Couple more stats not included in the NYT article (from http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109793):

30 Tanks Wiped Out in Lebanon
IsraelNN.com Aug 11, ’06

IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks.

At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets.

About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.

Always thought these three gave useful perspective.

Interesting turboshaft, I was aware of the UK WS-70 variant (the perfect Puma replacement in my opinion) but I didn’t know there was a RTM322 testbed. Anyone have any details of that project?

Believe that it was acquired as a testbed for the RTM322 engine, and first flown as such in 1986. Doing some digging, the aircraft appears to have been converted back to General Electric CT7s and sold-off to U.S. civil operator Brainerd Helicopters Inc. to support its fleet of dedicated S-70 Firehawks.

AW149 artist’s impression now released, together with further details of the design; see AW website.

Ja –

The number is from a non-public source, but is reliable. The carrierborne question is an interesting one, and one that I can’t give a firm answer to. My suspicion is that marinization will not be requested, purely as a cost saving, with standard wash procedures relied upon during vessel-based ops. The RAN is also having to face-up to the same question as its considers its own reqt.

Cost, cost and cost. The size of the MUH order has already dropped from 12 to ‘8 at most,’ while the T/LUH reqt will span between 4 and 8 ships. The EC 135 is certainly one of the favored options, though the EC 130 and EC 120 were also rumored to have been offered against the ITR as lower-cost options (for its part, Bell was also reported to have offered the 407 single).

Predator make DS redundant?

The termination of the Tier 3- ACTD had more to do with fundamental design issues (primarily aerodynamic instability and inadequate performance), plus cost and schedule overruns. The program was already going heavily over-budget — primarily due to overoptimistic assumptions over the ability to use the FCS software from the Tier 3 program — when the crash of the first prototype resulted in further redesign costs and delays.

It’s probably fair to say that the RQ-1/MQ-9 have exceeded their initial expectations, but the Predator platform is still very much limited to operations in low and moderate risk environments.

There’s an image and link on page 1 or 2 of the ‘Impressive Weapons Load’ thread (aka ‘The tbzz thread’).