Stumbled across this interesting video of the Soviet Navy’s VSTOL aircraft the Yak-38 and the supersonic Yak-41 (which unfortunately never made it into service) in action, sorry if it has been posted before…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81ajldA5xwA

Have any plans been made for another Sino-Russian military exercise/wargames like the ones that took place at the end of August last year in Guandong province, they were called Peace Mission or something!

Dear Members,

The problem is that Israel and everyone else knows what happened to the Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley when he was kidnapped and sent to the main hospital in Terhran, Iran. He was basically tortured and the doctors there kept him in shape for it. Weeks later all US agents in Lebanon started dropping dead. But it seems the Iranians went to far and he died. Many in the CIA believed that the US should have destroyed that hospital and to h*ll with any innocents.

Last the main worry that Israel has with Syria is the SS-21 which is extremely accurate and the Syrians with Iranian help have developed a reported VX warhead for it.

Jack E. Hammond

Didn’t the Syrians Also recently obtain Iskander-E (SS-26) Missiles from Russia which is more modern than the SS-21 and also has a greater range of about 300km.

Also does Lebanon have air force to speak of I seem to remember that it used to operate Mirage IIIs but maybe I am just imagining this!

It does indeed appear to be a JH-7 with folding wings (i am assuming that the other two aircraft are also JH-7s) as the aircraft with the short wings has the same tale. But it also appears to have forward wing extensions or possibly forward canards. An interesting point is that the Su-33 was given Forward canards to improve its carrier performance. If you add this to the recent report of the Varyag being fitted out and a set of engines being built for her this adds real credibility to the idea that the chinese are now only months possibly as little as twenty from having an identifiable sea worthy carrier. Of course the reports could be wrong and this could just show a plane with parts of its wings removed.

I can’t see the PLAN using the JH-7 from a carrier, especially if they do end up using the Varyag, Isn’t it too heavy and underpowered to fly from a STOBAR carrier.

I was just wondering…. what sort of avionics have been fitted to the J-10 I remember reading an article in AFM about 4 years ago which suggested that it might be fitted with a Russian (possibly Phazotron’s Zhuk) radar. Although I presume that it has been fitted with an indigenous Chinese radar, am I correct?

Well Galloway seems to just like causing a bit of controversy in order to keep himself in the spotlight and fuel his own ego!

In terms of the number of deaths in Iraq the coalition hasn’t really bothered counting civilian deaths, so its difficult to tell.

Altough I did find this site that is a Database of civilian deaths in Iraq, which claims around 40,000 have been killed since 2003…

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Also heres an article from the BBC about the civilian death toll in Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4525412.stm

I think when Galloway talks about 100,000 deaths he is refering to deaths since the end of the first Gulf war due to sanctions.

Yes happy birthday to the Phantom, Heres a one of my favourite versions the FG.1 which served with the Royal Navy on the Ark Royal, Altough in the first picture they seem to have USS Saratoga written on them!