They are indeed two traditional customers for Chinese aircraft and arms. But Kenya has already purchased the Z-9 – maybe they’ve bought more? Other possible African buyers in my mind would be Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, who have all bought Chinese aircraft in previous years. In fact it’s been in the news lately just how much China is investing in Africa’s natural resources and minerals supply – find out which African country has recently signed agreements with Chinese mining companies.

BTW, is Eurocopter happy to see China selling their Dauphin design like this – do the Chinese have a licence to sell abroad?

The Soviets rarely if ever used the their Mi-24s for the troop carrying role in either Afghanistan in the 1980s or in any of the Chechen wars The Mi-8 is in nearly all cases a more effective troop carrying ship. the Mi-24 is usually always seen as a gunship, ground attacker or heli escort – troop carrying and gunship are seen as mutually exclusive roles for a helicopter.
A parallel to this can be seen in the Vietnam war were the US army used UH-1s as either a gunship (armed with rocket pods and machine guns) or as a troop carrier (without any armament) – but never the same aircraft doing both in the same sortie. The US army would rarely try to make any troop carrying Huey try to escort itself.

You have been given a maximum of US$2 billion to create your own fantasy COIN (counter-insurgency) oriented air force, capable of engagement in low-intensity warfare and subnational conflicts, all from scratch with old or new aircraft.

Most countries, if they are politically unstable to have to fight a COIN war on their own territory, most likely wouldn’t have ‘US$2 billion’ to spend on aircraft to fight the insurgents. How much did Sri Lanka spend on aircraft throughout its 25 year war against the Tamils, or the Peruvian government spend on aircraft during its long war against the Shining Path movement?
Try 200 million USD…

Aah Kabir forgive him, I reckon that ‘slow cooker’ Turkey and Vegetable stew will be winner next time I have a dinner party (like never!) and I’ve just learned how to prepare my own vegetable stock (never use cabbages apparently). The Key Publishing Forum can be such a fount of useful information at times, don’t you think?:D

Of course, almost a decade between the service entry of the F-101 and the F-4 (in USAF). What I had in mind was service in the Vietnam war.
It seems that just about any aircraft that could be adapted to carry a ‘special device’ in USAF service in the 1950s did carry such weapons. The aircraft that most intrigues me in this respect would be the F-86H:

The R-35 in the Mirage III! That would be almost double the original power of the Atar – it wouldn’t be just the variable inlets you’d have to rebuild, but the whole airframe itself…:cool:

What type does/did Ryanair operate out of Belfast city? I thought that a main operational policy of of a low-cost airline was that it only operated one type – in Ryanair’s case, B737-800s?

interesting topic.

I’ve often wondered about solving the Tornado F3’s alleged lack of performance at higher altitudes – I’ve often wondered how the F.3 would perform if it was equiped with the M53 ‘leaky turbojet’ from the Mirage 2000. Or take the F-14, replace the TF-30 with the latest versions of the J75 (powering the F-105, F-106) – I have in mind the J75 version which could power the XF8U-3 Crusader III to Mach 2.6. That would be a fast Tomcat, probably wouldn’t be the Tomcat that the USN would have wanted though.