Unimog
or Air Unimog /Airnimog
Flying Unimog

In the car/truck world the Unimog is one of the best off road vehicles ever produced and a nice symbol of Europe.

And it is also partly produced by Mercedes Benz, na, only if we stretch the meaning of “produce”. Mercedes-Benz is a brand of a major shareholder of EADS, which owns (by now) all “shares” of Aibrus.

I guess something with “Euro” inside would stick.

Or how about
Transall II
or
SuperTransall

Some of those dreams came true, lots of them didn’t. The reality is that the official policy of the west is that they were evil when they were communist and suddenly OK when they got to elect officials every 4-5 years.
Political systems don’t make you good or evil.

Friends in the US and wests definition is based on the last war they helped you with. With us or against you. If that is your personal way of defining friends then I pity you.

Actually my political landscape is somehow more complex and the words “good” and “evil” don’t come to my mind when I think of nations and people. No matter how anybody might characterize the Russians, the current relation both political and economic between my elected government and the state of Russia are productive.

Your constant bashing at the west is pathetic.

I guess we don’t need to attempt to change each others perception of the world. I at least have better things to do.

The high loss rate was partly caused by the missions it flew. In these some basic wisedoms were disregarded.
– Strikes were often known to gound personnel, additionally did North Vietnam only contain a few vital targets
– the number of attacking aircraft was normally small
– the Thuds needed to go down to increase the chance of hitting something

After all, the air war over North Vietnam (1965-68) is the best example how not to fight a war. The aircraft F-105 was not more susceptible to battle damage than other contemporary fighters, some Thuds came home with considerable battle damage on the other hand. The loss rate was overally still acceptable when measured in terms of WW2, while it must be mentioned that the opposition was lower.

The whole campaign was a political message, flawed in concept and it didn’t really reduce North Vietnams war output. The resources it bound were low as SAM&AAA equipment was delivered often for free from China and the Soviet Union.

Eh?
Why?

Because it is American! :diablo:

Western airframes and engines are designed for long years of peacetime operations, upwards from 8000 hours, thousands of cycles, decades of servicelife. Russian equipment – and I assume Chinese as well – usually has only half or less of that projected servicelife.

Questions for the esteemed audience:
— Is that Western design philosphy the right way to go? Or do the Russians have a point, especially from the standpoint of the warfighter?
— Or could you gain more performance, plus save money on materials, etc from a shorter projected servicelife equipment?
— And instead replace it every five years or so, thereby having the chance for rolling upgrades via evolutionary building blocks and avoid those corn-hog-cycles?

From a Pro/Contra perpective you can say:
If you want to pure money into your production and like to preserve a huge manufacturing capability (and keep lots of people busy), choose short life time.

I think weapons should be seen as they are, simply as machines, they are not unvulnerable, great armies have lost wars or battles more to bad strategies than weaponry, I.E Germany lost WWII despite she had the best jet fighters and the best fighter pilot aces.

The MiG-21 is not an exception the aircraft was found a good aircraft with several good points, even with some better charateristics than even the Mirage III and F-4 however it had also weaknesses.

The MiG-21 was second (at best) in every category. But it was second in some key categorys, and the number ones normally lost on other fields. The MiG-21 was exactly what could be built in time and budget and number in the late 1950s in the Soviet Union. The MiG-21 has seen a lot of action with mixed results. It is a prefect example that an aircraft (especially an early supersonic fighter) performs just as good as its pilots, air force commanders and boundary conditions allow. Once again, the aircraft versus aircraft comparison is crap, from bow to stern.

And if you think that the F-105 was unsuccessful in its role in SE Asia during the 1960s, could you please suggest an alternative aircraft to the ‘Thud’ other than maybe the F-4, from any other country’s air force, that would have been more successful?

Although I don’t want to make the comparison (because it would mean to give the North Vietnamese American aircraft with similar Dollar value of their MiG fleet, which would have left the NV with 5 Phantoms or 15 F-5), I think it is fair to say that in 1965 the Soviet did not posses an aircraft of similar striking power (payload, range, speed, avionics), which still could with a reasonable chance survive an engagement against a fighter.

You can’t compare a generalisation with an exception. A serious bump to the head can cause brain damage is a generalisation. There are exceptional cases where sharp objects like arrows or spikes have penetrated human heads completely but the patient survives. Both contradict each other yet both are generally true.

The MiG-21 was found in US evaluations found to be easy to kill. Surely improvements were made, but in the 1950s combat survivability was no design consideration.