now home to almost 3,000 people descended from settlers who came from Britain, France, Scandinavia, Gibraltar, St Helena and Chile.

At the same time, you went on to fight wars with most of South America and colonise provinces with indigenous populations by killing or pushing them out.

When your government was broke and facing strong opposition in the 1980s, you invaded them to divert attention of the voters with the cost of 907 lives, and it cannot be unrelated to your letter that in a few weeks you face being ejected by the International Monetary Fund for lying over your economic figures.

At around the same time, the people who now live on these boring, windy rocks in the middle of nowhere are having a referendum about who they would like to govern them. You will ignore this, because you believe they do not have a right to make up their own minds and have repeatedly refused to talk to the islanders about your claims.

So allow me to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, the history of these windy rocks is an utter mess but someone had to take charge, and you weren’t up to the job. We did it pretty nicely, considering our record in other places.

Secondly, only jackbooted colonial scumbags refuse to listen to the democratic voice of the people who live somewhere, so you really ought to wind your hypocritical warmongering necks in.

And thirdly – well done with the wine, and the beef’s pretty good, but if you want to negotiate let’s start with you taking back your Total Wipeout, because as cultural imperialism goes it’s pretty offensive, and you might want to think about handing Patagonia back to its people as well.

After that we are quite prepared to let you come and holiday on these windy rocks, where you will be invited to pitch a tent anywhere you like within the 13 square kilometres where you left 19,000 landmines last time you visited.

We know they’re a long way away. We know there’s not much to the rocks, and there might be oil and it might give someone a claim to Antarctica.

But we also know something you don’t – which is that a well-run, law-abiding and happy bunch of rocks is the best bunch of rocks you can hope to have. You’re no more up to that job now than you have ever been.

In case our position is still not clear, the above could be summed up as: No.

Yours sincerely,

Blighty.

Ta-ta!

:diablo:

what is special about typhoon aesa over j10 aesa?

I gave a couple examples. Since you brought it up why don’t you back up your claims for once?

j10 already has aesa. typhoon 0.

News leaked out about this AESA radar mid 2011 by a Chinese source if I’m not mistaken, so it can’t be that old or much into the development stage, the same source claimed that this AESA has 1,100+ TR Modules, around the number of that similar to the Rafale’s RBE2-AA and whole lot less to what the Typhoon’s Captor-E will have. The AESA for Typhoon can be traced back to 2002, or to the late 90s if one wants to be pedantic. The CAESAR (not a Captor-E) first flew on a test BAC One-Eleven aircraft in early 2006 in sub-scale form and flew on Typhoon DA5 in mid 2007 in full scale form, with a number of TR Modules officially given as between 1,000 – 2,000, “unofficially” at around 1,400 – 1,500. The UK has it’s own AESA programme on the go named Bright Adder, the Captor-E ‘Radar 3’ will be built on this with the possibility of a new antenna array, for the RAF.

It will be interesting to see the exact configuration of those T3 typhoons.

Depends on the RAFO’s requirements.

Hopefully with an AESA radar, if not it would be quite wierd taking delivery of old fashioned mech radar as late as 2017 when AESA is now a standard option on export markets.

Likely so, though Captor-M shouldn’t be underestimated regardless. Theres an AESA ‘Road-Map’. An initial FSD ‘Radar 1’ to meet export requirements, this form of AESA radar would offer similar performances to the mechanical scanned Captor though with the advantages of multi-mode flexibility and reliability an AESA enjoys. ‘Radar 2’ is more advanced and meets the core four-nation requirements and ‘Radar 3’ (built on Bright Adder) will meet the UK’s requirements, apparantly with a new antenna array.

Same goes for AtG weaponnery as it would be hard to imagine a country being satisfied with current narrow array of AtG weapons integrated.

Just because the Typhoon currently has a limited number of A/G weapons integrated doesn’t mean it lacks in A/G overall, this is where so many are narrow minded. Every Typhoon user has different requirements, even for Captor-E hence the likes of ‘Radar 1’, ‘Radar 2’ and ‘Radar 3’. Same goes for the A/G capabilities and even in A/A if you’re Austria. P1E is a base for future capabilities with it’s abilities. And obviously there are more of these enhancements in store. Saudi Arabia for example are pushing well ahead with upgrades and enhancements thanks to ‘Contract One’, other countries can do the same should they feel the need.

I bet that Oman could be the first export customer of a “mature” typhoon with Saudi Arabia as a follow on.

I’d bet Saudi Arabia with the RAF not too far behind.

CFTs would be nice though to turn the typhoon in a potent multirole platform.

It already is in it’s current form.

Also, these new weapons are attractive to operators of other aircraft. Just look how many SPEAR weapons you can stick on a Typhoon:D

Very nice, but that number of SPEARs is rather exaggerated on Typhoon.

He is referring to the old adage that “It takes a sniper to kill a sniper.”

A good sniper cannot be seen therefore cannot be attacked via bomb, mortar, etc. Therefore the only way to get him is to become a sniper and hunt the other sniper.

This is in reference to the F-22 often being referred to the “sniper” of fighters (ie killing you before you know he is in the area and still not knowing where it came from).

Correct… back in the days when a two man Sniper team (or when one operated alone, which was seldom) would often work alone with very little outside help, if any at all.

Today in the real world, its a very different situation, the concept is the same, but theres a whole lot more much needed communication/networking going on. Same can be said for fighters, one needs communication/networking for the best results and I believe one would agree that networking isn’t the F-22’s forte so to speak, as compared to others. At the very least its probably like comparing a .50 Sniper Rifle to a .338 Sniper Rifle, both very effective, but you’d probably go for the latter if you want versatility.

Sorry to be pedantic & off-topic.

33,000 lb engines are not impressive for a 2027 jet. WS-10G which currently powers J-20 prototypes are around 32,000 lb.

A Formula 1 car with a V10 engine from 1999 might look better than a Formula 1 car with a V8 engine of 2012, but you wouldn’t pick the former if you wanted to win a championship.

The UK must start paying its share of R&D funding, which will amount to billions, certainly more than $2 billion paid for the F-35.

The UK along with BAE Systems are due to enter talks with Japanese officials on joint military/civilian ventures. Unless you know exactly what these talks will involve then your guess work is as good as any of ours.

The Tories do, with all the defense spending cuts that they are implementing, including all of 55 RAF Typhoon Tranche 1 units.

Wrong! The RAF have decided to keep all Tranche 1s, due to the fact that they performed better than expected during Operation Ellamy.

And they won’t be until Russia rearms.

Russia are already rearming.

The UK MoD is scrapping its existing Typhoons due to its inability to afford them; now how are they ordering more F-35s when they are in fact cutting back on F-35 orders?

Wrong yet again. No Typhoons are being scrapped by the UK, see above. There are “talks” about ordering additional F-35s to replace Tranche 1s in the future, theres a difference between “talks” and actually going through with it. Go figure it out.

Not for another 30 years, since the Tranche 2 units are still being delivered while the Tranche 3 units are just entering production.

Yet they will still to be replaced, so whats your point in quoting this part when you clearly can’t see the woods for the trees…

But you claimed that there was a talk of acquiring additional F-35 units; you contradict yourself in the same post!

I’m not contradicting myself, you just don’t get it. At the moment the number of F-35s for the UK are in double digits, much less than previously planned of the 130+, that would still mean they could order more, ‘additional’ units to that of the number they have in mind at the moment should the need arise. These “additional” F-35s would replace the Tranche 1 Typhoons since the number they’re likely to purchace of the former won’t be sufficient enough to cover their own roles and some of Typhoon’s.

Edit: BTW, I said I doubt there will be additional orders of the F-35 to replace the Tranche 2 and 3 Typhoons.

The UK doesn’t need and probably can’t afford all those jets; this is why they scrapped Harriers and are scrapping Tranche 1 Typhoons.

Yet again… The UK ARE NOT scrapping any Typhoons!