SchorschTake the F-35C, drop the F-35B.
Or take Rafale.
A new development/derivate just for 60-90 or so British carrier-capable fighterbombers would be insanly expensive, plus a truck load of other problems. Goes for both navalized EF2k and Gripen.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to take the C-model and just make the carrier a bit bigger? An exclusive model for UK is indeed stupid.
SchorschSurely not?
A380 has over 15 m extra wingspan. Therefore there are fields where 747 narrowly misses a fixed obstacle to wingtip, and A380 catches it. (Taxiway centerline distance is another matter, because you can close the taxiway for other planes while receiving A380).
A380 has about 2 m extra wheel track width. You can land 747-s at Rand airport (wheel track width 14,3 m will fit by 70 cm or so into the 15 m width of runway) but you cannot do the same stunt with A380.
A380 is way heavier than 747. The OEW is something like 280 tons for A380, 170 tons for 747. Sure, A380 has 20 wheels against the 16 of 747, but the total load still is bigger. There are bridges and swamps which 747 remains on top of, but A380 punches through.
Doublecheck your information and read what I wrote correctly!
First: I don’t say the A380 can land everywhere in scope of regular, commercial, reliable operation. I say it can divert anywhere where a B747 can divert. The point of being less safe because of reduced diversion airports is stupid.
Please show me one airport where a 70m span B747 can land and an 80m span A380 would hit something.
B747 are not allowed to operate into 15m runways.
The A380 has comparable wheel loads as B747. Landing speeds are lower for the A380.
Equally applicable to 747. But there are emergencies besides one engine nicely shut down.
The heavy -400 versions have high wing load and are quite edgy especially at hot&high conditions.
At least, I understand that since A380 has local hydraulic systems (powered by electricity?), an A380 with all global hydraulics drained would have better control than the JAL 747, Sioux City DC10 or DHL A300.
No, it reads like this:
B747, DC10 and A300 have no control at all in case of hydraulic failure.
The A380 retains full control even for double hydraulic failure.
All Tested & Certified.
SchorschOn a note of replacements, what options are open to the UK, other than the JSF?
Rafale, Typhoon N (please, God No!), Super Hornet, Gripen Naval, any others, and which is most feasible?
I think the JSF is a viable attack aircraft and I see no competitive alternative. Maybe a Typhoon-based fighter-bomber.
SchorschI recall that the USAF study found that they weren’t very effective. Also that the pilots testing them out felt strange seeing the wings flutter so violently
The F-18’s wing are pretty elastic anyways. And MDD/Boeing got a hard time with aeroelasticity. I think it is an interesting technology program, but as often it is just that. The question is also which aircraft should incorporate this technology.
SchorschMelbourne has already spent $220 million and is spending another $330 million on upgrading its airstrips and terminal. Sydney is spending $500 million, Adelaide $300 million and Brisbane $250 million.
I doubt it is solely for the A380. A few taxiway extensions don’t add up to this sums.
In a statement last month, the pilots’ association said the A380 would “create new challenges for pilots”.
How? It flies like an A320.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in the skies since the first jumbo jet arrived in Australia,” said Captain Woods in the statement.
“The wingspan and engine size of the A380 limits the number of airports at which the plane can safely land . . . there will also be fewer diversion airports en route able to handle any emergency landings.”
Crap. Of course the A380 cannot land in every airport for commercially useful flights (taxiways, airbrigdes, facilities). But in case of emergency, it gets down on every field that accommodates a B747-400.
With 4 engines and nice performance you don’t need to land as soon as possible.
SchorschObviously the air defence forces could not stop NATO attacks – surely that would be too much to expect from their size and composition in comparison to that of their enemy. The remarkable thing is that it still functioned throughout the war. The implications of this are not exactly staggering but surely they play on the minds of NATO military planners. How different would things have been had the equipment and training of the AD network been more advanced?
The fact is that Serbia was a soft target* for NATO and the civilian infrastructure (Swerve, the deliberate targeting of this is indisputable) was the softest bit.
OK, a defense that doesn’t defend isn’t really useful. One can argue that by hiding its AD-assets Serbia was able to increase the cost to NATO by forcing it to fly SEAD sorties until the end of the conflict. It also made NATO using medium flight levels to avoid AAA and MANPADS.
But if you put an SA-2 launcher in a barn it will survive, but that doesn’t help you in any way.
You also don’t know the rules of engagement for NATO air strikes. Given the fact that about 500 civilians died in Serbia 1999 due to NATO air strikes, the rules were most likely pretty strict.
The tactic NATO used was very easy: increase the cost for Serbia to level that public support drops and the situation becomes unattainable. I guess people in Belgrad didn’t like to sit in the dark each night for the sake of keeping a province.
SchorschYes, I am selective. Being selective with the information you gather, to me this is a sign of intelligence..
Maybe, but it is basically opinion …
I definitely trust the figures in the CIA Factbook unless I believe in some evil communist conspiracy trying to paint the otherwise bloodlusted warmongering greedy Cuban monsters, spending zillions of dollars on hi-tech weapons as doves of freedom with a modest defence budget. And since such misinformation would do no service to anyone in current US administration, I can comfortably rule it out and claim the figures as the most honest CIA could provide.
So everything that fits your personal views is accepted while the other information is filtered as US propaganda. What if the CIA is correct with possibly war-mongering claims?
But given your level of self-confidence with the sucked-from-a-finger claims you have raised, I have no doubts that you have better insider sources with the right figures, so let us hear them! I am giving you an unique opportunity to prove your *15% or more* estimate as something more than just cheap guesswork.
Quite offending style.
I mistrust the CIA “factbook” for several reasons.
It is basically a collection of figures from several other sources and comparable to most other sources of that matter. As such, it relies basically on Cuban reportings and possibly some analyst’s extrapolations. No external analyst has the ability to guess a GDP, especially not of a largely state-run economy and isolated (Cuba, North Korea).
The percentage of GDP is an indicator but not the final truth when we ask for the percentage of total wealth a country invests in its military. “Wealth” is measured by GDP as we have no other indicator. It is a very poor indicator for countries with non-Western economies. And investments into its military by the official defense budget, which itself is quite an arbitrary number for countries with no parliament authority over budget. Basically, the Cubans can claim any number they like and we have no means of verifying that.
Of course, I cannot come up with better numbers and actually wouldn’t waste the time to find any (if I do you wouldn’t agree anyways :rolleyes: ), but I state my general doubt about the correctness of those figures. If you stick to it and by that define Cuba as a progressive country with low military spending, do so. The fact that its leader still wears a military uniform makes me very suspicious of a lame 1.8% of an overally very lame GDP.
BTW:
Would you mind to use grown-up style when posting or do you compensate for something?
SchorschOK, you say these are falsified. No problem.. My source is CIA World Factbook 2005. I am sure you have a better one…
You otherwise wouldn’t trust the CIA one single word. They also said Iraq had WMD. Selective perception?
SchorschWell the Argintinians never wanted political change in Britain, they just wanted a few islands that are a lot smaller then Kosovo. If it was a relatively mild price for Serbia to give up Kosovo, what right did the Brits have to fight a war with Argintia half way around the world over a few far smaller islands?
The inhabitants of the Falklands did not pursue their independence from the UK. Actually, if they were asked for, they had chosen to stay with UK. The Kosovo’s population (in majority Albanian heritage) actually wanted to be independent.
Undoubtably, but then NATO has a far lower tolerance of casaulties then the Serbs and even if NATO had a very faviourable kill-death ratio, the sheer number of casaulties would very likely have broken the fighting will of many European NATO countries, which may have led to a more favourable peace deal for Serbia especially if they were able to tie down NATO ground forces.
Actually, you are implying that Serbs would fight much better than the “weak” Europeans. In Bosnia the Serbian regular army even lost against Guerrillas with minimum Western support. A ground war – though more costly for NATO – would have had just one outcome: total annihilation of all involved Serbian forces with even more bombs on Serbia, less picky target choice and pre-emptive cluster-bombing of suspected SAM sites.
I am not sure I understand what you are saying. Are you suggesting that the Serbs forced NATO to target civilian infrastructure because the Serb military refused to just come and stand out in the open in parade formation for NATO to bomb them to oblivion?
Serbia was unable to defend against NATO. Actually NATO could announce the bridge pile they gonna bomb tonight without Serbia able to do anything about it. NATO used its strengths.
If you lose in soccer you cannot claim that you would have won a Basketball game, hence you are technically not defeated.
SchorschIt should be pointed out that the mechanical backup was to be fitted to the first prototype only – purely as insurance at the insistence of some scientists and TsAGI.
On the first flight, test pilot Vladimir Ilyushin only used the FBW system – without any mechanical backup – so it can’t have been that ‘primitive’
Translated from a Russian text….
After some high-speed runs…
“The results confirmed the fact that the fly-by-wire system had better characteristics and was preferred by the pilot. Taking into account its reliability due to its four-fold spare capacity, the decision was taken to make the first flight using fly-by-wire controls”.
Ilyushin had lots of good things to say about the aircrafts handling…
Ken
The word “primitive” is in this case a bit arrogant. Nobody can really judge about the “complexity” of an FBW-system. Actually, overly complex systems are no good at all. Even F-18 use mechanical back-up.
The T-4 after all was a technology project, it kept and increased capability at Tupolev, which was the bureau for large supersonic aircraft. The 11 hours of test program should tell anybody partly familiar with flight testing the development stage of the project. I think the XB-70 had several hundred hours, most X-projects logged more hours.
SchorschOne can see live the pathetic SFC of those engines. 😉
SchorschCuba $572.3 million (1.8% GDP)
Nothern Korea 5.217 billion (could be as high as 12% GDP)
Israel $9.11 billion (8.7% GDP)
Saudi Arabia $18 billion (10% GDP)
I would assume that those budgets are falsified by any standard given. Israel has defense spending of 10 to 15 billion a year. I guess many costs are not included in that. North Korea and Cuba are just hillarious. Both countries rely on their army as backbone of power. They get at least 15% of official GDP, possibly more.
SchorschWell, maybe my examples of Pakistan and Syria were not perfect (but I still think they’re spending more than the can really afford) but which countries do you think fit the “9% on military spending” club?
I have Cuba (maybe), North Korea, and Israel in mind, and maybe even Saudi Arabia?:confused:
One should add that the defintion of GDP is anything but perfect. By its definition many people in the third world are totally poor because they don’t sell anything. Still, farmers can have a (sometimes rather good) living from their fields and still be statistically very very poor.
Countries like Syria and Pakistan have more economy that is not represented by GDP figures. So its expenses on defence seem higher. Our Western system of accounting just doesn’t fit to the rest of the world (uh-oh, what a surprise).
I think a defense expenditure of 5 to 10% is perfectly sustainable, however, it compromises long-term development as other more rewarding investments are postponed. The new shiny jet-fighter doesn’t fix the sewer system in Dear Leader’s capital that causes thousands of children a year to die of diarrhea.
A 3rd world citizen might add that Western expenditure on health care for very elderly people (80+) is anything else but rewarding and represents another type of “waste” regarding the future of a society. Of course, a delicate moralic issue.
SchorschThe irony of course is that in Turkey, the military are seen as guarantors of the secular democracy, to keep any government from turning Turkey into an islamic state.
Indeed.
Things tend to be ironic.
The military is however primarily the guarantors of its own power (and budget).
SchorschMy disgust at the NATO targeting of civilian infrastructure is not based on what the Serbs ‘deserved’ but rather on what I expected from NATO nations. Guess its my fault for believing that NATO member states are principled and just nations that would follow the spirit of international treaties and plain moral rightousness instead of word lawyering to twist the meaning of those treaties to allow blantent infringments on their part. 🙁
I guess if the Serbs had agreed to a battle on open ground (more or less what the Iraqis did), the NATO had happily agreed.
If NATO had started a ground war, the death toll for the Serbs would be far higher. Despite that, the political price Serbia had to pay was relatively mild. Ironically NATO never demanded political change in Serbia as requirement for settlement.
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