LevshaThat is partly why PAC-3 was designed. Just because a system has seen combat doesn’t make it better or worse than anything else either. By that logic the F-22A is not the world’s preeminent air defense aircraft.
A flawed analogy. It’s far easier to assess the overall potential performance of a war plane in peacetime than it is for a guided missile and no one has any doubts that the latest combat aircraft like the F-22 and Su-34 can fulfill the tasks that they were created for. If it can demonstrate this ability in training in peacetime, there is no reason why it can’t do this in war.
But with guided munitions it’s a different story. Usually they have to undergo real combat experience in order to find out the hidden bugs and loopholes in its performance. There have been many guided missiles, especially anti-aircraft missiles, which seemed promising enough during peacetime in tests and training against drones etc., but which failed to do their job when first introduced into battle and had to undergo serious reworking over a period of time to make them genuinely combat capable. Think of the AIM-4 Falcon, AIM-7 Sparrow, think of all those SAMs that had to be fired for every single kill attained.
If SOC’s supposition that the original Patriot was in some respects an ‘abject failure’ (although some informed people might disagree) well then this just supports the conclusion above; The original Patriot was tested in actual combat, was found wanting, was re-worked and redesigned as the PAC-3, used in combat again, and thereafter found to be far more successful.
A normal process in the design and development of any high technology product – and not just in the military field either. The only anti- ballistic missile interceptor to undergo this process to date, is the Patriot series,
SOC, do you think that the S-300 would have been more successful in the Persian Gulf in 1991, if so, why?
LevshaRussians make hands down the best air defense systems in the world, and the margin is really not that close.
Why do you say that?
The Patriot system, after all, has been combat tested in two Gulf wars against high altitude mach 6 targets with pretty successful results in both wars.
The S-300/S-400 hasn’t been used in combat at all, if I do rightly recall.
LevshaI’m quite fond of the Finnish air force, especially considering the 60 or so F/A-18C/Ds they have in service which must form quite a potent force for a small country of 5 million people – other small European countries take note!
Until the entry into service of the 4.5th generation ‘eurocanards’ the Finnish Hornets would have been possibly the most advanced combat aircraft in European service!
This suddenly provokes the question in me. How do Finland’s F/A-18C/Ds compare with next door neighbour’s Sweden’s JAS Gripens, technology and capability wise? After all, I don’t think the F/A-18C’S avionics predate the Gripen’s very much and they both use the F404 power plant.
Levsha[B] …requiring schools to teach patriotism and upgrading the Defense Agency to a full ministry for the first time since World War II.
The measures, enacted Friday in a vote by Parliament’s upper house, form key elements of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to bolster Japan’s international military role, build up national pride and distance the country from its post-1945 war guilt.
Why do some countries need to have such patriotism lessons and flag raising ceremonies anyway??:confused:
It’s a bit like the emotional feelings people may have for their parents (just as an example) – either you have these feelings of love, respect and attachment for your country (or your parents) in the first place – or you don’t, and I don’t see how any amount of long-winded oath taking or funny salutes with your left or right arm every morning at school is going to help compensate for it in any shape or form!:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
(And no, I’m not looking for a discussion about your difficult childhood):D 😀
Levsha[B] …requiring schools to teach patriotism and upgrading the Defense Agency to a full ministry for the first time since World War II.
The measures, enacted Friday in a vote by Parliament’s upper house, form key elements of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to bolster Japan’s international military role, build up national pride and distance the country from its post-1945 war guilt.
Why do some countries need to have such patriotism lessons and flag raising ceremonies anyway??:confused:
It’s a bit like the emotional feelings people may have for their parents (just as an example) – either you have these feelings of love, respect and attachment for your country (or your parents) in the first place – or you don’t, and I don’t see how any amount of long-winded oath taking or funny salutes with your left or right arm every morning at school is going to help compensate for it in any shape or form!:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
(And no, I’m not looking for a discussion about your difficult childhood):D 😀
Levshalink doesn’t work 🙁
Try this website instead!
http://capturedplanes.tripod.com/tomcat.htm
I get the impression that these photos have done the rounds on the internet so to speak, but I myself didn’t first see them until a month or so ago. Nobody seems to take them too seriously either:rolleyes:
Check out the Soviet F-86 as well – now that’s something I can believe;)
LevshaHere’s a link to some interesting if rather dubious photographs of F-14s with red stars applied. Personally I think that the’re fake.
LevshaGreat aircraft for poor latin American/African countries which needs to replace their aging A-37, F-5 fleet. Cheap and simple.
I can’t help but notice the similarity in physical appearance between this design and Iran’s ‘F-5 derivative’ Saeghe aircraft.
Levsha“fuels not subject to the whims of Islamic radicals”
Or newly re-elected South American radicals.
Did you know that the US still imports more oil (and has done so for over 30 years) from Venezuela than any other single country?
I guess the rantings Hugo Chavez was doing a year or so ago about the US “stealing Venezuela’s future by taking all of its oil” were just political window-dressing, since he is still selling us all the oil we want to buy from him.
You know, I’ve just been on to the CIA Factbook site to check a few statistics. Seems that 51% of all of Venezuela’s exports actually go to the USA, so we can see who is actually paying for these new Su-30MK2s, the same goes for Mexico’s new Flankers – guess where 80% of their exports go.
On the whole, what we can say about the Flanker is that we know who makes them, we know who buys them,
and we certainly know who pays for them:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
LevshaHas anyone considered the actual amount of aerial combat that would be carried out during the hours of darkness? Most American and NATO strike missions are optimized and planned to be carried out during the night and that it seems, is exactly how most major bombing campaigns were carried out by USA/NATO/UN etc, in the last 20 years in Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan etc.
If it’s going to be pitch black out there most of the time, how is this going to effect WVR air2air combat and what use will vectoring thrust, HMS and 50g capable short-range AAMs be, if the most important sensor and detection system, the ‘mark 1 eyeball’ has been almost completely neutralized?
One can see why the Americans have concentrated so much of their R and D efforts into stealth and optimizing their air power for night time operations. I should think their are much less vulnerable during night operations… and aerial warfare of the last 20 years appears to vindicate this…
LevshaWhat is the safety record of the F/A-18 in USN service anyway? I know that the Hornet was designed for safer flying and greater operability and maintainability than previous naval aircraft, such as the F-14 and A-6 but how do the statistics compare?
Also, I’m curious about the safety record of those F/A-18s in non American service, such as Canada, Kuwait, Spain, etc. I read recently that Finland lost a Hornet in a collision but what about the other countries, and how do land based F/A-18s compare safety record wise with the F-16 and MiG-29?
I get the impression that the Hornet’s record is pretty good, or at least I never hear much about Hornet accidents in foreign service.
LevshaThat is not exactly what happened to Soviet weapons, for example the F-4 in that case should be called a looser, the US lost more than 600 Phantoms only in the Vietnam War, Iran lost a lot too and Israel also lost several dozen, but no one here claims the F-4 was crap why?.
Flogger
The Soviets lost up to 16,000 (sixteen thousand) Il-2 ‘Sturmaviks’ to all causes, including accidents, in 1941-1945. I think that’s an amazing figure! Do you or anyone in the former Soviet Union call the Il-2 ‘crap’ (although you could call it overrated)?
The question is not whether 400 or 600 F-4s were lost in the 8 year war in SE Asia – but whether the final figure is in fact a glowing recommendation for the aircraft – or a damming indictment…
LevshaAll of the above being preceded by TSR2 .
Not the XB-70 surely?? :confused:
Levshafirst of all the Iraqis were not following Soviet doctrine, none of the arab armies ever came close to following Soviet doctrine, their units werent formed right, they certainly werent equipped right, they werent trained right and they certainly didnt maneuver right. Combined arms operations is something the arabs never got. In fact, it was the Israelis who came the closest, to maneuvering like the soviets, using a combination of Soviet (pre-1976 doctrine) and German doctrine (oh the irony). The Soviets changed doctrine in the mid-70’s actually and modern Russia has since changed doctrine twice. The modern Russian army doesnt even man its tank batallions like the USSR did, the Russian tank battallion was seriously rethought in the mid 90’s.
Hahahaha… since when did Soviet doctrine involve digging tanks into the sand? If the Iraqis had used anything like soviet tactics they never would have sat by and let the world spend 6 months building up their forces… it would have been T-72s vs Sheridans…
What makes you people think that the Soviet army was capable of employing its own military doctrine and tactics anyway?
I’ve met a few ex-members of the Soviet army and other Warsaw Pact forces who certainly would not have been confident about the success of any WP attempt to reach the English channel.
LevshaDon’t bother.. The Ye-8 was nothing but just a rip-off of some American design, anyway.. :p
Well, who knows?
Maybe a draughtsman in the Mikoyan design office accidently pinned a ‘borrowed’ drawing of a certain American aircraft upside down on his board one day… and the rest, as they say, is history :diablo: :diablo:
North American YF-107A Super Sabre and Ye-8
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