well think harder. Greece is broke. but Turkey could manage to finance $1T worth of trade deficits, Plus repaid IMF, plus $100b in reserves. plus nearly 100k troops parked next to Syria-Irak. with hundreds thousands of sorties of F-16 just on CAP. is it some magic wand.

I dont think they can now oust Ruaf.

Could you please elaborate, I am not sure I follow….

BBC breaking news:
The US is to end its efforts to train new Syrian rebel forces and says it will shift to providing equipment and weapons to existing forces.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34486572

Meaning giving even more modern weapons to terrorist groups than so far? So they are giving up on Syria altogether, but they just wanna make even bigger chaos in the region, and make it harder for Russia.

I was about to say, how soon before we see those Mil-24s being hit by stingers !!

What I’m curios about is why the stinger was so protruding by design in the first place – it used to have been even longer on the prototypes IIRC. Was there a need to offset the extra weight in the forward part?

wasn’t that the reason the canards were added? to compensate for the heavy nose?

http://djoker-lj.livejournal.com/191933.html

4 Yak-130s delivered.

http://gelio.livejournal.com/211509.html

A nice photo-report from NAPO, Su-34 production.

I never actually bothered looking into what is in the sting in the tail of the su-34. It seems there is just an apu and counter measures or am I wrong?

Yes, it seems so obvious now, doesn’t it? That’s called the benefit of a hindsight. I don’t know where all these sane people including you were before it all happened to warn all the insane ones.

But, really, you’ve had chaos before their removal. Like, in Saddam’s case, 8 years of devastating Iran-Iraq war, invasion of Kuwait, subduing the Kurdish and Shia rebellions, deaths due to sanctions on Iraq, etc. Also, IIRC, the rebellion in Lybia was ongoing for two months before the western countries decided to intervene, plus he had his own share of supporting and arming revolutionaries (or terrorists) around the world, invasion of Chad, clashes with Egypt, etc.

I think the influence of foreign factors in causing this chaos is grossly overstated compared to deep and unresolved boiling ethnic and religious divisions in all of these countries created by colonizing forces, the grievances further emphasized by the ruling minorities. The removal of these dictators simply triggered what was long kept under the surface by oppression as there’s little chance to peacefully accepting e.g. giving away power to another group or being dominated by another ethnic/religious group in such let’s say socially undeveloped countries where the winner takes all.

For example, Yugoslavia was much more socially advanced and you’ve had separate republics and regions in federation, but that didn’t stop it from being engulfed in a bloody civil war when one group of people belonging to one of the ethnic groups who also basically controlled the federal army wanted to usurp the power riding the wave of awaken nationalism and past grievances and religious identities long kept forcefully subdued by pipe-dream communist ideologies which were falling apart all around, thus triggering the domino effect of the same subdued nationalism in other groups, the worst part taking place naturally in the most ethnically mixed republic.

Oh we were all here, saying the same thing. It is just that “WE” are not important in a political sense. What I say, no matter how correct, sane and logical it is, has absolutely ZERO effect to the outcome of the chosen political games that players such as the US choose (or have decided) to play.

Unless you think that US think tanks and cabinet meetings take a moment to consider what blogs, fora and random people on the internet are saying!

This has not to do with hindsight, it has to do with common sense and recognising political realities.

Do you believe that if Syria, Egypt or Lebanon where the ones illegally occupying Northern Cyprus, it would last 42 years? They would have been bombed to oblivion within months.

Do you feel that Yugoslavia would have been broken up in such a manner if there were no political incentives to do so? Do you think that NATO bombed the serbs because they committed war crimes?

I did not see NATO bombing in Rwanda and that was proper Genocide !! Also I don’t see the PKK in Turkey being called a ” free kurdish army” by the west, although they want exactly what the Croats did in Yugoslavia and the kurds fighting aligned with western interests in Iraq and Syria are considered ..surprisingly “non terrorists” !!

So … those who have their eyes open, understand what is going on and that there are no saints when it comes to international interests and that noone fights for humanitarian purposes or to defend democracy, they all fight for interests and benefits.

All classic MiG-29s have these.. As well as the MiG-29SMT upgrade.. The latest versions of the MiG-29 based on the MiG-29M (MiG-29M2, MiG-35, MiG-29K/KUB) have the overwing louvres deleted and replaced by fuel tanks. The FOD system has been replaced by simpler intake grills similar to the ones used on Flankers.

I thought the MiG in the photo was a 35 one!

And will someone please explain to me why Russian General purpose bombs are so non aerodynamic??

the pilot already explained it , didnt he

So you are implying that the F-35 can indeed do so much better, but rather, the choice was not to, although the aim of the test was to examine the aircraft performance at some of the extremes.

Or have I understood wrong?

I am baffled by the lack of supercruise capability, though.. What exactly is responsible for that?

I would assume the aerodynamic design of the bird the engine sits in has a lot to do with that.