First, I want to express my sorrow and grief over the death of all of the British and foreign civilians in these coward terrorist attacks.
As a person living in a country suffering many terrorist attacks, I understand well what’s going on in Britain now.

However, with your permission, I have two questions bothering me for a while now.
1) How could it be that the British intelligence failed so badly, and couldn’t do anything to prevent the attacks?
And what is taking the British police so long to figure out what exactly happened in each attack scene and recover the remaining bodies?
2) Well, not really a question, and forgive me if it may sound a bit rude, it’s not my intention. The question is, why do people here and in the UN condemn so quickly and strongly the terrorists, both those who commited this horrible act and those who are based worldwide and planning more of these attacks?
The UN particulary. When Israeli civilians are attacked by terrorists, well withing the international borders of Israel, most of the world’s reaction is pretty cold. Yes, it’s true we have many of these attacks, but it doesn’t make each attack easier. Therefore I think that the world must react much more strongly against any terrorist attack, anywhere in the world. We are no less humans than the British nation, we too want to hear the world supporting us and condemning these cowardly acts.

With all regards to the British people, and peace loving people, may they be Christian, Muslims or Jews.

To the last sentence the answer is no.
Retired aircraft were/are stored at Uvda AB and Hatzerim AB. But they are kept for possible export opportunities via IAI/SIBAT or selling of spare parts from those. Those are never intended to be reactivated in the case of war.

Some other aircraft are stored in some IAF bases in a level of storage that will allow them to re enter service in time of emergency.

I have some pics from the Uvda boneyard, showing many Kfirs and Skyhawks, and I know that there are also F-4s and a few F-15s there. I’ll try to dig them out.
Some pictures of the aircraft in Hatzerim are available on the net, I think there are some on airliners.net as well.

it’s ok Erez , it can happen to anybody to have dirty glasses and to miss a detail as big as your nose in the middle of your face 😀

It’s OK Fred, it can happen to anybody to have a huge stomach and to miss something as big as your belly after a good frogs soup 😀

Erez, thanks for the info, much appreciated. However, I do have a couple more questions. You mentioned they use modified 707s as command and control jets, are those based on the Phalcon system are they regular looking aircraft?
Secondly, the upgrade you mentioned in regards to the C-130 fleet, will it be a design locally drawn up or will it be something very similar to what the USAF is presently doing to its C-130s.
Again, thanks a lot for all the held, it is greatly appreciated! Cheers!

You’re welcome 😉

The 707(s) used for command and control look like the rest of the planes, except for the larger number of antennas on their fuselage, as in the pictures DeepSpace uploaded.

The C-130s upgrade will probably be the one offered by IAI.

About the 707’s… most of the IDF/AF 707’s are used both for tankers and command and control jets… they look like normal KC-707’s but with many antennas, just like this (these photos are from this site) :

I don’t tend to agree that “most of the IDF/AF 707’s are used both for tankers and command and control jets”. The plane in the pictures is probably one of the command and control aircraft, as it participated in the Maple Flag excerise. However the rest are either tankers or passenger planes.
I could be proven wrong though.

I’ll grant you that I probably shouldn’t have used the term “morons”, it would have been better to say that we are slaves to Israel’s survival. In fact, I’ll go edit that part out of my original post. That being said, I have nothing against the people of Israel, the issue I am addressing here is my government’s policies towards Israel.

Thanks, that’s pretty much all I wanted to hear.

Personally, I have no problems with the idea of a nuclear Iran. They’ve got no missiles that can range to the US. They’re not about to shoot one at us in the Gulf anyway, as they know we’d just shoot back. They have to be too smart to hand Al Qaeda a nuclear warhead: if it blows on US soil, do you think we’re going to take a long time,investigate, build a UN-approved coalition, and then ask Iran to apologize nicely in the Security Council? No. About 30 minutes after the detonation, Tehran would evaporate. So, as far as the US is concerned, I see no reason why we can’t live with a nuclear Iran.

You are right, they currently don’t have any missiles that could reach the United States. However, they are well on their way to get some. Iran’s Shihab 4, for example, is capable of reaching a number of European states, as well as Egypt, deep inside Russia and maybe even Japan. And that’s for countries. The American forces based all over the globe, not only in the Persian Gulf, are under a threat. And the Iranian missile program goes on.

You may believe that Iran’s rulers are too clever to use nuclear bombs against the US, however, as the modern world often shows, the mere fact that you got the possibility to use a weapon (or to make others think you do) gives you a critical advantage. In other words, it could lead to an international blackmail. We did something similar in 1973, when our fronts were collapsing – we were ready to use the nukes, to perhaps avoid the destruction of the country, but didn’t do it because the US started sending us supply. And that basically made Israel win the war.

That critical advantage, the nuclear arsenal, is an evil thing in its base. The common human interest is one – surviving. That’s why I think only countries ruled by the common people should be allowed to hold nuclear weapons, as the nation itself wouldn’t let irresponsible leaders be in power. In Israel for example, and unlike the US, the prime minister cannot decide alone to use nuclear weapons, that we call the weapon of Armagedon. In dictatorships, eventually a single human being makes all those critical decisions. A human being. The human race as a race is not perfect. We are under the pressure of society, and under the pressure of our own mind, mentality, faith and instincts. The problem is, that a dictator could be very wrong about something, but will have no one alse aside him to balance him. Especially as he is declaring night and day over his will to start war and destroy other nations. Even Hitler wasn’t like this, that’s why he came to power in a somewhat democratic way. Will you give a gun to some crazy guy who declares that life sucks and he’s gonna shoot himself?
In the same logic, you can’t let a country like Iran hold nuclear weapons.

No action taken, as neither did I read SOC’s original remark as an anti-Israel one, but one aimed against a certain faction within the Israeli political spectrum which is perfectly acceptable in a civilised thread like this. Also, whether you tolerate an attitude or not is entirely your own business. Whether it is considered suitable or not for this Forum is decided by the Webmaster and/or the moderators.

Anyone that reads carefully and knows a thing or two about English grammer could see that this statement is problematic. But SOC clarified it, and I have no problem with it now.

I won’t do any moderating actions in this thread, especially since SOC has shown the courtesy of editing his original post.

And there’s no need to.

Erez, be advised that we prefer people to contact the moderators in private rather than in public.

Will do :dev2:

Arthur
Well-dressed in his Moderator Gown and waiving his wand of moderation.

Halleluja :diablo: