With these 4 crashes, total is now 91 rotary wing and 13 fixed wing aircraft. Most of them were due to malfunctions and/or pilot error and a few were fratricides. Still, at least 30 were confirmed by US as being due to hostile fire.

Still much much better average than vietnam. (over 8500 aircraft) Then again, that was a much different kind of operation, and capability gap was much narrower.

If this is the case then the discussion should be about technical support rather than tactics followed.

From BBC:
“After 1.5 million hours of flying time, some 55 helicopters have been lost since May 2003, about half to enemy fire according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution.

But the US military is not taking any chances. The US command in Iraq has already ordered changes in flight operations in the face of the recent losses.

Although they will not specify what those changes are, Major General William Caldwell said the US was “making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters”. “

Almost similar view from BBC. Again it seems technical support seems to be the weak point. On the other hand it is still one chopper per 27000 hours. that figure doesn’t seem to be bad to me.

Given the success of the airbus family and the fact that the Euro- name will be avoided as with Euro-fighter I think that something like Airtruck A400 can be the first member of a family with many different variations or planes to follow.

I don’t know if flex actually have studied and work extensively on what he uses as his avatar, however, if he is an ANSYS expert his views deserve a little respect.

I haven’t studied the case of WTC or the papers that published later but what I can tell is that the building should at least confront with building regulations which are actually legislation. I don’t think that resistance to plane crash is part of any regulation in US law. What the designers state is another issue. I haven’t met anything in Euronorms either.

The fact that the buildings collapsed verticaly is a case as it is the time scale.

On the other hand even if the buildings didn’t collapse the disaster would still be tremendous. Therefore, the motive for collapse has to be explained by those supporting that there was a preparation for the demolition.

I ll have to insist on the widespread impression that building a fighter is just designing some drawings in the CAD program and producing the CAM code.

Unfortunately a lot of theoretical and experimental job has to be done before even making the first full scale drawings.

I ‘ll just mention a little paragraph from a book I currently study: ” Buckling Experiments: Experimental Methods in Buckling of Thin-Walled Structures” written by Israeli professors – a truely amazing job.

“New phenomena have still to be found and properly understood in physical tests, before even the powerful computers of today can give a reliable simulation and then extend the range of parameters. In a similar vein was the false 1975 prediction for aerodynamics that “Wind tunnels in 10 years will be used only to store computer print out””

As for your statement kilcoo that today’s procedure is more cost -effective I will totally disagree, especially when we speak about USA. In terms of engineering it is certainly much better but in terms of management is way more expensive. You see other legal systems would address that as a scandal of corruption. However, in US everybody seems to be happy with that.

Merry Christmas to all forum fans.:)

With the Hi-Tech CAD Systems of today they can design as they build………its really amazing!:D The same could be said for ship construction………:rolleyes:

FLY NAVY:cool:

Well, it’s a little bit more complicated since those systems were available from 80’s and it’s not just the structural testing. If it was only that, then ANSYS should have already closed the thread:rolleyes: .
You have to add the electrics, electronics and software to finally speak about “systems”. The methods available today for “systems” are truely amazing.

Also of great importance would be who were involved in the construction and design. Probably not only Colombians…

Pardon, but what got Cyprus to do with EF GmbH ?

This is the kind of fairy tails that both Turkish and Greeks enjoy to hear…