here goes a Peruvian Su-25.
i wonder what kinda’ equipment it had when it was belarusian.
Camaro.

Same stuff as all the other (former) Soviet Su-25s, and i don’t think these were actually downgraded when they were sold to Peru. The MiG-29s surely weren’t, so why would the far less sensitive Frogfoot be monkeyfied?

According to Douglas Adams in his preface to the HHGttG bundle i have, the book and the radio version differed greatly in details. There just was a lot of editing involved writing one scene/chapter from radio to book and vice versa (the way it was written was of course totally chaotic). That matress-scene surely must be an example of that.

Good write-up by SOC. Do i read a historian’s mindset there? 😉

But i think that for a large part, individual persons are to blame for skewered perspectives. No matter how balanced the information you digest, be that for a navel-staring hick or for people like ourselves who think we’re all reasonably intelligent and connected people like us English-reading web-surfing internationally-debating folk. At some point you are likely to grow an opinion, be that balanced or not, and from that point on you tend to filter your information to the sort that suits your pre-existing ideas. Welcome to the world of dogmatics! At this point, people not only prefer to absorb information confirming their beliefs, but the level of information is also lowered since your opinion is already set so you don’t have to bother learning what you already ‘know’. With this process in mind, it’s quite easy to understand how a minor nuisance on the international arena like Iraq can suddenly become a threat to world piece. Or how a bunch of extremist muslim terrorists suddenly start representing the whole Islam. Or even how the Vanguard of the Proletariat becomes a new bourgeois aristocracy in less than a generation.
Thanks to mass media with it’s tendency to focus on a particulair issue for only a limited amount of time, such dogmas easily grow on large numbers of people. Up until the point where such dogmas can reach the point of mass hysteria – both the “war on islam”-mentality cbdst refers to in the opening post, as the anti-Israeli craze in large parts of the Middle East is IMHO just that.

Avoiding that is very, very difficult. Not only would you be forced to keep informed, but also to continuously try to counter your pre-existing notions. That’s not only tiring, it’s also really uncomfortable as you should be able to detach from opinions you hold on any given moment in time.

Gee, i’m rambling again. Sorry.

Did i hear sausages?

And Turkey definately is dry. Didn’t rain once when i was there.

Only if they start rebuilding the rubble too fast.

Arthur, Srbin- Lets make clear that the reason you like the Su-39 is this supposed ability to withstand flak better than other jets. I havent read anything about older “heavy” russian jets like Su-7 withstanding damage better in combat than any other jet, so its all up to your imagination so far. And just because this jet hangs so and so missle is not what I consider a good reason for buying overweight junk. And srbin, if you read my post I said “old style russian hardware” thinking the word style would be understood as a class of airplane, NOT ITS BUILDER YOU IDIOT!

Brad,
I don’t see what the Su-7’s undisputed ability to withstand damage (read up a bit on the Suka, it is indeed VERY sturdy) has anything to do with the Su-39s performance in that respect, nor with that of the AMX. There is nothing imagined about that. One of the reasons that the Su-25 or Su-39 are what you consider ‘overweight junk’ is exactly because of the armour and redundancy fitted to the airframe, in order to make it survivable. There’s no armoured bathtub to protect the pilot in the AMX, there are no firewalls around the engine in the AMX, it hasn’t got foam-filled tanks, it hasn’t got any automatic fire extinguishers…. The AMX is nothing but a light plane pretending to be a fighter (it’s built, designed and ordered as a G91 and MB326/Xavante replacement after all), while the Su-39 is an up-equipped Shturmovik. Totally different class of airplanes.

Also note that the AMX’s weapon load of 4000kg is nothing more but a theoretical one. I will be surprised if you can show me a pic of an AMX hauling more than 2000kg…

Prior to AWACS American aircraft went into battle without any “GCI type” support.
So the fact that American aircraft have AWACS is not an advantage, it is a leveling of the field against GCI.

That’s not true, Adrian. The Air Defense units in the US (mainly USAF’s ADCOM/NORAD, but also a number of air defense-tasked USN squadrons and a whole number of Canadian squadrons) operated under strict GCI from the early 1950s on, in fact under a more strict and ground-controlled environment than their Soviet counterparts.
And well before AWACS were in active military service in the US, there was a large urge to keep US aircraft inside a ground-controlled environment. Not only for interception tasks, but also for attack missions. That is the reason why the USAF maintained a number of radar stations in Laos during the Vietnam war, and why the USN had a whole fleet of radar ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.