If it can take out whole flights of Eurofighters in a mission without suffering a loss, then it’s probably worth the money.

I read an article recently that stated the British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency ran a project that pitted real pilots against each other using F-22, Typhoon and Su-35 combat simulators. The F-22 vs. Su-35 kill ratio was 1:10 while it was 1:4.5 for the Typhoon vs. Su-35. So, I suppose you could argue that one F-22 does the work of two Typhoons. By that same logic, if you are paying more than twice the price of one Typhoon for each F-22, you are being ripped off 😀 . Of course the article did NOT go into any details on the assumptions the DERA made. Perhaps the DERA only assumed an early Tranche 2 aircraft? If that is the case one would expect that the Typhoon’s exchange ratio would increase if the Typhoon was a Tranche 3 bird with improved electronics and a thrust vectoring engine. In addition the Tranche 2 machines can be retrofitted with TV engines so the lack of TV capability is really not such a collossal shortcoming as some Typhoon detractors claim.

That yellow color will take some getting used to.

…by giving inth e late 40s and early 50s the markings of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to italian Siai bombers…

If nothing else that is an interesting epilog to the history of the crusades. 😀

But… back to the topic. A French charity operatning under the name of the Hospitaller order (Oeuvres les Hospitalièrs Françaies de l’Ordre de Malte) operated a couple of DC-3 cargo planes out of Liberville on humanitarian flights into Uli airstrip during the Biafra war. They wore simiar (though not excactly identical) Hospitaller crosses. Old planes but they did some good work airlifting starving children out of the war-zone.

Will there ever come a time when manned aircraft are no longer necessary, when their disadvantages outweigh their benefits compared to those of unmanned aircraft?

For the military? Definetly, they will at some point phase out alot of pilots from the combat role in partickular though I doubt military pilots will disappear completely. In so far a civillian air travel is concerned I doubt it, if only because of human paranoina. I know I won’t ever step into an aircraft flown by a computer alone, with no pilot to take over in the event of a catastrophic computer faliure, and I’m sure million of humans share that sentiment. 😀

Damn it! I just don’t like it! I must still be too nostalgic over the Anyushka to like the An-3.

Not to be unkind but that pointy nose does make the An-3 look like a certain rodent. The An-2 on the other hand looks like a bulldog.

I think, you’re mixing up Ireland and Iceland!!! 😡

Well, Ireland has no Air Force, but Ireland has an Irish Air Corps .

Here a link of their aircrafts.

fightingirish 🙂

No, I was just absent minded and hit the [Quote] button by mistake. 😀 That post should have looked as it looks now.

Not that it really matters all that much, genetically speaking the Icelanders are half Irish anyway.

.. Though they can’t understand why the Pope hasn’t yet mounted hellfire missiles to give them ground attack capability.

I suppose that when you already have the capablilty to rain brimstone and fire on cities and turn their inhabitants into pillars of salt hellfire missiles must be a really funny joke.

I agree here.. Sites like ARC or HS often post scans of decal sheets or magazine pages and it surely supports their sale rather than the opposite.

Right and so does intenetmodeller.com (scans of decal sheets that is), a low res scan of a decal sheet is really rather useless for pirating but it does give me a good idea of the quality of the sheet before I blow $XXX plus postage and packing to buy it.