Help do you part by making a contribution. This disaster has affected not just people from the Asia, there are british, germans, poles, norwegians, swedes, austrians, amercians, belgians, australians, new zealanders, chinese, canadians, brazilians, czechs, danish, french, israelis, italians, japanese, dutch, singaporeans, south koreans, swiss who were in those areas having a holiday. And many more from Bangladesh, East Africa, India ,Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka & Thailand were killed. While we sit comfortably in our chairs reading this forum, there are our countrymen who are in those diaster areas suffering from cold, many without food and sleeping in the open. Children who lost their parents, those who lost their loved ones. Many have lost their possessions. Some are left only with their pyjamas. Bodies are rotting and there is a threat of disease outbreak.

So do what you can to help. Don’t be a NATO ‘No Action Talk Only’

23 killed in Car Nicobar island, IAF base washed away
The entire Indian Air Force base in Car Nicobar island has been virtually washed away by Tsunami waves with 23 air force personnel and their family members being killed, IAF Chief Air Marshal S Krishnaswamy said.

Tom Morganfield was involved in the 1st accident if I’m not wrong, he was the 1st to pilot the X-35 too.

The advantages of one a/c to fill in the roles of serveral are:
Maintainence, in terms of costs and manpower. You have to deal with less spare parts and in time of war, a carrier out in the sea cannot get parts easily. So with one type of a/c, its more easy to cannibalise for spares. Less techs are needed as E/F/Gs are mostly the same. For example the EA-6, you need people for the airframe, the engines and avionics. These group of people are trained on one a/c type so if a carrier got 6 EA-6, these people can only service those 6. For Hornets, the people doing airframe and engines can service the 3 models and avionics is only a little more complicate due to the jamming stuff.

Pilots, it takes a long time to train a pilot and a long time to type rate one for an a/c. So when you train a pilot for one a/c, the person cannot just jump to another a/c. Yes there are pilots in the navy that can fly more than one a/c but not all especially the junior ones. And those with more than 1 rating needs to fly often to keep their proficiency. So if there are cost savings when its all standardise on one type.

The Growler can fly any other mission that an F can. Strip of its jamming gear, it can carry missiles and bombs when its jamming capability is not needed. And certainly it can fly CAP since the radar and weapons are still there.

The Viking and Prowler are at the end of their airframe life. So if the hornet can fill in the gap with less costs than developing a new a/c and shorter development time. Why not?

The Growler can defend itself, in fact it will fly with wingtip amraams for missions. This allows the Navy to free up aircrafts.

I hate to break this to you but the US have supposedly had the F-16, C-130, P-3C and PAC-3 on “offer” to India for the last 3 years if we are to believe Indian news reports, but nothing ever seems to happen. The sole purchase made by India (since lifting of arms sanctions) has been 6 fire locating radars, even all these are not in service yet. Despite supposedly being able to buy US weapons for the last (almost!) 4 years.

In a years time we will hear the same news reports and nothing ever happens.

No I dont wish to upset anyone, but you have to admit for a so called “strategic partner” there seems to be little in terms of defensive or offensive weaponry going Indias way from the US

I also hate to break it to you that this is an Aviation Week article, an American publication. They were the 1st to report that the crash of Columbia was due to some fault on the left wing and they provided photos of the problem as it streaks across california. During the Vietnam War, they published a MiG-21 in USAF colors when its existence is top secret. And during the B-2 roll out ceremony, despite Northrop efforts to limit the view of the a/c to the front, the reporters flew a light plane over and obtain photographs showing the entire a/c.

Oh, Aviation Week’s nickname? Aviation Leak. 😀

In this one, you can see paya lebar airbase on the left