Russia has a lot of problems in infrastructur. They basically did not invest any money in the last 15-20 years. Russia’s most important export product – gas & oil – are produced by dangerously outdated facilities. Russia has a severe energy problem caused by enormous waste and loss of energy. Russian people still suffer from the downfall of the Soviet Union (which doesn’t imply they would be better off if the SU still existed).

If Russia spends too much money on new weapons they can call themself equally stupid as the people that wrecked the country from the 60s on. Russia doesn’t have enemies that necessitate huge investments in military hardware. I do not doubt the need for a strong and useful army having comparable hardware in its inventory. But there are other fields in Russia that deserve more money.

Unfortunately for the Russians is that their current leader is a little too much focussed on power projection. He acts a little bit like old Kaiser, being mostly concerned about his place in the world.

Just think for a second you live in a country which has severe health and infrastructure problems, but has earned reasonable cash in the last years through oil exports. Now your Dear Leader tells you, that instead of a new hospital you get a new fighter jet. Wouldn’t that be totally hilarious?

Why not? I’m talking about the Mk48 VLS not Mk41. It would let you carry more rounds

“The Mk 48 VLS used with the Seasparrow requires the same space as a trainable launcher, but can hold up to 16 rounds, twice the number of ready-to-launch missiles. “

As for self defense all US carriers carry self-defense weapons. Typically two 21-round RAM launchers, two 8-cell SeaSparrow launchers, and two or three Phalanx CIWS.

So you think that the missile capacity of an aircraft carrier is insufficient? Otherwise you wouldn’t suggest the usage of a basically similar system that only has higher numbers in stock.
I think Sea Sparrow ist not really the big shiny weapon but a better AAA for ships without real air defence capability. The most useful thing about Sea Sparrow launcher is the ability to carry RAM missiles. Would be interesting to know how infrared fire’n forget weapons can be launched vertically.

Gentlemen!

This is getting a bit silly now.

Keep it civil, and let’s see nobody else use terms like “hypocrite” to describe fellow members. Yes – I’m talking about you, Sandy!

Respect each other………

GA

Don’t worry. I needed to look it up in the dictionary. That reduced this immediate feeling of being insulted. 😀

Great to see the same pointless flaming, stereotypes and A-bashing everytime something popps up on Airbus. And always the same people.

The B787 is indeed in an advanced stage of design and I know many people who hope it falls apart before first flight. It won’t happen. Boeing is very cautious about its investment. So they went through lots of risk reduction.
However, plugging the whole thing together, switch on and start flying is always more difficult than it looks. From the distance, problems look accountable and managable. You can mess you’re own day with bad reporting, overly complex structures and tight finance plan (hello A380). And you can kick your own a#s by promising the customers utopic numbers of aircraft in the first year.

Nobody around here knows exactly where the key issues of the B787 are. The optimism/pessimism of most people is not based on factual information (which only very few people have to make eduacated decisions, probably the head of engineering for the B787, but even he doesn’t know every problem in detail).

Actually, having 35 customers, most of them second line airlines (FirstChoice Pakistan Airines, …), Boeing can just delete one or two from the delivery plan if the run into problems.

The old pointless story: “Don’t talk bad about my Boeing!” 😀

But the most interesting things you missed about Leahy’s statement.

… except for stealth characteristics of F-22. 😎 These are absolutely for free.

Surely has a negative impact on aerodynamics and gave the designers a hard-time when designing the flight-controls, air intake and various other features. As eagle remarked correctly, some disadvantages can be wiped out with time & money (= technology, innovation, test).

I bring up the Mig-29M because the Mig-29K and Mig-29SMT upgrades use it as the base for upgrading ideas.
Figures for early Mig-29 were something like 4,000l internal. SMT has over 6,000l internal fuel. The equivelent of carrying a 2,000l external fuel tank extra but without the extra drag and without tying up an external pylon.
In comparison the Su-27 carrys about 5,000l as standard load with a max internal load of about 9 and a half thousand litres.

The Suchoi-27 has fuel fraction of 0.35, which is better than most other fighters (most designs are between 0.28 and 0.31). But it is not exceptional. The price the Suchoi pays for it is considerable, too. I don’t question the design, I just remind you that nothing is for free in aviation.

I know a very military capable country which has embarked itself all alone in a quagmire a few years ago which now proves to be a complete waste of ressources and poses no threat to rogue states. It’s even rather the other way around with so many ground forces just next to some quite famous rogue states… Nothing to be very proud neither is it ?

lol

It is not about fighting something like Iraq. It’s about threatening countries to stick to rules and to do missions like Kosovo if necessary. It is also about giving countries the confidence that Europeans can jump in with force if they are threatened by their neighbors.
If the military has to shoot the mission can be considered failed. Most important is the projection of force. You can change thinking of people (of course moderately sane people) by placing one or two carriers in front of their coast or at least tell them that you can do.

Bring democracy by bombs is of course dumb-**** and just worked once in history.

For a lot of European countries I do think it makes a lot of sense, many EU countries are surrounded by other EU members, have no other defence committments and know that any major external threat would be countered by the big EU military forces (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc.) so why not just free load and get somebody else to pay for defence? Possibly not a very laudable attitude, but a logical one.

A possibility would be a force on a joint level. For example Denmark buys 12 Eurofighters and operates them in cooperation with the Luftwaffe. A full wing including German and Danish fighters is located in the border region and covers Northern Germany and Denmark (which is geographically possible). The training, maintenance is joined.

The actual aircraft are shared, that is, the Danish might use a German Eurofighter if they have unscheduled maintenance and by that eliminate the need for more aircraft. They can also use German training aircraft and facilities. The air policing over Denmark resp. Germany is still done by respective pilots. Similarily out-of-area missions are done seperately, so the German paralament cannot sent the Danish into war and vice-versa. But as both countries are very likely to be always inside an international coallition, the Danish could send 2 or 3 pilots with a German force and by that participating without having a unpractically small unit.

As Danish people are very good in English and so are German pilots I don’t see a language problem.

This would call for an unprecentended level of cooperation and I doubt that Danish would coorperate with the Germans (for unknown reasons they mistrust us). With Sweden it looks more promising, but with Sweden not in NATO I doubt it. Possibly Norway.

In general air forces are without any use for small European countries except for air policing.