Paton……Nuff said

That’s what I loved about the early/mid 80’s. You could go down to Waldenbooks and they’d have a new Salamander book or two almost every week it seemed.

Waldenbooks….spot on, I used to have one at my local mall, and I had some lil podunk bookstore where I actually bought these books, and I remember the land warfare one sitting there, and I didnt buy it “smacks head”. Those were good times, as you said Sferrin, there seemed to be a new half decent book on the shelves every month….Now, I gota peddle through all your guys stuff on KeyPub and try to figure out somethin 🙂

If this object was as close as it appears to be in this “untouched” pic, well, id be spending less time posting the pic on a forum and getting my M-14 and M-1 Garand ready for action…..and seeing if I could pull a .50 cal from a buddies……Call me an alarmist, but I wouldn’t take highly to UFOs flying this close to me.

They probably would have better weapons than I do, but I’d go down with a fight nonetheless.

I Don’t mean to stir the pot, but does the Rafale actually use a windows product for mission planning/routing? I’m just surprised, since I thought everyone knew how much of a boondoggle any windows since 3.1 has been……

And, being an American, If i find out the F-22 has any windows based systems on it, I will start a petition to have them replaced with either MAC or other software….anything but windows in my book. (And this is coming from a windows user).

This is nothing against the Rafale at all, I just found it surprising thats all, then again, it wasn’t the first or last time that I will be.

Why is it that all you see is Rapter and F35? neither are proven aircraft. The F35 isnt even in production so we dont know what its going to be like. The F22 Rapter hasn’t seen combat deployment (Afganistan, Iraq) because the US Air Force will not deploy it outside the US (apart from a brief stint in Japan). There are other alternatives. The new MiG 35, SU37, SU29, Typhoon, Rafale, Grippen……….the list is endless.

You’ll probably say its because small AF like Japan, RAF etc can’t afford Rapter. We can. We just don’t need it. Nuff said!!

Just a question, from your own list of aircraft, which are proven?….

And to be honest, neither the JASDF or RAF can afford the Raptor, since the USAF cant either lol, I’m just being honest.

Lets put it simply, the US and Japan have a strong strategic partnership, one, as an American, I like and enjoy and I hope most Japanese would too…..I’d love to visit your country someday…Sometimes, you pay extra to your friends, because:

A: They are your “friends”
B: You want the best product with the best backing (a warranty,politically and mechanically for the future)

My comment as a US citizen is…Don’t believe the period at the end of the sentence any elected official makes…….its all politics, there is no truth behind it.

This picture that keeps popping up of the F-15/F-35 half drawings is really interesting to me, especially considering the topic of this thread.

Is this a true, honest to goodness graphic of front ends of both aircraft? Only reason I ask is, I see and read everyone saying the F-35 is draggy because of its internal payload/design (fuel+weapons)…….all based on the naked eye, since i can be sure no one here has got a real hands on job in the program. But from this pic that keeps popping up, at least from a heads on view which I know isnt everything….), it seems better than a F-15 with CFTs…….

anyone care to elaborate on the pic?

I ask this knowing theres tradeoffs with everything, believe me I know, im not an engineer but I build things and work on things all the time, I see it all the time…

where do I sign up?

Ok, bad humor, sorry…