They are developing their own 5-gen fighter. Little or no details though…

That’s a joke right? They have no funding. All the talk about purchasing arms isn’t backed up with money what so ever.
They can’t even come up with money to buy the refurbished P-3Cs they’ve been asking for.

That would be like saying you only have practics and never play a real game against real opponents.

Wars are best won by not fighting.
BTW exporting arms doesn’t make a country a superpower.
Sweden exports a lot of arms and it can not be called a regional power while japan who exports no arms can.

PAK-FA program would probably be dead in the water if not for export sales. Just take a look at how much new fighters RuAF is procuring.
J-20 isn’t in the same boat.

They are supposed to have them.. But every year the integration is delayed. 10 years after the first ship was laid down the MoD still have not decided when to start doing the weapon tests

Are the weapons integration outsourced to third party contractors like how USN does it?

well, the hull was also supposed to become a casino :p:p:diablo:

Maybe they’ll throw on a slot machine just to humour everyone…

First car?
1987 Mercedes 560SL.
I needed something with a little more horsepower…:dev2:

30% seems a bit steep to me unless they have developed a secret new engine or technique. 3% might be a more realistic figure.

Hard to say how much. New engines from CFM and PW claim 10-15% increase in efficiency. Extensive use of composites will reduce weight and henceforth save fuel.

It’s may also be a double gain if the carbon credit system is implemented world wide. Cutting emission is beneficial to any transportation sector.

You make it sound like A and B took a quick glance at the idea and dismissed it.
In actual fact, they’ve been studying it for years and neither A or B have been able to coax more than a projected 10% in savings on a new design versus what they already have. Not enough to warrant a completely new aircraft model.

I guess, when you make something as good as the A320 and 737, it’s hard to improve on it. Both have their pros and cons and sell in similar numbers for similar prices and do the same job as each other. As engineers say: “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”.

I very much doubt this chinese plane will be 30% more efficient overall than the A320 or 737. I think that is just marketing hype.

Airbus has a lot of reasons for not wanting to pour major resources redesigning the A320. The main one being not wanting to mess with their cash cow and of course the lack of competition helps. Then again their money is all tied up with the shiny new wide body jets. neither Boeing or airbus has the money to come up with a new design. The irony is Boeing used the same argument you used when Airbus first came out. History may repeat itself yet again.

Rand company was more than one-time wrong to stay polite.

The Russians were firm believer in the Lanchester Equation Basics, but that does work in the long run only.

The task of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdverband_44
Role Bomber attack and not to mix it with the escorts.

There are many more curious claims.
The Soviet Air Forces had at least 17.000 aircraft at hand in June 1941 and of that were 1289 MiG-3, 322 LaGG-3, 335 Jak-1, 485 Pe-2 and 249 Il-2 or 2670 of new models. The main shortcoming of that were. They were scattered in units converting to that and the main disadvantage was, just the commander aircraft were fitted with a not very reliable radios. All that did prevent the Russians to make some good use of their higher numbers. The Germans did single out the very aircraft and those units get scattered after that. Just the commanders were briefed about the mission tasked in detail. Till 1942 they had learned their lessons and from 1943 they were able to make good use of their higher numbers at hand. At least when the airwar in Europe and the Mediterranean showed a rising impact on the now scattered German forces.

There are contentious parts in that analysis but the part regarding sortie generation rate is quite accurate. Limited sortie rate = limited action.
This is the inherent fault of US dependence on few big airbases in the region. Once kadena airbase is disrupted, the options then become extremely limited.

The article’s argument is essentially a good one. It shows the limitations of forward basing and beyond visual range combat taking lessons learned from recent conflicts.

At least Rand corp have the good sense to analyze logistics instead of tactics.