Can somebody enlighten me on how to pronounce “Tejas”? Is there a sample clip with the proper pronunciation available somewhere? 🙂

Sounded like perfect sense to me, and in line with what a lot of other highly qualified people have to say also.

What do you think he should have said?

Paraphrased, here is what he said: “We have have been doing well, they have been doing well. The Typhoon is good, so is our Flanker. AWACS matters for everyone. Regardless of the plane a good pilot will use his advantages and exploit his opponents weaknesses.”

That’s a load of platitudes. Is there anything in there that qualifies as information?

Things that would have been informative and interesting to us are also very likely to be classified. Detection ranges, kinetic measurements, BVR/WVR combat records, or in general numbers would have interested me.

Firstly, the ship was sunk back on March 23th of 2006, not recently, so this thread is more than a little out of date!

Secondly, the ship was not manned, the crew had been seized and arrested, in full compliance with Australian law. The ship was impounded, and it was felt that the best way to dispose of it was to sink it in a military training exercise.

Fair enough. I can see the sense and purpose in that.

Thirdly, Australia is not in the habit of attacking vessels suspected of illegal activities, and pretending that the Pong Su sinking is an example of this is either ignorant, or intended to mislead. When vessels are suspected of illegal activity in Australian waters, every attempt is made to seek a peaceful resolution, preferably involving the arrest of the crew.

And that’s the way it should be. Other posters here seem to think that everything should be bombed first and that it’s a grand spectacle.

As for all the nonsense about legalising drugs, this is an aviation forum, not a hippy politics forum!

As for all the nonsense about not legalizing drugs, this is an aviation forum, not a hawkish bible-thumping forum!

In any case, just legalising something because its difficult or impossible to prevent from happening is ridiculous, otherwise you could argue for legalising murder.

Self-inflicted harm is something very different from violence towards others. Otherwise… Did you ever drink something alcoholic? Did you ever smoke? Did you ever eat fast food? Do you consume sugar? Congratulations, you must be supporting the legality of murder.
People take drugs for a reason and other people deal them for a reason. In my opinion it would make much more sense to analyze the systemic connections and deal with the primary causes.
If you don’t want your closed heating boiler to explode, you put the fire out, not try to screw the valve shut tighter.

If something causes harm to others, as drugs do, then it should be illegal, and every effort should be made to stop the trade, not to try and embrace the illegal activity.

Causes harm to others? It’s things you use to “cause harm” to yourself. I’ve never heard of people injecting each other against their will heroin or people forcing a third person to take cocaine. Fast food? Alcohol? Cigarettes? What about those?
All you do with criminalizing substances is creating a maelstrom of associated criminality, violence, evasion of the law and heaps of dirty money that is used for many wrong causes.

Great, military taking judicial and executive power into its own hands while pissing on most human and civil rights.

And all it does is spurning the black markets and driving prices up. The ones actually responsible for the transport, sitting somewhere in safety, are rubbing their hands and calculating their new profit margin.

Way to go.

It’s not Tango’s fault. I’ve also seen the press release in another place and it had the same (presumable) mistake. Can’t really expect him to check them all, can we? That’s our job. 🙂

Don’t shoot the messenger. 😉

I still love this thread and think Tango is doing a great job delivering the news here.

All four squads grounded.

I don’t recall it very clearly, but I think I’ve recently read something of either refurbishings or exchange deals with MiG-31s being part of some arms deal with Russia.

sferrin,

I’ve read speculation recently that the Bear flights near the UK (which have been intercepted by Tornados instead of Typhoons) and near Guam during Valiant Shield already have been ELINT operations. It could very well be possible.