Beleg: Turkey may choose to continue the flights, but as should be painfully clear, it is incredibly dangerous to do so. Complaining about the Greeks wanting to maintain the integrity of their airspace strikes of belligerance. It may or may not be international waters (that is a matter of debate, so we will leave it as a may or may not), but that does not mean that the THK should be intentionally antagonising Greece.

The sad result of this incident is the probable death of a Greek pilot, who has clearly died as a result of THK ‘flying in international airspace’, so perhaps the wise thing is to avoid the same situation in future! This does not mean I agree with either side, but the facts are the facts.

Perhaps Greece should buy Turkey a spy satellite, then the Turks can take all the pics they like, without putting lives at risk!

I think it is important to remember that this is not a forum for Greek or Turk bashing. It is likely that a pilot has died, in what is, in any sensible opinion, a tragic incident – I say incident not to place blame, but to recognise that this may not be entirely accidental.

I think both sides need to sit back and take stock of the situation – where there is ambiguity over the territorial boundary, it might be sensible not to go ‘teasing’, and perhaps incidents like this will be avoided in future.

I think we need to clear one thing up: is this an ’80s Argentine daydream project, or is it a current daydream project? I am assuming that it is the former, apart from anything else because the Argentines have no real hopes of building a new carrier now or in the near future.

If doing the project now, then the cheapest option would probably to buy the Indian Air Defence Ship, completely off the shelf (built in India). In that case, as Fed rightly says, the LCA is the best bet. The only problem would be that the Indian carrier is likely to be STOBAR, which rules out compatibility with the most likely support aircraft, i.e. the S-2 Tracker – with a STOBAR carrier, there are a very limited number of support types.

I think the real question is actually going to be the development of UCAVs over the next few years – the Gripen (in any form) has one drawback compared to the JSF, and that is stealth. If UCAV development advances as quickly as UAV technology has, then a combined purchase of the new Gripen and UCAVs would give a very similar capability, but perhaps at a lower cost. I think that is one of the major reasons behind the J-UCAS project having its funding cut (to avoid competing with the flagship project).

Okay, my 2 cents:

5 C-17s
5 A-310 MRTTs – buy a couple of extras to keep some available for VIP use
15-20 C-130Js
15-20 C-27Js – to replace the Buffalos and Twin Otters, both in the Arctic SAR and TacTrans role.

That would be a lot of aircraft, but you need a lot to replace the current fleet, also, the A-310 fleet would not need to grow by more than one or two, just have three more conversions done. The C-17s are probably needed, though to be honest, you could probably get away with a fleet of 20 A-400Ms in place of both the C-17 and C-130s, as long as they are supplemented by some tactical transports like the C-27Js.

The problem for Canada is that it needs to replace a surprisingly large number of Hercs, and replacing them with only a handful of C-17s and J-model Hercs could prove difficult. I would not mind seeing a mixed approach – ~5 C-17s, ~15-20 C-130Js and a few more reconditioned CC-150s converted to MRTT configuration. There are plenty of A-310s available, and they might allow for a spreading of the transport taskings – they would probably compare favourably with buying extra C-130Js!

Not really, it is just bad journalism… (It is the BBC after all!)