I don’t think China is overly concerned with the US and probably feels American defence expenditure will lead it the way of the Soviet Union eventually. The Chinese communist Party evolved in the Yellow River Valley, the very birthplace of Chinese civilisation and I don’t think I’m exaggerating by suggesting they tend to view things with millennia worth of tradition and in terms of millennium at the very top. Patient and aloof is an understatement.

I also don’t think they have any concern about NKorea. NKorea is wholly isolationist and whilst a tad paranoid it’s the soviet kind which the Chinese broke from about 1958. NKorea definitely aren’t expansionist, they’re really less of a world problem than the United States, they don’t threaten anybody except the south. That itself isn’t even really anti-Americanism either, although US involvement inherently generated it. Anybody’s guardianship of SKorea would’ve brought resentment and more than a little local concern.
Basically the approach taken of withdrawing direct (read: military) interference in eastern political affairs and feeding SKorea good equipment, international community membership and training, effectively sponsoring them, seems to be the best road.

Considering NKorea is prone to personality cults the new leader might bring expansionist ambitions but it wouldn’t be very smart. I’d say his own military would advise strongly against it.

It’s really a non-event over there. Nothing is happening, nothing is likely to and there’s really nothing to worry about in any case. There’s a mini-iron curtain at the border and that’s about it. History would have us believe you can just wait these things out, spending your concerns on the struggle to wrap all our minds around peacetime economies in a world without warfare or so much need for massive arms buildups.

It’s already decades on and at some point the whole cold war sentiment is just going to have to run out of steam, we’re still going through the motions of an arms race between US and Russian military industries like some kind of final puff and cough but most of the world is catching on.

The US is still dodging and swinging at phantom enemies, kill the drug trade, kill the terrorists, kill kill kill, somebody has to be killed. Eventually you just have to calm down and stop building nuclear carriers and military superiority, it’s going to kill you.

Looking for enemies is just bad psychology, the enemy is you.

nastle, alfakilo it might be worth considering if you will, to my experience (Polish family members), east europeans tend to use words like “technology” and “doctrine” interchangeably.
I don’t believe the Soviets received notice their technology was inferior, but it is an ostensible notation there were already voices in the Kremlin by the 1980s suggesting their doctrinal approach was.
And doctrinal approach was dictating industrial requirements and processes particularly for Frontal Aviation equipment (moreso than AVMF or PVO).

And when a Russian tries to tell you a doctrinal approach is inferior he is very likely to use the word technology without thinking there is any difference. The technology of military leaders, the doctrine of military leaders, it means exactly the same thing.
But not to english speakers.

What do you think, possible?

Let us stick to the facts. The later MiG-25 was an interceptor for the PVO mainly. Just in the West was the believe of a “super fighter” till the 70s for public purposes. With the defection of Viktor Belenko in 1976 that myth was over and the MiG-25s were freed for exports. No Warsaw Pact member bought it as a fighter. Just Bulgaria bought a few RBs as the most useful example for recce purposes.
http://books.google.de/books?id=qN8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=Me-262%2Brocket+plane&source=bl&ots=xz0O73cu4K&sig=v6GOLpWgoVt_zZ9KY_XeDbCAcXU&hl=de&ei=V1-iTMKHJsWQswai0ZCKBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Me-262%2Brocket%20plane&f=false

See page 6 about the “rocket plane” and that the other were labeled “turbos” or “jet plane”.
From August 1939 the world had learned about a German jet aircraft and the allied pilots and crews were briefed about the German Jets at least from 1944.
http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=1762

Sens my use of terminology was taken directly from the mouths of B-17 pilots on footage. Rocket plane is the term used when describing footage of an Me-262 making a pass on their fortress. I’ve heard the same term used by TAF pilots personally, describing a doctrine which came into force of attacking the airfields of “German rocket planes” when clearly they were talking about Me-262/Arado bases.

Why you would want to have an argumentative way of contesting my use of terminology, an entirely inconsequential notation within the context of the posting is something I do not care for or about. Just I don’t know, take it a bit easier on people when you want to discuss something they said, the moderator’s post notwithstanding for both of us to curb any further argumentation between us here.

I believe I have a fairly detailed research foundation on the Foxbat by the way and have quite a bit of documentation saved to disc.

Its reputation as a “superplane” was largely generated by the public comments of USAF secretary Robert Seamans in 1973. But there is more to it than that, an entire book could be written to fully take one into the political and technological environments of the time.
The Pentagon and Intelligence community remained quite ambiguous about its capabilities around 1968 when the FX program was being developed, based on their own special projects they were basically divided in two camps, either it had no thick air combat capabilities at all (inaccurate), or the Russians had made unknown technological achievements (inaccurate).

Whatever the Foxbat was not, it remained a tremendous achievement for a 60s warbird, essentially a Phantom or Thunderchief contemporary.

The myths dispelled with Bel’enko defection were both the extremist camp in the Pentagon that said such ridiculous things as the Russians might’ve had alien technologies from extra-terrestrial visitation. And before you say that’s off the wall, believe it or not the cold war was really that paranoid. All sorts of ridiculous things were being considered by the authorities, the Russian had an official military project to investigate psychic powers, the USAF had project Blue Book investigating extra-terrestrial visitations. This is the time period aircraft like the Foxbat were produced, and the Space Program was fully underway on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The other myth was far more conventional, more rational minds in the defence administration felt the Foxbat was probably contemporary with American technologies and that simply Russian industrial processes had become more advanced (considering experience developing new industrial processes for the building of Blackbird and Valkyrie aircraft). It astonished them that the Foxbat performance was achieved with mass production as they had found this impossible.
What they figured though was that it probably had weapons/avionics systems quite similar to a Phantom.

It was a shock then when Foxbat construction was found to be just very simple and robust, with avionics and instrumentation not much different from 50s interceptors. The latest US step in doppler radars and advanced signal processing hadn’t even been made, although the radar was very powerful and had some impressive capabilities (multiple frequency emission, making it jam proof at that time).

It compromised the security of the Smerch radar set and PVO Foxbat squadrons so the Sapfir processor from the Flogger was adapted and the PD radar received doppler for good measure. The Foxhound was already in rudimentary development by then anyway, which had new engineering requirements of low altitude interception (following a shift in USAF attack doctrine of low alt terrain masking penetration over high alt dash penetration).

This event did not open up export for the Foxbat. The Foxbats used against Israel for most of the 70s were flown by Russian pilots under independent command and simply had Syrian or Egyptian markings placed on them.
From 1978 the newer Flogger and PD Foxbat models were entering Russian service so the older variants of both were opened up for export (Sapfir-23B radar rather than Jaybird in Floggers, for example, at least among satellites). According to some sources even the Iraqi PD Foxbats received in the 80s were downgraded with Smerch radars. Most importantly in 1978 the Fulcrum was expected to enter mass production to replace Floggers and the Foxhound was due to enter production in 1980.

The main thing prohibiting wider use of Foxbat interceptors outside the USSR is shown by what happened with Foxbat-A squadrons in Ukrainie based PVO. It was engine life. Reliable replacements couldn’t be counted on frequently enough to justify flying operations and when they were updated to PDS and PD variants the Russians discovered Ukrainian PVO interceptor pilots had actually forgotten how to fly them and had to be retrained from scratch.
The PD uses the RB engines so has better engine life but even so the Foxbat is an expensive and difficult fighter to operate under normal conditions, even the PVO always used supplementary Su-15 and MiG-23.
Excepting the fitment of RB engines, ie. the PD variants export interest in the Foxbat interceptors was always muted by engine life and expense given such a fairly simple machine. India for example became more interested in developing an indigenous Fishbed variant for specialised interception duties after performing a study which concluded its capabilities would only be marginally exceeded by a Foxbat interceptor force with more aircraft equipped and better service life. That was cancelled anyway.
The success of the Foxbat design is much better exampled by the service of its RB variants, which have been popular exports and have good service records, and note the PD/PDS uses the same engines.

Now whilst Bel’enko defection dispelled abstract myths about Soviet advancements in avionics and airframe technologies, combat experience in the Gulf dispelled myths on the other side of the equation about the Foxbat’s combat performance at lower altitudes. It was found to be fairly handy in thick air and more than capable of engaging contemporary fighters at lower altitudes, if the conditions were good for their often poorer weapons/avionics.

So both extremes of being only capable at very high altitude interceptions, or being a superplane with fantastic capabilities at all heights are equally inaccurate. It’s a pretty ordinary older style fighter-interceptor fairly similar to something like a Phantom or a Thunderchief (which can’t really compete with Eagles and Hornets either) but has extreme speed characteristics as altitudes rise and has fantastic transonic acceleration and sustained climb.
And one should keep in mind things like Phantoms are still in service around the world.

Hmm probably wouldn’t be the massive international outcry you envisage. China would be annoyed, Russia could go either way. Japan, South Korea, probably most of Europe wouldn’t be too bothered or would openly support it.

And lets remember that the only nuclear weapons that North Korea can detonate would be on their own soil. They’d also be a top priority target – B2’s, Tomahawks, and a lot of US marines would be tasked onto capturing and/or destroying the nuclear sites and weapons.

Killing a bunch of Koreans, or anybody at all certainly isn’t any kind of outrage, nobody cares so long as we’re all good. The outrage is all in how it’s done, which is always the case, and at least the appearance somebody cares for the benefit of the general public.

All out war without a formal declaration and assassinating governments justify nuclear retaliation by any reasonable sensibilities and opens the door on way too much latent paranoia to be tolerated. How do the French know they’re not next, because you say so? You get to say who’s okay and who needs to be wiped off the map? How is the USA God exactly? How is the USA even right about anything for anybody?

Your politics, government, views and outlook are based on your populace, culture and ideologies, they are incorrect elsewhere.

The way you view the North Koreans is wrong. It is not universal. Others may disagree. That in and of itself makes you wrong about them. Because you don’t get to say who is right in this world.

What has NATO to do with it?

NATO is a mutual defence treaty applying to Europe, North America & the North Atlantic. The NATO treaty clearly states that it does not apply outside that area.

The forces in Afghanistan presently are a NATO coalition. Georgia applied for NATO membership. Turkey is a NATO member. This is registering?

The prerequisites for NATO membership is about force composition, this is the basis Georgia was refused membership…ostensibly. In actual fact, in this case it was because the RF put up a formal protest of any non-CiS peacekeeping interest in Georgia due to proximity to the Northcaucasus military district and military assets located in Georgia, they said directly that if NATO peacekeepers were sanctioned to enter Georgia by the UN a conflaguration with Russian forces was likely, in a submission made in 1998 iirc when there was still a US advisor based at Tblisi reviewing the NATO application.

Still under the terms of NATO treatise force composition is a deciding factor of membership, not geographical location.

Such an attack would be bound by international treaties to be sanctioned by NATO and tabled at the UN. A very great number of member nations would raise protests, some would sever diplomatic relations with the US. It would affect trade and you would have social unrest at home.

Probably the worst factor is that such an attack would justify nuclear retaliation under strict international treaties, so the US would be held responsible for a nuclear conflaguration in the region.

Don’t kid yourself, no government has any power without the backing of the military. Any attempt to assassinate an entire government would elicit the military infrastructure must also be destroyed.

So what you’re really talking about is all out war without any formal declaration, pretty much every nation in the world is going to have a serious problem with this.

Your twisting reality for all to see. The MiG-21s got the LASUR system for guidance, when the lack of space did not allow to install the SAU system for landing at the same time! The Me-262 was not “rocket plane”, when the Me-163 was one. We agree that the MiG-25 was an interceptor for hit and run attacks higher up.

Sens you really need to hold back on the propensity to attack posters out of hand. Obviously if what you say about the Fishbed GCI set is accurate then it is an honest mistake.
US fliers during late-44-45 made no distinction between the Me-262/Me-163 or others and referred to them generically as “rocket planes.” Germans themselves referred to jets as turbo and the only rocket plane in service by its name, komet.
We do not agree that the MiG-25 was an interceptor for hit and run attacks higher up as a comprehensive descript for the capabilities and flying characteristics of the model. You and I don’t agree on very much at all actually, mostly to do with everything about the way you think as a person.

None of this in any way describes a culpable liability of twisting the truth, that is an entirely misleading personal attack without justification.
When you do attack another adult out of hand, why would you possibly think they would have the slightest investment in anything you had to say in the first place about them?
Learn to be polite, feller.