So far close to 400-450 orders and/or commitments ( 390-400 firmed up allready) and over 20 airlines signed up , allready the hottest selling widebody ever at this stage of maturation and on its way to 500 firm orders by first flight – Something has to be right dont you think 😉

Have fun and search all my posts regarding B787 and you will not find any statement doubting the logic of a very efficient wide-body. Neither did I doubt Boeing’s ability to build an aircraft. I just want to point out that details are rare and even if the FI is writing a 40 page extra on it, there are still many questions unanswered. The same applies for Airbus.
A company focussed on its shareholder value in the first place will of course do risk reduction efforts before commiting so much money to a project. So I will not be the one doubting that the B787 bwill ever fly or predicting an in-flight break-up. But there is a huge space between aircraft flies and aircraft certified (says somebody who joined the A380 flight test team for 6 month).

Sure airlines will not buy aircraft from companies that are unable to deliver. Why do you think Airbus is so worried about delays in A380? But, only very few airlines really have the ability to watch into a manufacturer’s design, often even the Air Force has only limited means to really control the design.

The customer is normally safe of losses because he can bail out of contracts if the manufacturer doesn’t deliver, which is normally more a theoretical possibility (think of really messed up programs like the L1011).

Thanks for the good summary of the situation, bring_it_on. When I read the story about the C5-heritage of the B747 I remeber my professor saying lately that the B747 was funded by the military in this competition. That is, however, non-sense. Your statement is right.

‘The thing I criticised on Airbus mostly in the past years (and with Airbus a lot of its supporters) was the pure arrogance of success, making people (especially those with funny accents) blind for reality. Airbus has actually a good position on the market, from the strategical point of view comparable to that of Boeing, while Boeing still has 4-times as many aircraft in service as Airbus. But Airbus faces a cash-problem in the next 2 years, not only because A380 has delays, but because the dollar is so waek (please, my dear Americans, do something about your trade deficit, will you?).

Potentially Airbus will be successful with the A380 and finally have a worthwile business case. But that gonna need a while, I think it is safe to say that we are at 300 aircraft now for the break-even.

The carbon-question: I don’t think that everythink on the B787 makes sense from a technical point of view. Some things are – and I have say that the Americans are masters of it – marketing and image. People around here (Hamburg) are no idiots, and everybody knows that neither A nor B can do miracles, so some technical decisions seem to be driven by other considerations than pure technical performance (I heard somebody say a few days ago: you can build an alu-aircraft out of carbon, but if you wanna build a real carbon aircraft, you need to start from the very very beginning).

The B787 bis not flying, and it is especially not in service yet. So let’s be careful about wild dreams. They have to deliver in a very tough and tight schedule, and I guess nobody is in the design head office. He would surely be less happy and enthusiastic.
BTW: If you need an A380 but have no special interest in equipping it with a cabin, we have some on stock here.

Soviet bomber capabilities against carrier battle groups were vastly overrated, if only because of the bulk of the missileers (Tu-22K, Tu-16Kx and Tu-95Kx) were actually operated by the DA and were tasked with attacking land targets. Also, for the AVMF regiments, more emphasis was put on taking out ReForGer/Cavalry convoys than actually slugging it out with CVBGs. And effectively stopping ReForGer/Cavalry would have made the battle for the carriers more or less redundant, if you ask me.

But only by taking out the carriers they could really attack the merchant ships. The carriers protected against airborne and submarine threats and posed a significant opponent to the surface ships, of which however the Soviets did not really had much in the 60s.

They’ve been at it since 1992 (first smatterings of a concept) Thats 14 years.

Boeing thought of, brought to the drawing board and introduced into service the 747 in 7 years. That was a massive leap back then and all done with slide rules.

Bad example. The delayed launch of the A380 was due to the need to get enough customers involved. Unlike Boeing, they didn’t want to start with a single order. Another issue was the Airbus strength to conduct a program of such magnitude. Boeing nearly went bancrupt over the B747 (at one point the wanted to sell the B737-program to the Japanense) and today nobody in the Boeing management would allow anything like the B747. That was a statement made several times by the Boeing top management: “We will never bet the company again for any program.”

So: no argument.

Actually: Take a sharp look at the B747-100 and ask yourself why the -200 came out so quickly. The problems of the B747 in the first years were impressive, and of course many of them were not in Boeing’s responsibility (esp. engine). The B747 is certainly not a good example of how to conduct a program in the first years, it really became successful after a few years.

I guess the appropriate war was just missing. The FB-111 could fly missions of the B-47 and partly of the B-58. It was placed between the SACs large bombers and the TAC fighter-bombers. For a war like Vietnam it would have been suitable, but you cannot earn glory when there is no enemy.
Although there are so many aircraft that have never earned a name in combat, that cannot be taken as prove of concept. I guess the people involved in the procurement of an aircraft always consider well where to spend the money.

In the 1960s VietNam was divided into two states due to different ideololgies, but fundamentally the country is one. America can install as many puppet governments as it wants in the South but the resistance from the VietNamese people would never stop. Even if the VC is damage.

America can bomb VietNam over and over again, American soldiers can keep raping and murdering VietNamese civilians but victory belong to the people of VietNam. In the battle between decent human beings and bloodthirsty barbarians, the human will always be the victor.

While the North Vietnamese government was by no means the “right” government. You are right in saying that Vietnamese in the South should have had the freedom of chosing their government, a freedom actually not granted by USA. On the other hand, free elections are still not really a common event in today’s Vietnam. How many parties are there?
You write like you were exposed to “red light”. 😉

Both the R-40RD and R-40TD are developments of the original R-40 “AA-6 ACRID,” created after the original missiles technology were compromised when Belenko defected to Japan in a MiG-25 in 1976. The R-40RD uses the SARH guidance system of the R-24, which is itself a development of the R-23 – better known in the West as the AA-7 APEX. The R-40TD is the infra-red homing version, with an improved homing head. I think it may be the first all-aspect heat seeker in Soviet service

Along with this; the new AI radar for this “new” MiG-25 was developed from the MiG-23’s (MLA?? MLD??) Sapfir-23 – becoming the Sapfir-25, presumably with a wider diameter antenna and greater power output for improved seeking range

So you can say that the Soviets created a new uncompromised variant of the MiG-25 in the shortest time simply by lifting a lot of the radar and weapons electronics from late version MiG-23s

The defection of Belenko is often said to be start, but generally the MiG-25 were due for improvement in the mid 70s. USAF tactics of entering an airspace in low level would have compromised the capabilities of a MiG-25. The fact that MiG-25PD were exported to 3rd category allies says something about how modern the Russians considered the technology of the -PD in the late 70s.

Sometimes that was related to the inability of the NV to distingish between F-4s in the bomb-truck and escort-role. The US flyers learned to fly look-alike patterns of different aircraft/services to lure NV fighters. But I agree, with growing confidence the NV flyers became more aggressive too.

I guess Operation Bolo is the example. American F-4 flying like “bombers” into NV and were able to shot down 7 MiG-21. A really devastating blow to the NVs.

Following the lists of A.C.I.G. there was a 3-month gap after the January 67 operation in any NV air operations.