sortie generation is more revealing to actual combat capacity

Meaningless statement. There is not much point developing high sortie numbers if you are only capable of completing simpler combat missions with less payload. How many amraam or Harpoon type missiles can a J-7 carry? Does it have the radar for BVR or anti-ship missions?

What’s gone down recently is really mostly a “rally ’round the flag”-effect. Good comparisons would be Thatcher and the Tories right around the Falkland crisis, or indeed the POTUS (for whose popularity ratings the term was originally coined) every time the US gets involved in something that spurs patriotism.

Case in point (G.W. Bush approval ratings):

Then you have three other main factors pertaining to V.V. Putins general popularity – namely the abysmal job his predecessor did, the very tangible improvement of peoples lives in Russia under Putin and the lack of any credible alternatives. In other words, it’s no wonder he’s heaps popular and there’s no need to ascribe it to propaganda or personality cults or anything like that.

So what you are saying is that political leaders’ popularity increases when they invade countries or declare war?
The year 1939 comes to mind…:rolleyes:

1] the trend is increasing demands of positive ID,

Not in a real war against a real aerial threat I’d imagine. Positive visual ID a Su-35 or Y-20 – not likely.

Wondering why pilots preferred (ahead of engineers) a new TV channel to a new IR on Rafale’s OSF?

American F-4 had the TISEO television sighting system in the 1960s. Iranian F-4s might still have it?

It is noteworthy that all A2A engagements are around 5 nm, give or take,
and the give or take is given by if the target is moving away or towards the missile

US pilots were restricted to attacking enemy aircraft that were in visual range in order to make a positive ID. What that has to do with the real performance of AIM-7 is not clear. Also, BVR missiles of the sixties were, I believe, primarily designed to shoot down bombers – not MiGs.

Well if “stealth aircraft designers” have been working on the problem for many years maybe they have indeed “being able to do something about it” ?

Evidence Is Now Conclusive: Two Ukrainian Government Fighter-Jets Shot Down Malaysian Airlines MH17

http://globalresearch.ca.ext.prxa.ru/evidence-is-now-conclusive-two-ukrainian-government-fighter-jets-shot-down-malaysian-airlines-mh17-it-was-not-a-buk-surface-to-air-missile/5394814?null

Paralay, did you read your own link?

Further, there’s this crucial 21 July photo-reconstruction of that cockpit-fragment positioned into place on the aircraft as it had originally been in that intact-airliner: http://sss.twitter.com.ext.prxa.ru/EzraBraam. (Sometimes that doesn’t work, so here’s another screen of it from someone who copied it.) Looking at that photo-reconstruction, one can easily tell that the SU-25 or other fighter-jet that was firing into the cockpit from the pilot’s left side didn’t just riddle the area surrounding the pilot with bullets, but that it then targeted-in specifically onto the pilot himself, producing at his location a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane precisely at the place where the pilot was seated. Furthermore, this gaping hole was produced by shooting into the plane, precisely at the pilot, from below and to the pilot’s left, which is where that fighter-jet was located — not from above the airliner, and not from beside it, and also not from below it.

In other words: this was precise and closely-targeted firing against the pilot himself, not a blast directed broadly against, and aiming to hit, the plane anywhere, to bring it down.

Haisenko explained how this penetration of the plane, though it was targeted specifically at the pilot, caused immediately a breaking-apart of the entire aircraft.

Other readers have responded to my news-report about Haisenko’s article, by saying that shrapnel from a Buk missile could similarly have caused those holes into the side of the cockpit. However, that objection ignores another key feature of Haisenko’s analysis. Haisenko said there: “You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likeley that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile. The edge of the other, the larger and slightly frayed exit holes showing shreds of metal pointing produced by the same caliber projectiles. Moreover, it is evident that … these exit holes of the outer layer of the double aluminum reinforced structure are shredded or bent — outwardly!”

:highly_amused::highly_amused:

look so much like PHOENIX though

A very old,old jibe against the R-33, mentioned many times in this forum over the years. But the R-33 and the AIM-54 are 2 different missiles. For a start one is semi-active, the other, with a fully active radar homing head.