I don’t like to say “photoshopped!”, but um. Blocker looks it.

Look at shadow from LERX. It’s straight.

I am hungover to hell. So it’s quite possible I’m wrong on this.

Folding fins arent going to help that bad boy fit into the F-35’s bay 😉

How well does scram technology scale down?

I’ve no doubt, if the US identifies a need for such a missile, they’ll develop and produce it. But we’re probably talking 10+ years before entering service? Versus 2013 for the Meteor.

Thank you for the additional photos and information folks! 🙂

What sort of damage would have been done to the cockpit (aside from the smashed canopy)

Would it have been largely superficial?

It’s relatively rare that an aircraft ejected from, lives to fly again… I can think of two other examples off the top of my head (Vampire & Jet Provost), but I’m sure there are many more.

Not necessarily. Merely having access to supercomputers doesn’t mean one has the know how to do everything. The Russians are still buying foreign UAVs due to the lack of expertise to build locally, and meet the standards that the RuAF expects.

I know one doesn’t necessarily imply the other, it’s just I would have considered the challenge of creating a stealth aircraft, modern avionics, powerplants, AESA etc. to be much more challenging and costly than a frame less canopy.

Again, I guess it’s a question of priorities.

Materially, how difficult is it to meet the challenges of resilience to bird strikes, prolonged supersonic flight etc, with a one piece canopy?

quick and dirty ps of the gear up

Hi Code, welcome to the forum!

It’s a very interesting and sad story.

Regardless of whether he was a military pilot defector – one thing is for certain – if he was a Russian in Austria/Switzerland, he had/has an interesting story to tell!

Is your mother quite certain he was Russian? I know the DDR ran an intelligence operation which targeted single females who worked in official jobs. Essentially they’d send a handsome man in to seduce a woman and use them to access secret documents.

One thing about that list of defections on Wikipedia is that it seems to concern only military personnel. It’s possible this man could have been a civilian pilot?

From anything I have read – Austria was a hotbed of espionage during the Cold War, if he was a person of interest to American authorities, it would be possible that they would prefer to debrief him/glean information in a neutral setting such as Switzerland.

The last two pages are sad to read..:(
To much derailing garbage:mad:
Isn’t there Moderators who follow these threads:confused:
There should be some cleanups here..

Otaku keep posting those great pics:)

Thanks

While my derailing was tongue in cheek… I’d still like to apologise!

I think the forum admin should set up a subforum (read: a playground) for trolls/nationalistic pissing contestants. I.E. ban repeat offenders from this section and leave them to their own devices in a sandboxed forum where they can discuss which country has the best pilot DNA etc.

Leave it unmodded and let them work away.

There’s clearly a desire for that kind of discussion.

No! Break up & sell off the DRDO, HAL, the state owned shipyards, etc. As long as they’re state enterprises, they’re doomed. You need Indian firms (probably with foreign minority partners) competing with each other & foreigners for contracts. That’ll speed up development, lower costs, & increase quality. India is full of talented people: unleash those talents! Remove the dead hand of state bureaucracy!

This is probably the best/most interesting post in this topic so far and it’s been completely overlooked.

Is there any desire within India for such a move?

I fully agree with the Indian members who advocate indigenous solutions – your country has the talent and the finances to compete on the world stage, but it appears to me that there is room for a lot of reform of local industry.

I’m not a “privatise everything” person, but certain sectors would really benefit from it.