Originally posted by Phil Foster
In any case whatever the Strike Eagle can do compared to the Typhoon it does it at twice the operating costs ….

Not twice but at an increased cost as the EF2000 is like a Rafale or F-18E/F for maintenance methods.

As the EF2000 is still not checked out on a lot of A2G weapons yet and the Rafale is, I wouldn’t put them in the same category of competition. Like I said before: This isn’t the South Korea Competition some time back. Now the Rafale is up and checked out on A2G weapons of a wide variety. This gives it an edge in a sales environment. The EF2000 is still not. ( captive carry tests don’t count) They are just getting around to certifying AMRAAM on the EF2000. They have a long way to go.

Inquiry Suggests Pakistanis Sold Nuclear Secrets

NY Times

By William J. Broad, David Rohde and David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 — A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors has forced Pakistani officials to question his aides and openly confront evidence that the country was the source of crucial technology to enrich uranium for Iran, North Korea and possibly other nations.

Until the past few weeks, Pakistani officials had denied evidence that the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, named for the man considered a national hero, had ever been a source of weapons technology to countries aspiring to acquire fissile material. Now they are backing away from those denials, while insisting that there has been no transfer of nuclear technology since President Pervez Musharraf took power four years ago.

Dr. Khan, a metallurgist who was charged with stealing European designs for enriching uranium a quarter century ago, has not yet been questioned. American and European officials say he is the centerpiece of their investigation, but that General Musharraf’s government has been reluctant to take him on because of his status and deep ties to the country’s military and intelligence services. A senior Pakistani official said in an interview that “any individual who is found associated with anything suspicious would be under investigation,” and promised a sweeping inquiry.

Pakistan’s role in providing centrifuge designs to Iran, and the possible involvement of Dr. Khan in such a transfer, was reported Sunday by The Washington Post. Other suspected nuclear links between Pakistan and Iran have been reported in previous weeks by other news organizations.

An investigation conducted by The New York Times during the past two months, in Washington, Europe and Pakistan, showed that American and European investigators are interested in what they describe as Iran’s purchase of nuclear centrifuge designs from Pakistan 16 years ago, largely to force the Pakistani government to face up to a pattern of clandestine sales by its nuclear engineers and to investigate much more recent transfers.

Those include shipments in the late 1990’s to facilities in North Korea that American intelligence agencies are still trying to locate, in hopes of gaining access to them.

New questions about Pakistan’s role have also been raised by Libya’s decision on Friday to reveal and dismantle its unconventional weapons, including centrifuges and thousands of centrifuge parts. A senior American official said this weekend that Libya had shown visiting American and British intelligence officials “a relatively sophisticated model of centrifuge,” which can be used to enrich uranium for bomb fuel.

A senior European diplomat with access to detailed intelligence said Sunday that the Libyan program had “certain common elements” with the Iranian program and with the pattern of technology leakage from Pakistan to Iran. The C.I.A. declined to say over the weekend what country appeared to be Libya’s primary source. “It looks like an indirect transfer,” said one official. “It will take a while to trace it back.”

There are also investigations under way to determine if Pakistani technology has spread elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia, but so far the evidence involves largely the exchange of scientists with countries including Myanmar. There have been no confirmed reports of additional technology transfers, intelligence officials say.

The Pakistani action to question Dr. Khan’s associates was prompted by information Iran turned over two months ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency, under pressure to reveal the details of a long-hidden nuclear program. But even before Iran listed its suppliers to the I.A.E.A. — five individuals and a number of companies from around the world — a British expert who accompanied agency inspectors into Iran earlier this year identified Iranian centrifuges as being identical to the early models that the Khan laboratories had modified from European designs. “They were Pak-1’s,” said one senior official who later joined the investigation, saying that they were transferred to Iran in 1987.

Pakistani officials said the sales to Iran might have occurred in the 1980’s during the rule of the last American-backed military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. They acknowledge questioning three scientists: Mohammed Farooq, Yasin Chohan and a man believed to be named Sayeed Ahmad, all close aides to Dr. Khan.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official said Mr. Farooq was in charge of dealing with foreign suppliers at the Khan laboratory, run by Dr. Khan until he was forced into retirement — partly at American insistence — in the spring of 2001. At the laboratory, where much of the work was done that led to Pakistan’s successful nuclear tests in 1998 and its deployment of dozens of nuclear weapons, Mr. Chohan was in charge of metallurgical research, according to senior Pakistani officials.

Contacted by telephone last week, relatives of Mr. Farooq said he was still being questioned. Mr. Chohan’s family said Sunday that Mr. Chohan had been released and was at home.

Pakistani officials have insisted in that if their scientists and engineers had done anything wrong, it was without government approval. They said their bank accounts and real estate holdings were also being investigated. A senior Bush administration official, while declining to comment on what was learned when Pakistani officials questioned the men, said that all three had been “well known to our intelligence folks.” Another official said the United States had steered Pakistani officials to the three, in hopes it would further pressure Dr. Khan.

Dr. Khan declined several requests in November for an interview, routed through his secretary and his official biographer, Zahid Malik. However, Mr. Malik relayed a statement from Dr. Khan that he had never traveled to Iran. “He said, `I have never been there in my life.’ ” A European confidante of Dr. Khan’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani scientist put the blame for transfers on a Middle Eastern businessman who he said was supplying Pakistan with centrifuge parts and, on his own, double-ordered the same components to sell to Iran. “There is evidence he is innocent,” the confidante said of Dr. Khan in an interview. “I don’t think he is lying, but not perhaps telling the whole truth.”

Iran has insisted that all of its centrifuges were built purely for peaceful purposes, and last week it signed an agreement to allow deeper inspections.

But for 18 years Iran hid the centrifuge operations from the agency’s inspectors.

In Pakistan, the disclosure of the investigation is already complicating the political position of General Musharraf, who narrowly escaped an assassination attempt a week ago. An alliance of hard-line Islamic political parties has already assailed him for questioning the scientists, saying the inquiry shows he is a puppet of the United States.

Any attack on Dr. Khan, hailed as the creator of the first “Islamic bomb,” is likely to be seized by the Islamist parties as a major political issue. Many Pakistanis opposed the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as what is seen as the United States’ one-sided support of Israel. Many also perceive the United States as trying to dominate the Muslim world — and through pressure on the nuclear scientists, to contain its power.

While General Musharraf was responsible for sidelining Dr. Khan nearly three years ago, he has also praised him. When the nuclear and military establishments of Pakistan gathered for a formal dinner early in 2001 to honor Dr. Khan’s retirement, General Musharraf described him this way, according to a transcript of his speech in a Pakistani archive: “Dr. Khan and his team toiled and sweated, day and night, against all odds and obstacles, against international sanctions and sting operations, to create, literally out of nothing, with their bare hands, the pride of Pakistan’s nuclear capability.”

European and American officials have a different view of Dr. Khan, from his work from 1972 to 1975 in the Netherlands at a centrifuge plant, Urenco.

At the plant, Dr. Khan gained access to centrifuge designs that were extremely sensitive, records from a later investigation show. Suddenly, around 1976, Dr. Khan quit and returned to Pakistan. Not long after, Western investigators say, Pakistan started an atom bomb program that eventually began to enrich uranium with centrifuges based on a stolen Dutch design.

Investigators in the Netherlands found a letter he wrote in the summer of 1976, after having returned to Pakistan, to Frits Veerman, a technician friend at the plant. “I ask you in great confidence to help us,” Dr. Khan wrote, according to an article by David Albright, a nuclear expert, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This is absolutely urgent.”

Dr. Khan asked for help on how to etch special grooves on a Dutch centrifuge’s bottom bearing, a critical part. The grooves were to aid the flow of lubricants. He also asked if Mr. Veerman might like to vacation in Pakistan “and earn some money at the same time?”

Suspicious, Mr. Veerman gave the letter to officials at Urenco. It was eventually used against Dr. Khan when he was put on trial in absentia in the Netherlands. In 1983, he was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing nuclear secrets. The conviction was later overturned, however, on a legal technicality.

By 1986, American intelligence had concluded that Pakistan was making weapons-grade uranium. And Dr. Khan was making no secret of his expertise: he published two articles that advertised his knowledge. He did so, he wrote, “because most of the work is shrouded in the clouds of the so-called secrecy” controlled by Western nuclear powers.

At around the same time, Iran made its secret deal and obtained basic centrifuge designs, the ones that now bear Pakistan’s technological signature.

But it was in the mid- to late 1990’s, as American sanctions tightened, that Pakistan made its biggest deal — with North Korea, American intelligence officials have said. Though Pakistan continues to deny any role, the laboratories are believed to have been the centerpiece of a barter arrangement of nuclear technology for missiles. South Korean intelligence agents discovered the transactions in 2002 and passed the information to the C.I.A. In the summer of that year, American spy satellites recorded a Pakistani C-130 loading North Korean missile parts in North Korea.

Earlier this year the State Department barred American transactions with the Khan laboratory because of the missile deal.

Pakistani officials say that since Dr. Khan’s retirement, he has no longer been officially affiliated with the laboratory that bears his name. Still, one former Pakistani military official described him as a proud nationalist who saw himself as a Robin Hood-like character outwitting rich nations and aiding poor ones. Dr. Khan, he said, “was not that sort that would think it was a bad thing” to share nuclear weapons technology. “In fact, he would think it was a good thing.”

David Rohde reported from Pakistan and Boston. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported from Vienna, New York and Washington.

Originally posted by m.ileduets
Well, you’re laughing, but there are highly ranked politicians in Japan seriously considering nuklear armament. There have been newspaper articles about half a year ago on that topic.

You are correct. One of many reasons why pressure has to be put on NK to back off.

The Japanese are not dumb. Defense advisers can make an easy case for MAD. They are like the boy scouts: Be prepared. This should be excellent motivation for China to tighten the chock hold on NK. Including in other areas like not letting Pak C-130s pick up missile parts in the NK in exchange for nuke tech assistance.

Originally posted by Phil Foster
Oh gods not you again. another quote from AFM so take it or leave it “the Bk27 cannon will be fitted to ‘all’ Typhoons including those of the RAF”. Not only is there great desire in the RAF (or are you going to start insulting them as well?) for a cannon armed Typhoon but there is also a requirement stipulated by air policing procedures introduced since 9/11. Who else are going to call a moron you t!t?

Yet the idea of no gun was thrown around early on. Not too smart.

Originally posted by Phil Foster
Thats interesting and scary stuff Dis’ but the British Empire is ‘no more’ because of war, no bad thing in my honest opinion, not the war bit but the bit about the empire no longer in being.

The problem is historical precedent. I like the USA mostly and I would dearly like to see it continue but people said that about the British (well some said it anyway), some said it about the Romans and before that the Greeks and before that the Egyptians yet all went the way of all power bases and economic/military hegmonies (I think I spelt that right) and the only way I can see the USA remaining in the long term is if they do business fairly both at home and abroad. No I can’t see a foriegn country ‘taking out’ or destroying the USA, at least not without taking out or destroying everybody else while they are at it including themselves. However it could happen internally and it could be Americans who see themselves as disenfranchised and unrepresented.

The English Civil War (actually it encompassed Scotland Ireland and Wales too but you know the one I mean) was fought because people wanted freedom and justice and they wanted the King to have few powers and no say in political circles. The people won yet by 1776 almost all of those ideals had been lost in the quagmire of empire and the Americans were having none of it. So they took matters into their own hands and very eficiently began to build their own country based on the ideals that were fought over in Britain over 100 years earlier.

If those ideals are stuck to America will remain, if they don’t and people in the USA get trodden over as much as others abroad feel they are being trodden on at times, I give the USA perhaps 200 more years at most before it implodes. That might mean bugger all to you now and you might think “well hey lets live it up for a couple of hudred years and screw everybody else”. But people are living longer these days and the people who have to pick up the peices in 2 centuries time or sooner, might well be your great grand children or your great great grand children. You might even live to meet some of them. Don’t you think you owe it to them to ensure that what you have survives longer than a couple more centuries?

Its a free country I guess. Thats pretty impressive senseless babbling on your part. You think that all up yourself?

Originally posted by ageorge
:confused: :confused: him dyslexic maybe what ? hey hey hey lol lol lol hey hey hey . Anybody clue he say what ,hey hey hey :confused:

No. The pubs still open. I remember my first beer.

Originally posted by F-18 Hamburger
are you saying you can’t look at these people straight in the eyes?

Sure I can. Well actually down the sight of a 12 gauge with number 4 buckshot.

Question for the day:

“How do you stop a clown from laughing?”

Hit them in the head with an axe.

Originally posted by haveblue
A replacement for the AIM-7 was required before a replacement for the AIM-9, hence the development and fielding of AMRAAM was initiated before that of ASRAAM. AIM-9X is the product of traditional American inability to accommodate the requirements, and industrial participation of their partner – it was to go the Yanks develop the BVR AAM, and the Pomms the WVR AAM. But the Yanks decided they wanted both of domestic origin. ASRAAM was developed, and fielded before AIM-9X. ASRAAM is now in service with the RAF, and export customer the RAAF. . . AIM-9X is still in the latter stages of development.

It fails logic to abandon a program because of delays, then initiate another only to produce latter than the initial program.

You might want to flush out your headgear and get a clue. X is operational. Don’t talk to me about U.S. development/fielding decisions, when you have, for example, (picking on the UK MOD) morons in the MOD who thought fielding the EF2000 without a gun might be smart. Or ordering a bunch of AH-64s, and the first thing that happens to them upon delivery is that they go into storage. So please continue if you have anymore wierd statements like:

“AIM-9X is the product of traditional American inability to accommodate the requirements, and industrial participation of their partner “-

No. It is about working an existing program and moving it along to the next level. RAAF decisions were done on the fact that they know a thing about sustaining their small organization well with limited funds/resources. They usually make good decisions. For their small size, their skill at program management / sustainment is first rate. Something not all air arms can say.

“It fails logic to abandon a program because of delays, then initiate another only to produce latter than the initial program. “

No, all programs reach decision points with develpment partners that risk a fork in the road when you are dealing with multiple companies. They all have their own ceiling for how much money they are going to put in, including as the project moves along. And those same companies have other projects that are competing for a shot at future sales. If a company has 10 high visibility projects and 4 of those start getting negative attention from the board that they won’t make money. They are history. If a company believes a certain project is a no profit dog, (whether it is or isn’t ), it’s life span is going to be short. People aren’t stumbling all over themselves buying defense equipment like they were 15 years ago. Although Sgt York like projects like the V-22, still see the light of day once in a while.