I would think the landing gears would be more or less good to go. The ones on the Viggen were very robust. The engine was also designed for short take-off to begin with. The HUD has aids for steep landing angle even.

A more massive and robust under carriage and arrestor hook would be needed. Plus that thrust reverser would be deleted, which might just keep the weight balanced. Then there’s the salt water problem.

Transcript from “Count Down with Keith Olbermann”

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OLBERMANN: As we mentioned, China fueling fears of an arms race in space by conducting antisatellite weapons test last week, in which one of its old weather satellites was destroyed by a Chinese missile, the Bush administration not alone today in criticizing the Chinese government for that test, having kept a lid on it for a week, so it could weigh the significance that China felt free to blow up its own satellite only possible because, in late August, Mr. Bush ignored calls for a global treaty that would ban such tests.

Why might he do that? Perhaps because his administration has been working on, quote, “a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would be used against enemy satellites.”

Let‘s call in nuclear weapons expert Joseph Cirincione, the senior vice president for national security of the Center for American Progress, also co-author of “Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Thanks for your time again tonight, sir.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, CO-AUTHOR, “DEADLY ARSENALS”: My pleasure, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Was it a mistake to turn down the Chinese and the Russians when they offered to negotiate setting ground rules for weapons in space? And might this be an attempt by the Chinese now to get the Bush administration back to the bargaining table?

CIRINCIONE: It was definitely a mistake to turn them down. I condemn the Chinese test. There‘s no justification for that test. But there is an explanation. For the last six years, the Bush administration has been yelling loudly about our intentions to militarize space. We‘ve established a U.S. Space Command. We talk about space dominance. We have a half-dozen very expensive space weapons on the drawing boards. We have insisted that we have an unimpeded access to space, but we‘ve also insisted on our right to knock out other countries‘ satellites.

We have voted against efforts to have treaties that would ban these kinds of weapons. In October 2005, 160 nations at the United Nations voted for a treaty to ban weapons in space. The U.S. was the only nation that voted against that treaty. China has gotten the hint. They say, You want a race? OK, bring it on.

OLBERMANN: So if we don‘t get back into negotiations with the Chinese, the Russians, if we don‘t go along with the U.N. proposal, are we looking, realistically, at another nuclear arms race, only this one with the weapons pointed outwards?

CIRINCIONE: The race is already on. We‘ve been racing by ourselves. China has now joined that race. They‘ve demonstrated that they have a capability, as we do, to launch a missile that could knock out a satellite. The trouble is, we‘re the big losers in that competition. We have over 420 satellites in space, more than the rest of the world combined. China has only about 34.

We have more to lose from such a race. You have two choices here. Either you start this race, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and require us to harden our satellites, maneuver our satellites, have spare satellites to go into space, and develop antisatellite weapons of our own. Or you negotiate a ban on any weapons in space and stop this madness before it gets started.

OLBERMANN: Not to get too cynical from the beginning on this, but was the idea here in our refusal to be involved in this, that we should not be banning weapons in space, because whether or not they ultimately worked, developing them for this country would be forth hundreds of million dollars to American defense contractors?

CIRINCIONE: You don‘t have to be an Eisenhower scholar or have seen the documentary “Why We Fight” to know that there really is a military-industrial complex, and there‘s a lot of money to be made in weapons, particularly space weapons. Space is very expensive and very profitable. And what we have here is a fusion of that military-industrial complex with the ideologues in the White House that is propelling us towards a space race.

My only hope is that the next administration will come to its senses and stop this madness and negotiate a treaty that preserves the peaceful uses of space for all nations, including the United States.

OLBERMANN: Something else we have to keep our fingers crossed about through the beginning of ‘09. But in the short term, before that, if the Chinese are capable now of shooting down one of their own satellites in space, are there military implications for what else they might be able to do back here on the planet?

CIRINCIONE: Oh, certainly. They just demonstrated the capability to shoot what‘s called a low-earth-orbiting satellite. Most of our space surveillance and tracking systems are in those low-earth orbits. So they could knock out our eyes, ears, sensors in space. They could cripple U.S. military operations in any conflict.

And it opens up this interesting, unresolved question of where one‘s territory ends. The Chinese are saying, The space above our land is our territory. There‘s no clear law on this. That‘s one—another reason to negotiate a treaty, to clarify that everyone has a right to space.

OLBERMANN: Yes, why would we ever have wanted a treaty to stop anything like that?

Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress. Once again, sir, thanks for your time tonight.

CIRINCIONE: My pleasure, Keith. Thanks for having me.

The problem is there aren’t that many stretches of road suited for combat aircraft operations, and these are nearly as identifiable as regular tarmacs. The ability to protect airfields and repair them still have no substitute.

There is no problem. The naming policy of Russian and Chinese equipment is not going to change. It still functions today with classes of naval vessels, radars, aircraft, missiles etc. The naming system is designed to be used from the ordinary troop level all the way up to the Presidential/Prime Minister level. ASIC are assigned Russian and Chinese aircraft/helicopters. If the naming system annoys you then I’m afraid you’ll just have to live with it.

It’s my observation that the change has already occured. And it seems my explanation for its probable cause have rubbed some people the wrong way.

As it is pointed out, the JH-7 remains the Flying Leopard in usage, and the name Flounder has never been confirmed. There is also no F-name for the J-10 for anyone to get annoyed at. Given the existance of this aircraft was well documented for a decade with no adversary name given, the situation will in all likelihood remain that way.

I think at this point all sides of the arguement have been presented. The kind thing to do is to leave it at that. We’ll have to let history be the juge.

That is my whole point – it IS confusing – when said over a a radio with poor reception in the heat of a conflict.
…

I appreciate the situation, but the J-10 will be given its proper market name soon enough, and it would probably be less linguistically intimidating than the Taiwanese “Ching-Kuo” fighter. I’m sure there are lots of words for Falcon/Eagle/Phantom in the various European languages as well so I don’t see what’s so confusing calling the JH-7 Flying Leopard.

So the question comes back to why should a CHINESE fighter get a Nato codename when plenty of non-Nato jets do not? If this were truely an universal rule it would be not be worth mentioning. Will you admit there’s an underlying assumption in this naming tradition that Nato is more likely to fight against a Chinese aircraft than other non-Nato types? That being the case I think such a policy needs updating. Given the good relations Nato enjoys and promotes with the PRC, it wont surprise me in the least should Nato part with tradition in this case.

Did Brasil ever consider the F-20 Tigershark back in the day?

US should be selling F-15s not F-16s. The Eagle can’t be used to drop nukes and it’ll play a superior interceptor role. Ironically, India should have less to worry about. If Saudi Arabia gets F-15s, why not Pakistan?