I think the more pertinent question is what this will do to the relationship between India and Pakistan.

The PAF will have to work hard and get new hardware if they want to keep up with India. That said, so long as Pakistan remains and ally of China they should be alright.

Well that’s debatable. I don’t think the PAF is really a threat to the IAF anymore, at least not in its current guise, and excluding the MMRCA programme. And Pakistan doesn’t really have the resources for fairly modest capability upgrades, let alone to “keep up with India”, at least not without significant military aid. And theren lies the issue, I don’t think the Chinese will be willing to give significant military aid, at least not in the same veign as the US…although the Chinese will be willing to provide generous loans with favourable premiums 🙂

Since they didn’t hit anything they should have done, the strikes were very wasteful indeed.

The fact that the cruise missile strikes didn’t actually achieve anything was primarily an intelligence and recon failure. If cruise missiles weren’t used but rather a full scale and sustained air operation, it would have been significantly more wasteful.

But what, if any, options the USA had at the time is not relevant to current & future requirements of the USA, UK, France, etc., & procurement decisions to be made on how to meet those requirements. We should be considering the future utility of cruise missiles vs UCAVs. Note that this doesn’t mean that we should consider whether to buy one or the other, but which is best suited to particular purposes.

Okkaaay :confused: But I was referring to your specific example of US cruise missile strikes in the 90s. Like I tried to explain before, things have moved on since then and will continue to do so, with technology dictating where and how UAS/UCAVs are used.

I think engines as well, an uprated EJ200 with TVC?

Blowing up mud huts with cruise missiles (as done by the USA in the 1990s, for example) is stupid & wasteful.

Is there a particular example you’re referring to here? I was assuming it was the US retaliatory strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan after the Kenya embassy bombings in the late 90s?

If so, what alternatives did the US have at that time? I don’t think they had anything like the armed UAV capability they have today. In hindsight, although the US didn’t achieve much by the strikes, short of full scale and sustained air operations over 2 large sovereign states, what choice did the US have? And I don’t think the US is particularly short of cruise missiles, so I doubt they were “wasteful”.

No ****. These are the Empire’s newest and favouritest instruments: near-useless in anything resembling legitimate military endeavours, but unbeatable in oppressing third-world populations. No different from the Brits’ use of biplanes in a bygone era, and with the same “I don’t see what’s so wrong with gassing uncivilized tribes” (that was Winston Churchill) mentality behind it. How little all the people look from up here.

I’m not sure I would call it “oppressing third-world populations” and you can hardly compare the UAV ops in the AfPak region to some questionable opinions of Churchill.

Besides, why would the US use expensive high-tech gear like B2s, B52s and other assets when the Taliban don’t have any air defence assets? Surely it’s a case of the “right tool for the right job”?

In addition, how do you distinguish between “civilian” and “enemy” in a region like AfPak and the Taliban, who are not exactly a professional uniformed army, but rather a bunch of blood thirsty religous fanatics drawn from the wider “civilian” population?

It’s a tough task, not easy. But I think the US has done well considering the challenges; a number of high profile Taliban/AQ leaders have been killed this way.

The issue of accidental attacks on Pakistani positions is primarily due to a combination of poor communication and lack of joint coordination of ops with the Pak forces. But considering their unreliability and “Frenemy” status, can you really blame the US for not wanting too close dealings with them when it comes to hunting down Taliban and AQ? Don’t you think it’s all rather coincidental that on almost every occassion that Pak forces are accidently hit, its always been when US forces have been engaged with Taliban/AQ elements that somehow always appear near Pak forces?

It’s a logistical consideration for internal carriage in heavy bombers – while it is definitely more draggy (irrelevant in this case), the barrel shape is a lot more compact which allows more to be carried in a given weapons bay.

Yes, while it is logical and appropriate for internal carriage in bombers, it’s not really appropriate for external carriage on the bulk of the fleet. But it seems it doesn’t concern the RuAF too much given how long they have used them and the heavy loads seen on the Flanker series.

Damn. Re-hosting.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5151/eed1f4oqhrijvzkhbfva.jpg

Why do the Russian FAB series of general purpose (GP) bombs look like small oil drums with fins stuck on as an afterthought? Compare them with the US Mark 80 series of GP bombs, for example, which have a more streamlined appearence and some area ruling. Don’t the FAB series induce relatively high drag with that flat frontal section? Just something that I’ve always found puzzling :confused: