I didn’t know that the Kaman Super Seasprites which the Australian Navy tried and failed to put into service were made in France…:rolleyes:

I think wrightwing was commenting on this statement:

thought this beeing obvious looking back at all those crazy Russian stunts(sucsessfull ejections) over the years.
No other aircraft can top the Flanker and Mig-29 on this issue..

Air show accident records for the last 20 years or so, show all too clearly, that modern Russian combat aircraft come equipped with very effective crew escape systems – it’s a way of making a failure look like a success, I guess.

I’ve often wondered why AWAC aircraft haven’t been armed before with long range AAMs. If MPAs can be armed with AShMs, I can’t see why AWAC can’t be armed. Seems rather a waste to have that long range radar, yet not be able to engage targets at long range.

Sure. I would have thought that AWACs aircraft were a high priority target for any fighter pilot, obviously your average E-3 has its disadvantages when it comes to trying to survive in a hostile environment – so it’s best to play to your strong points, i.e. good avionics kit, good stand-off range.
It wouldn’t be hard to install some sort of F-22 style rotary launcher in a large airframe, like an E-3, would it?

$600 toilet seats (at 1980s prices!)

I thought there was a toilet seat which cost $60,000 at one point?

A single Defender for Ireland’s relatively hugh coastline – no wonder the country has become so popular with the “cartels”:rolleyes:

And speaking of Qadaffi and Libya, I can remember as a boy growing up in Ireland in the 1980s, the Libyan arms shipments for the IRA – you couldn’t go for a walk on a coastal strand in the west of Ireland without tripping over an RPG-7…
I believe the only time an arms shipment from Libya to the IRA was ever detected and intercepted was of the coast of France by the French military…

The Irish Air Corps also has been operating out of Malta.2 Casa cn235’s and a Learjet 45 haves been flying out european citizens. It is also the Air corps first forward deployment of aircraft to a foreign country for an extended period of time. For a small force it is a huge occasion.

What are the Irish using for the maritime patrol of their waters while the CN235s are in Libya?
Ireland is something of an ‘entreport’ for narcotics to the UK is it not?

My point is that they fared rather poorly in Pakistani hands against Indian MiG-21s.

F-104s may have suffered to the Indian air force in 1971 – but what point are you trying to make about it?