Agreed. Certainly not with Labour running the show.

With all due respect it wont make that much difference (if any) with a conservative government. The best that the UK armed forces can hope for is that there is never a Liberal Democrat government.

The RN’s problems bacically date back to the end of the cold war, whilst ship numbers were slowly shrinking there was quite a good system working with units being replaced on a regular basis, considering the size of the RN at the time the new units were very powerful (type-22 and type-23 were both very capable multi-role ships for their time). However with the end of that the system broke down, now everything needs replacing at once, the MoD seems to have been struck by a near permanent paralysis that prevents them commiting to any big procurement programmes and large sums of money are being wasted sending troops to foreign countries in order to satisfy the ego of politicians.

My personal opinion is that without a major re-think of UK foreign policy the best bet would be the much talked about hi-lo combination. Continue building the T45’s but try and give them a more multi-role capability (maybe different versions like the FREMM frigates) and a number of smaller vessels like the Cerberus trimaran design or for the more conservative the frigate/corvette that was nearly bought by Greece a while back.

If money was to increase and Russia was to become a threat again (not inconcievable considering the deep chill between Russia and Europe, Russias current re-armament programme and her inherent sense of wounded pride as well as the liklyhood that the US will in the next few decades start to focus more and more on asia-pacific) then I would scrap the lower tier and press ahead with DDG design, again I would go for multi-role capability and look for a follow on to the T45, maybe based on something like the BMT defnce services F5 pentmaran. However none of this will probably ever happen.;)

The Moroccan weekly ” Le Journal” said in its recent issue that Saudi Arabia has given the Moroccan air force 20 warplanes of US- made F 16 planes. In its recent issue published on Tuesday, the Moroccan weekly said the Moroccan air fleet suffers old US made F 5 planes and French- made Mirage F1.

The weekly said that the new planes Morocco got from Saudi Arabia are currently stationed in the military base of Meknas, Morocco

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020109/2002010916.html

As previously stated, Saudi Arabia has not and does not operate F-16s.

I saw it last August. It seemed to be there.

Moggy

Shame.

Sorry pleuris for ruining your thread,but the thought of hordes of Il-2 and Me-109 clashing,or the land F-22:Stallone is just hilarious.
Now seriously.
In recent exercises VVS and PVO units from Ural district,successfully intercepted targets that according to Russians have the same RCS as F-117 or B-2.The target was modified S-125 rocket(“??????” or Pishtial(?)

The chied-engineer of the missile claim that the RCS is around 0,3 m2.The missile can be launched to 40-50 km in altitude and 85-90 in distance.Maximum flight time is 200 s.
Drones were engaged with Kub and S-300(unknown version).
I know that F-22 have RCS of 0,001,nevermind of the aspect,but i hope this is interesting to somebody.

Do you have a source for that Pesho? It would be very interesting if it is indeed the case. I think that everybody recognises that the advantage of stealth will slowly be eroded.

The 02 wasn’t entirely completed during the introduction ceremony. Except for missing seats I also can remember uncompleted tail spine, replaced by some kind of dummy tube.

Oh yes, I will never forget the piece of drain-pipe and tape, just what you want on a $50 million dollar strike plane.:D

Seriously though, Like flex said, 02 was incomplete, looked like the key issue was to get it painted and polished rather than airworthy.

But Pakistan is not China. Pakistan had to go through alot of wars, difficulties with neighbors on the east and west side that create instability, and its still a developing country. Thats why its logical to start with the JF-17, not the J-10. Its like expecting Bangladesh to mass produce the F-15. :rolleyes:

All Pakistan is doing is building them not designing them, they just do what the Chinese supplied instruction manual tells them to.:rolleyes:

Nope, that’s the antenna system for BARS, which is offered for sale as a separate module without NIIP’s processer unit to those customers who are still not satisfied with Russian computing and electronic technology.

Good guess though, for IRBIS is a development from BARS for use on the MiG-35.

Here’s a picture of IRBIS-E’s antenna and diagram of the radar’s layout:

From http://www.niip.ru/main.php?page=library_sky17

Thanks for the info Levsha, however the Irbis is for the Su-35 and not the Mig-35. Incidently the Su-35 will supposedly also get the Osa radar (also seen on the NIIP website) in its tail sting.

However NIIP have develooped the BARS-29 which is a version of the BARS for the Mig-29, it appeared at about the same time as the MMRCA contest appeared which suggests to me that NIIP was hoping to play of the commonality with the Su-30MKI fleet, but the Indians want AESA to NIIP have been left in the dark for now.

Hey calm down everybody, I was simply using the Vixen-500E as an example to show that Aesa’s could be developed for small nosed aircraft. I was not proposing it for LCA.

My suspicion is that this news that India is devloping a new fire control radar for combat aircraft combined with the desire for AESA tech from the MMRCA programme means that the Indians are looking at developing an indigenous AESA for future LCA blocks.