A fat wallet is prestige and a weapon in itself

But that alone is not always enough in world politics.

SU would have placed a few missile boats and some legacy armor around the islands. That alone would be a game changer.

Even Project 205 would be extremely dangerous operating from Falklands coasts for any incoming ship, let alone one new Project 1241, and dealing with not so old by that time T-55s, or relatively new T-60 series, would be a challenge for enemy infantry.

B-2 over my head a few minutes ago going east. So low and slow I could see it’s silhouette in the sky, dogs barking everywhere like crazy.

Ten years ago I saw another one around the same date and near the same location during my vacations in the Pyrenees too, that time it was in transit to Italy in broad daylight.

In my view, the gravest concern is chemical weapons getting into the hands of extremist groups operating in Syria; the worst nightmare for the region and Europe, if not for the rest of the world.

The biggest concern should be the thousands of tourist that, even after unrealistic high casualties, are going to return home with dubious ideas when not traumatized or maimed.

do the iranians have the capability to reverse engineer the F-14?
seems like they’ve been able to do so with the cobra helicopter and the tiger.

Since Northrop Grumman built a carbon copy of it’s F-14 overhauling facilities in Iran and trained scores of Iranian engineers, even after losing some of that capital after the Islamic Revolution and the I-I war, they have been able to keep a proper maintenance of its fleet, even if they lack the capability to reverse engineer the complete aircraft. Bell did the same although not at the same extent.

The UK (along with Argentina & Chile) is a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty. In effect, their claims are frozen. No new claims since the treaty are recognised. Brazil had not asserted a claim when the treaty came into effect, & later signed the treaty. It thereby accepted that it could not make a claim while the treaty is in force, so I don’t see how there can be a Brazilian claim.

AFAIK the USA does not recognise any Antarctic claims, & I think that is also true of China, Russia & many other countries.

Everyone in the region has some type of claim related to Antartica, both formal or informal, that is a recurrent topic from time to time, especially when supporters of those claims want to stir the pot for political reasons.

Claims are frozen but both US and Russia reserved their right to make a claim in the future but most other signatories, like China, renounced to make a claim.

Brazil is a signatory and although it has no formal claim the reservations at the time of the signing have allowed the idea of a future claim.

Sooner or later, depending of the tricks the government is able to pull, USAF is going to go down the same path as VVS did.

The downsizing is not going to come in the form of a clever PowerPoint roadmap, instead it’s going to come from many not so apparent fronts, like the recent furlough of civilian workers.

Nothing that money can’t overcome but an issue when money is not there.

Taipei is not going to buy Russian hardware for two reasons, first the political sh*tstorm, including parliament fighting (literal), at home for buying “Made in USSR” and second, unless ROC drops it’s claims over Tuva Republic there’s no chance of Moscow approving the sale.