savage-rabbitWell, it would have–if they had any victories to their name. As it is, facts are facts (not just in the air). Are you aware of any major arab military successes since 1945?
Sorry no luck I am wearing a flame resistant suit. 😀
Complain, complain. Their MIG-25s were “downgraded”?
Soviet export models usuall were and the SyAF did not fly wall to wall MiG-25’s in … Errrr …. Ya’ know, now that I think about it your are right! The SyAF’s 1960’s tech MiG-21’s were the ultimate F-15 killers we all know that don’t we?
(That last part was a sarcastic comment in case you didn’t notice) 😀
One of the reasons, yes, though the israelis weren’t flying Raptors either.
No just the 1980s equivalent the F-15.
They would have done just about as badly with any aircraft.
Badly perhaps but had the SyAF been packing, say, the latest French gear the Israelis would have suffered.
Hm. Insulting whom?
Now that would eventually lead to a discussion about your apparent admiration for the the political writings of a certain Austrian Corporal … which has little to do with Modern Military Aviation and I would HATE to go off topic. 😀
savage-rabbitMy personal view, based on their military performance over the last 700 years: no arab country is capable of producing good pilots–it is culturally and genetically antithetical to what the arabs are.
That logic went out of fashion in 1945. 😀
Why would anyone write a book about an air force (like syria’s) that constantly loses all the battles, that has incompetent and inept pilots, that is repeatedly crushed in combat by others, that can’t even protect its own air space? SAAF’s record of failure is long and well known, why is there a need for a book on the subject?
Has anybody ever told you that if you trade in your napalm for tactical nukes you can start much bigger flamewars?:eek:
The SyAF has had to deal with downgraded Soviet equipment for most of its history. Considering the technological gap between the forces that met over the Beeka valley in 1982 it is not surprising that the Syrians got bowled over. If you think for a single second that the Syrians would have done this badly if they had been flying up to date aircraft you are dreaming. Furthermore if you can not make a point without insulting people it says more about you and your character than anything else. Keep this discussion on topic and on a civilized plane or go away.
savage-rabbitCoolness is not sufficient a factor.
True! And it bugs the hell out of some people.. 😀
We simply do not know enough about the avionics of this plane to make a comparision.
But we do know enough about the FC-1 say at this point (pending more information on the Iranian plane), the FC-1 still has the upper hand on the avionics. We do know the FC-1 has a duplex fly-by-wire system, probably comes with Grifro PD radar and has and will be delievered with a BVR missile.
If the F-7 series is anything to go by Chengdu will outfit the FC-1 with any avionics/electronics that the customer can obtain. That includes western European, Israeli and Russian as well as Chinese options. I would say that the quality of any individual FC-1 export version will largely depend on what you put in it, ie. whether you go for the bargain basement model with baseline Chinese avionics or buy something more potent like up to date fully featured European or Israeli gear. The Iranians on the other hand do not have most of these options Israel is out, as are the Europeans who will not sell Iran any hight tech military gear. This leaves three options. Numbers one and two are China and Russia. Both of whom will think long and hard before aggrivating Uncle Sam and generally screwing up their trade relations with the west by selling hi-tech miltary electronics to Iran. Option three is developing the avionics from scratch domestically in Iran which is difficult and extremely expensive. I can’t say I envy the Iraninans of their situation but I admire their persistance and ingenuity.
Cheers
SR
savage-rabbitAccording to one Russian source, Vietnamese MiG-21s are much better maintained then that of the Indian and Syrian airforces, in April? Vietnam signed a deal with Hindustan Aeronautic Ltm. (HAL) to upgrade at least 100 of its MiG-21s.
Has this been confirmed and if yes can somebody point me a press report from a reliable news agency?
savage-rabbitLet’s cool it savage rabbit and phrozenflame, no need to start a flamewar here, and it’s getting close. 🙂
I will only ask once, please refrain from mudslinging , I won’t participate in a flamewar. Anyway we are getting wildly off topic anyway, I seem to remember something about this being an aviation forum. Either we move this somewhere else or this is my last post on the subject.
I resent that, as you can see I refused to shovel more wood on that fire. All I did (originally) was suggest that allowing Pakistan to buy advanced weapons might not be a completely bad idea. And it was Golden Arrow not phrozenflame who jumped all over me for it. I only joined here a couple of weeks ago but I am already getting the impression that this place is more of a flamethrower target range than a forum. So far I have been napamed twice it two weeks after making about a dozen posts. I have been posting on acig.org for years and have never been flamed.
Golden Arrow went, there first by dropping snide hints, not me!
It doesn’t matter- just do your best to ignore it, or offer Golden Arrow the opportunity to discuss to further in the GD forum. It takes two to argue, remember
Fine by me!:D! If I keep getting Napalmed I will simply leave, this place is rapidly ceasing to be worth the 3’rd degree burns.
savage-rabbitWho are you to talk about what should happen in Kashmir? USA, Russia and China? Give me a break. I have a better deal. Let myself, Groo and Vikasrehman guarantee an auction of your house. How’s that?
Yes and of course it goes without saying that the peopele of Kashmir are just jumping up and down with enthusiasm about becoming Indians.
Do you even know that China occupies about 35% of Kashmir. What kind of idiotic idea would it be to make a party to the dispute as a judge? :rolleyes:
Yes and I also know that I sould have added India and Pakistan to that list. The only way to solve the Kashmir conflict is to ask the people of Kashmir what they want ie which country they want to join or whether they want independence. A Plebicide is only going to be successful if all the parties to this conflict are involved in the process and unfortunately for India that does not mean that India gets what it wants, it means involving Pakistan and China. What are India and Pakistan afraid of ? That a plebicidie in Kashmir might indicate that the people there don’t want to have anything to do with any of these countries after being caught up in a nationalistic slogging match for all this time? Is that what you are afraid of?
Nonsense. Pakistan is not threatened.
RTDP – Please don’t put words in my mouth. I did not say Pakistan IS threatened I said It FEELS threatened. There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between the two.
What Pakistan wants is enough conventional weapons, preferably free of charge, for it to keep carrying on mischief with India. No nation has a right to demand weapons. You talk as though India and Pakistan are some babies and God appointed you to “sort them out.”
I will only ask once, please refrain from mudslinging 😀 , I won’t participate in a flamewar. Anyway we are getting wildly off topic anyway, I seem to remember something about this being an aviation forum. Either we move this somewhere else or this is my last post on the subject.
savage-rabbitIf I were Musharraf, getting Erieye would be a great win for me given the current situation world wide.
I agree 100% if I were Musharraf I would dump any Gripen deal in no time flat if I thought I could gain an AEW&C capability.
savage-rabbitSR,
Nations make choices and have to live by them. India has a national, stated commitment to non first use of nukes. Under no circumstances will India EVER be the first to use nukes. India is also a status quo nation. Virtually all Indians have abandoned hope of getting any territory from Pakistan. So the only chance for a nuclear war is if Pakistan uses nukes.
And what makes you think Pakistan will strike India first? I prefer to give Pakistan the benefit of the doubt. Surely Pakistans leaders know what the consequeces of a first nuclear strike would be? The international community would come down on Pakistan like a ton of bricks and that includes her old ally China. The Pakistani leadership would have to be positively insane to start a war of agression against India using nuclear weapons.
Pakistan seeks to arm itself hoping that it can use nuclear weapons as a blackmail to force India to concede territory. That is dangerous.
I assume you are referring to Kashmir? That province has a Moslem majority, that fact is hard to deny. What should really happen here is a UN sposored plebicide guaranteed by the USA Russia and China that decides who gets the province and let that be the end of it. From my point of view the will of the people of Kashmir overrides any political ambitions of either side.
BTW, you never came close to addressing the reality that India needs to protect the China front.
Yes like China shores up Pakistan to help protect its India front. There is another side to that coin.
Old theories of India-Pakistan equivalence are dead. Otherwise America would hvave sold Pakistan everything plus the Kitchen sink. Thank Goodness for that.
I did not say that Pakistan and India should be made equal in capability, I simply suggested that Pakistan be allowed to arm her self to the point that any hypothetical Indian attack would become too costly to contemplate. I am not in favor of anybody going overboard on arms sales to this region. I simply think it is a mistake not to counteract Russian and Israeli enthusiasm for selling advanced weapons to India by allowing Pakistan to keep up. Given the past conflicts between the two countries and the scale of Indias military buildup I find it hard to blame Pakistan for feeling threatened by a widening capability gap.
If you are concerned about avoiding a nuclear war, you should be concerned about war period. And the best way for that is if Pakistan forgets winning territory from India and end the proxy war.
This is presumably another reference to the Kashmir conflict. I refer you to my above opinion of how that problem should be solved.
savage-rabbit“There is no question of selling them weapons or anything directly related to weapons today,”
What’s next? Unfortunately we can’t sell you our beer because you might drink it!
Running an arms factory in Sweden must be a frustrating job. It must be hard to sell Gripen Jets when their cheif selling point is how good they look as multi million dollar garden ornaments. 😀
Cheers
KR
savage-rabbitBesides, arming Pakistan is a sure fire way of starting a war in the region because Pakistan’s Generals hve shown a streak of irrationality when getting a sense that the arms pipleline has opened.
That really depends on how you, the great power decide to allow Pakistan to arm it self. If the access of arms is restricted to mainly defensive equipment this strategy will work. The Gripen for example (unless I am very much mistaken) was concieved mainly as a defensive aircraft and not so much as an aircraft suitable to an agressive war. That would mean it severely restricts Pakistan to the defensive both because of its underlying design concept and because there is no way in creation that the Swedes will sell the Pakistanis spares and replacements in times of war unless Pakistan can very convincingly point at India and say “We did not start the fire!!” If that is not spanner in the worsk of any hypothetical Pakistani plan to attack India then I don’t know what is. Of course Sweden is practically guaranteed to be unwilling sell weapons to anybody who actually intends to use them so this will probably come to nothing for Pakistan.
Leaving the region to the market forces is the best bet for peace. If Pakistan wants arms, it will focus on economy instead of nuclear blackmail.
Pakistan has the bomb, we must accept the reality of that fact. Mutually Assured Destruction kept the USA and USSR off each others backs for the better part of half a century but that was also due in no small way to a balance in terms of conventional forces as well as Nuclear forces. If we allow the technological gap between India and Pakistan to widen to the point that the Pakistanis feel the only option is the nuclear one how are we better off? I for one would feel alot better if Pakistan considered it self to be able to beat back any hypothetical Indian attack with good old guns ammo and conventional guided missiles.
BTW, who is “we”?
Anybody who who considers him/her self to be better off if these two countries do not turn the region into a radioactive ashtray.
Cheers
SR
savage-rabbitIn other words – Nuclear blackmail
That is suuuch and uncivilized way of putting it. I prefer to call it gaining political leverage through the intensive study of physics …. 😀
If Americans don’t buy it, don’t expect the Swedes to. The other argument is that nations that easily sell their nukes to dubious states cannot be trusted with hi-tech.
You might also make the argument that excessive isolation of Pakistan drove them into a corner. The USA has many strenghts but skillful diplomacy with long term aims is not one of them. Even Henry Kissinger admitted as much…. The simple fact is that we are better off shoring the Pakistanis up by selling them just enough advanced fighters to counter Indias Su-30 threat, AEW&C aircraft to counter Indias Phalcon AWACS etc. than we are ensuring that the capability gap between India and Pakistan deepens and Pakistan is pushed even further into China’s arms.
Cheers
SR
savage-rabbitMay one be so bold as to inquire as to where the blazes they got a J-8 from? Has the PLAAF begun to sell them off for scrapping? Or is this one of the examples rumored to have been sold off to Iraq?? Either way this sounds like a ‘must see’.
Cheers 😀
SR
savage-rabbitinstead of buying the MiG-29, i think the Cambodians can buy some Chinese FC-1s (due to the good relationship between the two countries)
if they can not afford the FC-1, then the J-7G or the F-8IIM can be cheaper options for them.
Out of all those options I would be surprised if they went for anything more expensive than the F-7MG and even then only if the PRC is in a benevolent mood and arranges for Cambodia favorable financing to maintain a military balance in the region. Cambodia’s priority at the moment is building up her economy to the point that she will have enough cops to spare to prevent national humiliations such as looters sawing the heads off the priceless temple statues at Angkor and selling them to European and US American Yuppies as parlor ornaments. 😡 I don’t think the Cambodians can afford to buy something like the FC-1 unaided. :confused:
But along another note. Has anybody seen pictures of these upgraded MiG-21-2000 fighters?
savage-rabbitThere are some photos of IRIAF F-7N’s here:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=26182&page=8&pp=30
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=390066#post390066
I don’t suppose anybody has some more??
Cheers
SR
savage-rabbitAbout those Uganda MiG’s
it isn’t even certain if these airframes really received the -2000 upgrade.
Excellent picture though
I was thinking the same thing, the Ethiopians apparently wanted to get the full treatment for their MiG-21’s when they sent them to Israel but ended up only getting them overhauled due to lackof cash. The way to tell if the Ugandan MiGs are upgraded would be the new one piece windscreen. It is of course not 100% proof but if the Ugandan machines have it, it would make make it more likely they have been upgraded rather than just overhauled.
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