Lots of talk about flight performance.

But if theres going to be a fight at all you’ll need to keep those fighters airworthy. Now since F-14s et al are quite a b*tch to maintain in comparison to Super Hornet it doesn’t take a rocket engineer to understand that you’ll have a higher degree of availability on the newer designs. That is a force multiplier in itself.

regards,
Cliff

Thx Soren-A for the info! I reckon there was something about the cabin height as you mentioned.

regards,
Cliff

Barnes, sorry, I guess I misunderstood you there.

– No problems mate!

Yes, the Danish embassy in Syria was torched. (For a drawing, i bet they have not seen).

They torched the swedish embassy as well and raised some kind of flag on the swedish flagstaff. The swedish minister of foreign affairs has called the syrian ambassador this evening in order to send a protest to Syria.

Nobody is denying their right to freedom of expression but would you like to take a second and explain to me as to why was Muhammad (PBUH) chosen as a subject and not Bin Laden or Zwahiri or Zarqawi since the ‘naive’ artists wanted to show the extremist elements of Islam? The cartoons are implicit in their meaning and implie that all Muslims, by their very nature, are murderers. Let me see you justify this act of theirs.

Kursed, I don’t know why you ask me to justify their act? I have told you before and I will tell you again: I thought it was stupid to print those cartoons when they knew they were going to hurt and upset a lot of muslims. But people like the Saudi Arabian ambassador must understand that the danish prime minister can’t (as in are not allowed to) stop them from publishing stuff like this. They have freedom of speech, and let me point this one out very clearly: the freedom of speech is worth more than religious concerns in democracies.

That does not (as Viper previously pointed out) imply that you have to print cartoons like this. But many countries in the M-E are attacking the danish prime minister and wants him and the danish people to apologize. What for? They have no part in this.

regards,
Cliff

By your post it’s clearly visible that you don’t know or have failed to understand as to why Muslims have taken offense to cartoons of Muhammad (PBUH). I’d suggest you to read more into this topic and you just might realise as to why is this such a sensitive topic for us Muslims.

Kursed, I think most people here think it was quite stupid to print those cartoons in Jyllands Posten when they knew they were going to insult and hurt people.

The problem here is that the freedom of speech is such a strong right in a democracy that even if I think they made the wrong decision in printing those cartoons – I must defend their right to do so.

regards,
Cliff

My advice to the countries in the middle east:

Broadcast Monthy Pythons “Life of Brian” on national television and you might get a clue of what democracy and freedom of speech is about.

regards,
Cliff

A stealth fighter uses different techniques to avoid being tracked by radar.

When it comes to the transmitted radarwave being reflected away from the receiver a (in theory!) simple solution is using bi-static radars where transmitter and receiver is separated in distance. Stretching this a bit further, one fighter could send a radarwave which bounces of the target but in such a direction that it can be received by another friendly fighter. Coding the radarwave with information about which fighter it was who sent the pulse and at what time and position – the second fighter could get a picture of where the target is at once. A real-time datalink would also be able to send this information back to the transmitting fighter. What ought to make this hard at the moment is computer power – but it will be solved in some years to come.

What is much tougher is the use of RAM coatings in stealth fighters. In the example above they may very well be able to weaken the radarpulse in such a way that fighter number two never receives that echo…

Just speculation but with the UK and France signing to jointly develop new carriers it may make sense for both nations to operate the same aircraft i.e. Rafael. This would reduce the development costs for both and the carrier would then be completly common. With this in mind it would perhaps be convienent for the UK to have a “reason” to pull out of JSF.

This is of course just one of several options. Any thoughts?

Albeit it sounds like a smart solution there is another problem – politics.

France left the project that later became Typhoon because they couldn’t agree upon how much workshare they should have and who was to become leader of the project. From a british/german point of view I reckon they was quite upset and considered the french being quite arrogant (according to sources such as the magazine ‘Flygrevyn’) by claiming far too much workshare and considered themselves as leaders of the whole project. So whether France quit the project themselves or got kicked out I don’t know – but they certainly left and produced the very nice looking fighter Rafale by themselves instead.

So politically, I can see that there is a problem by taking Rafale instead of JSF. It would look like they (the Brits) had failed with the Eurofighter and should have let the french lead the project.

PS. Before the french audience will jump on me: I know there was more to this decision than what I just have written. Some will say that the french needed carrier capable fighters from start while the others didn’t etc – but this wasn’t what killed the cooperation according to ‘Flygrevyn’. What did kill it was the workshare and that the french demanded being leader nation of the project. Now you can discuss whether the french made some valid claims or not. But you won’t manage to drag me into that discussion.

regards,
Cliff