Billy BishopI meant Su-22M4 not Su-24M4
Billy BishopOne of the largest? The US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece and the Netherlands have more fighters than Canada…
By “largest” I don’t count every plane in the airforce, but only those assets which are valuable to NATO. I thought I made this point obvious. And the fact is, Canada has the ability to contribute more to most NATO operations. Proof: Allied force, Canadian jets flew more missions than anyone after US, UK and France.
Blah blah blah… especially since you yourself are either to ignorant, arrogant or just plain lazy to actually give arguments for your own fanboy-listing.
Personal attacks are against forum rules. Please try to behave like an adult. If I wanted to engage in a name calling match I would go to the local playground.
So you’re mightily impressed by two squadrons of MiG-29s and a bunch of Fitters? The glory days of the PWL are long gone, unless you consider dozens of TS11s to be valuable NATO assets.
90 Su-24M4’s is more than most NATO countries have, and they can contribute to NATO.
Your later argument for this was really, really funny. Especially since back in the Cold War days, the Norwegians would get two squadrons of Dutch NF-5s to assist them… ’nuff said.
That’s irrelevent, Norwegian pilots averaged 430 hours a year. Of course they needed assitance, Norway is a country of 4 million, why would you expect them to stand up against a country with 290 million?
Looking forward to your evidence why two dozens L-159s and ten MiG-21MFs are better than three squadrons of F-16AM/BMs. Tear down this argument, please.
You’re forgetting their Mig-29’s which have been upgraded with new communications equipment so they are partly NATO compatible.
Why Estonia above Latvia? Even if you do know the difference between the three Baltic states, you surely don’t know the sizes of their airforces. A hint: Estonia’s airfleet can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but for Latvia you need two.
To be honest I know nothing about the Baltics but I know none of them have anything that is useful to NATO therefore they can all be tied for last place.
Or to quote the famous German philosopher H.J. Breuer: “Mann, quatsch doch nicht so!”
Or to quote the famous Canadian genius Billy Bishop: “Du bist doch dumm wie brot”
Billy BishopWhat are the capabilities more specified to verify your ranking? (The USA aside, no question about that.)
1) USA – largest AF by far
2) UK – I put UK ahead of France because they seem to have contributed more to NATO operations
3) France – France will probably surpass UK in 10 years
4) Canada
5) Germany – I put them behind Canada because Canada has a larger number of aircraft suitable for Kosovo-style operations, eg AMRAAM and JDAM capable Hornets. The Eurofighter acquisition in the near future will move Germany up the list. Germany of course has a much more powerful AF than Canada, however Canada’s can still contribute more to NATO.
6) Turkey – very large and quite modern, also unlike most other NATO AF’s the Turkish AF has lots of recent combat experience (against Kurdish rebels)
7) Greece – one of the most modern AF’s, eg AIM-120C, F-16 Blk 52, M2000-5
8) Italy
9) Poland
10) Norway – trained harder than most other AF’s because they would have been the first line of defence against the USSR
11) Netherlands
12) Spain
13) Romania – large airforce, domestic modernization efforts recently begun, eg Lancer, Sniper, IAR-99
14) Czech
15) Denmark
16) Belgium
17) Portugal – only thing worth mentioning are 25 F-16A’s
18) Slovakia
19) Bulgaria – good sized AF but recently it has begun falling apart due to lack of funds
20) Hungary – small, underfunded, and proved not too capable when they were unable to repel Yugoslav incursions deep into their airspace during the early 90’s, but will move up in the list when it gets Gripens soon
21) Slovenia – a few PC-9M’s, useless for NATO
22) Lithuania – nothing worth mentioning
23) Estonia – nothing worth mentioning
24) Latvia – nothing worth mentioning
25) Luxembourg – no airforce
26) Iceland – no airforce
Poland 9th? Poland above Spain, Norway & Netherlands & Denmark and Belgium & portugal?
Poland’s AF is much larger than any of those airforces. And when they get 48 F-16 Block 50/52’s in 3 years they will be even better. Don’t forget that Poland is a country of 40 million, you can’t really compare tiny little countries like Belgium or Portugal to Poland.
Billy BishopInstead of naming planes after evil things like dragons, I think planes should be named after benevolent things, like Biblical figures:
The F-14 Jesus
The F-15 Moses
The F-16 St. Paul
The F/A-18 Jebediah
The F/A-18E Super Jebediah
etcetera
Billy BishopIn China the average adult person seriously believes in the existence of things like dragons.
Billy BishopHow do you guys get off bashing the Canadian AF when it is one of the largest and most modern airforce in NATO? The upgraded CF-18’s will be one of the best fighter bombers in the world.
Since we are discussing NATO, we are not talking about teh country’s airforce as a whole, but only those assets which are used to contribute to NATO operations. And the fact remains that Canada’s airforce is currently capable of contributing more to NATO operations than most other NATO countries. This has been proven.
As for threat perception, the fact is Canada has no threats. Who do you think is gonna attack Canada? Russia? China? Muslim terrorists? The chances of another country attacking us is non-existant, and the chances of terrorists flying an airliner into a building are small but we are more than capable of dealing with that. The only reason Canada even needs a military is for contributions to NATO.
So the comments about Canada cutting back on its military are really not applicable here since those cutbacks have not reduced Canada’s ability to contribute to NATO.
Since Canada has no threats, if it was up to me, I would pull Canada out of NATO, pull all Canadian peacekeepers home, disband the entire military, thus saving tens of billions of dollars. A well armed police force and a coast guard is all Canada needs for homeland defence.
Here are all NATO airforces listed in order of capabilities, anyone who disagrees with even a single entry in my list just try and refute it, I will tear down your arguments so fast you won’t know what hit you:
1) USA
2) UK
3) France
4) Canada
5) Germany
6) Turkey
7) Greece
8) Italy
9) Poland
10) Norway
11) Netherlands
12) Spain
13) Romania
14) Czech
15) Denmark
16) Belgium
17) Portugal
18) Slovakia
19) Bulgaria
20) Hungary
21) Slovenia
22) Lithuania
23) Estonia
24) Latvia
25) Luxembourg
26) Iceland
Billy BishopCanada? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Canada has 122 CF-18’s which are being upgraded to unbelievable standards (better than F/A-18C). Canada will be the first nation to have the AIM-120C in its inventory.
If you look at recent NATO operations, Canada is usually one of the top 2 or 3 contributors. For example in Allied Force, Canadian Hornets flew more missions than any other country except the US, the UK, and France (I’m not saying that’s something to be proud of, just making my point that Canada’s current airforce is in a state to contribute more to NATO operations than most other NATO countries).
Billy BishopHow can you take a program like that seriously when the Russian economy is still in shambles
First of all Russia’s economy is very good, the GDP is now at about 1.5 trillion, 6th or 7th highest in the world. Secondly, Russia’s budget isn’t the only source of funding for the PAK-FA project.
they still has the mess in Chechnya to contend with, the current fleet is in need of upgrading, the various Flanker outgrowths (i.e. Su-35, etc.) have little chance of making it into service any time remotely soon, and even fewer chance of getting into service in suffiicient numbers.
How is any of that relevant to the PAK-FA project? If anything, the deficiencies in their airforce should only motivate them to spend even more resources on the PAK-FA project.
Billy BishopWill these Helos be passed on to IAI for upgrade to western/NATO standards which has now become the norm in the Czech Republic?
Probably not, considering that bringing a Mi-35 to “NATO standards” involves simply putting in a few extra communications equipment. Czech Rep already has an aerospace industry that could easily do that without Israelis’ help.
Billy BishopWhen will you morons realize there is no such thing as a per plane cost? The price of each plane depends on many many things, such as the customer country, the current global political situation, the current regional situation in both the customer country and the source, the number of planes bought altogether, other planes the consumer has to choose from “the competition”, etc. Therefore you can’t say the PAK-FA costs X million dollars, because even if country A buys the PAK-FA and it ends up costing them X millions per plane, that won’t necessarily be the same price that country B will have to pay per plane. Get it?
Secondly, some of the potential customers of the PAK-FA that were listed are not very likely, not because they can’t afford it (which is also true) but because Russia will not sell its latest and greatest to just anyone, unless it’s a severely downgraded version. The PAK-FA will only be available to very close Russian allies (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Belarus, India, etc). Russia learned this lesson the hard way when it sold Mig-29’s to countries which let Americans come in and take them apart. Since the PAK-FA will be Russia’s front line fighter for the next couple of decades they can’t afford to have that happen again.
Billy BishopI find it unlikely anyone would use Pascal for something so important. Pascal was designed to be a language to teach new programmers (ie to be easy to learn), it was never meant to be a “real” programming language. To me, the most practical approach would be to use C for everything, and assembler for those parts of the code which are going to be repeated many times (most programs spend 95% of their time in 5% of the code).
The OS used on onboard computers on planes and missiles and such is probably not any OS you’ve ever heard of, the designers would write their own OS from scratch, and the OS would only work for that particular piece of hardware.
Billy BishopAlthough crashes are usually caused by software not by hardware problems, certain hardware problems, for example a processor or a memory module running too hot, can cause the software to crash even if the software is completely bug-free. For example, if you try overclocking your PC by a large amount without adding any extra cooling, your PC will crash more often than if it was not overclocked.
Billy BishopNo, the APG-77 is an LPI radar so the F-22 remains stealthy even with it’s radar on. In fact the APG-77 can even lock onto a target, and the target doesn’t even know he’s been locked onto. At least that’s what the designers of the F-22 claim.
Billy Bishophow did they manouvre the MIG-21F set the fuse delay and also keep track of the aircraft they were aiming at?
Usually not very well, which is why it was very difficult to score a kill in the 60’s. A good fighter pilot would have to have above average intelligence, and Mig-21 pilots were the best of the best. The average IQ of a Soviet Mig-21 pilot was probably like 170. These days it’s a lot less demanding, with computers doing most of the work.
For a pilot with technophobe tendencies, seeing all those MFDs can be a nightmare.
I doubt a technophobic pilot would pass all the qualification tests to fly a front line fighter jet in any airforce.
Billy BishopYeah but they gained a lot of expertise designing it, expertise which will be incorporated into future Russian radars.
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