That proves it then. If you actually lived through that era and remember it (i’m from 1974, which is probably ‘mid-1970s’, my memories only reliably start in the mid-1980s) then 1983 must definately precede the late 1980s.

That is, if 1973 precedes both the late 1980s as 1983.

Good luck!

It’s not really the gun that costs the money, it’s using that gun.
With the guns fitted as ballast only, the MOD is not going to have money spent on ammo, not going to pay for flying hours doing gunnery training, not having to clean up black sludge around the gun nozzle after firing a few rounds, not having to check for structural problems after a large number of rounds fired.

Best of all, is that guns-for-ballast can eventually be rewired.

The V-VS designation has always been Su-27IB, as a fighter-bomber version (Istrebitel’ -Bombardirovchik) of the Su-27. Just like the official military designation for the Su-33 was Su-27K, and the Su-35/37 was originally ment to enter service as the Su-27M.

However, back in the 1990s when the Sukhoi marketing machine began rolling, they started giving totally new designations to aircraft that are nothing more than updates of existing airframes. Eventually, the military followed. First the Navy started calling their Flankers Su-33, and the Su-27Ms now flying from Kubinka are called Su-35s now. With the flatnose-Flanker now entering service, i reckon it’s time to follow Sukhoi’s desgination for this variant as well.

Be careful in giving Sukhoi’s marketing names for production machines to the prototypes though. One of the T8M protos (so that’s the humpbacked second-generation Frogfoot) was displayed subsequently as Su-25TM, Su-25TK, Su-34 (yes, that was before they decided to relabel this one as the Su-27IB) and Su-39. Likewise, calling T10V-1 (bort 42, the first flatface-Flanker) a Su-27IB when it never was ment to represent the full production standard doesn’t make sense at all.

Here’s some more air-to-air pics. MiG-23M, MiG-25PD and some sunshine from the rear of a MiG-25RBsomething (the latter is most likely not air-to-air, but still nice and sunny).

Information on Floggers and Foxbats/hounds difficult to find? Not really, although complete production lists aren’t publicly available yet.

Any information in particulair you were looking for?

I really liked Once upon a time in Mexico. A great ending to Rodriguez’ Mariachi-trilogy, and one of the few films in which i didn’t think Johnny Depp was an annoying nuisance.

I was totally bored by King Arthur. I spent half the movie thinking of schemes in order to get one of the film-T-shirs which the people at the cinema were wearing. So despite the movie being crap (even though Keira Knightley does offer lots of visual compensation), i’m now really happy with my King Arthur – Warrior, Legend, King T-shirt 😀