Germany already operates a heavy helicopter in the shape of the Sikorsky CH-53. The heaviest helicopter in French service is the Boeing CH-47 Chinook.

Since when does France operate Chinooks ?

As OPIT said, it would excess MTOW but they can start with empty tanks and top them in flight as has already done before (see Chris Yeo article in Flight global).

Extremely interesting picture, torpedo, thanks! 🙂

In fact all the credit go to dada4 who published and hosted this image on his site 😮

Actually that’s not what is inside the bridge that allows for the 360° windows on Gowind and 270° on Meko, that’s what’s outside … or rather what isn’t outside.
With the grouping of all sensors in one integrated mast, the displacement of smoke funnel at water level, the missiles carried in silos under the bridge, you can eliminate several superstructures so you gain space, stealth, clean lines and unrestricted view.
In addition, this may help counter the threat of terrorist attacks by small boats.

Remark the outwardly canted windows that allow direct view from the bridge to the base of the hull.

Doesn’t it look bizarre that every time a western navy boat was touched by an antiship missile, the electronic defenses systems were said to be switched off ? Hanit system on stand by, USS Stark same claim, Sheffield systems were supposedly shut down to prevent jamming the satellite communication 😮
Am I the only one who find that strange ? :diablo:

Nothing that shows anything worthwhile.

News of the attack was quickly disseminated by Hezbollah’s television station Al Manar, and the world was left to wonder if Israel’s vaunted military was, in fact, quite vulnerable to Iran’s increasingly sophisticated missile systems. Well, it turns out that the failure was not the ship’s, but the crew’s.

Defense News reported this week on an Israeli investigation into the attack. It seems that the Israelis can fault an “electronic warfare systems officer, who switched active defense systems into standbye mode without informing the ship’s commander.” The INS Hanit was armed with the Israeli-made Barak ship point missile defense system, seen below, which, according to DN, has “demonstrated an intercept capability of more than 95 percent in thousands of simulation and dozens of live-fire tests in Israel and abroad.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/01/

Update on that.
I found at least 2 independant sources refuting that interpretation of the event. One is from the french electronic defense industry association journal (Guerrelec) and the other from defense-update, here:
http://www.defense-update.com/2006/07/ins-hanit-suffers-iranian-missile.html
Also in Jane: http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw060718_1_n.shtml

Apparently 2 missiles were used, one C801/802 as an active decoy to fool the defense systems of the Hanit, and one C701 in discrete optical guidance mode at low altitude. Data from coastal radars might also have been used to detect the ship w/out warning it.
The Hanit defense system was most probably active at the time of the attack and was not able to detect and intercept the missiles.
This raises questions about the efficiency of the Phalanx system and israeli electronic defense systems. They might be not as infaillible as they are often credited :rolleyes: . On the other hand, working in the coastal environment can be really tricky and they were probably never designed to do that in the first place.

Sri Lanka already operates air defence radars and radar equipped fast jets, no? Since it doesn’t seem to work, adding another radar and another fast jet in the inventory might not be the solution. :confused:
Maybe the low flying turboprops can not be detected by airborne radars over the jungle background (too slow for doppler radar clutter rejection algorithms) or they fly too low below tree level along rivers and trails). Since these aircrafts may not carry such a heavy payload, they can probably not do much damage at once. So it might not be crucial to intercept them before they strike, and it could be acceptable to send aircrafts after them only after they attacked. Night vision googles may be enough to detect them in that case (but they only have a short range).
Thus I maintain that a handful of turboprops dispersed at different airbases to cover the operation theatre would be a good solution.
what do you think?

What about getting turboprop trainers fitted wioth machinegun pods, PC21, super Tucano T6B … Ideal to hunt for Zlin?