Since the USAF has requested information on aircraft that it knows are not supersonic, I must assume that they would not be dismissed out of hand. Also, I think it’s been stated above that the USAF has said that supersonic performance is not a requirement.

Thanks Swerve. Always appreciate your help.

Cheers

And the London Tabloids are calling for Capello’s head. Unbelieveable and short sighted. He was not the reason they crashed out of the tournament. ther than Wayne Rooney (who obviously underperformed in South Africa) and maybe Dawson or Defoe, who on this current England club would be worth building around for 2014???

No one!

Jack Rodwell, Joe Hart, Theo Walcott, Jack Wilshere, Lee Cattermole, Danny Wellback, Gabby Agbonlahor… These are the kids that you have to build around and hope that you can have them turn into some sort of decent side and hope that enough of them turn into the decent footballers the club needs to be competitive down the road.

Euro 2012 will in my eyes be the last kick at the can for the Lampards and Gerrards, assuming they qualify for the tournament. Yesterday should be it for John Terry… He can go back to being “father of the year” and pinching the girlfriends of team mates. The 2012 campaign for England must be looked at as a transition campaign to 2014 where there needs to be a wholesale change of players. England was the oldest club in average age at the World Cup and they certainly played like it!

If one takes a very cursory look a the most significant military events for the UK in the last decade what does one see? It sees that the UK forces participated in virtually the full spectrum of land warfare. And Air and Naval support was essential in each of these conflicts. Here is just a sample.

Fighting the last war is the mistake the French made with the Maginot Line. You have to fight future conflicts. The last ten years has seen the UK military fight in just about every type of conflict imaginable save for nuclear war. It is very safe to assume that in the next twenty all of these types of conflict will still be possible. It is hard to see the need for preparedness for the Iraq/Afghanistan/Sierra Leone scenarios not being needed.

Organic air power, airlift, well equipped land forces and an independent reconaissance capability are the bare minimums the British need to fund if they have any pretensions to consider themselves worthy of a seat on the UN Security Council in the years ahead.

One of the most unfortunate impacts of the Second Gulf War was to send the message to the Iran’s and North Korea’s of the world that the only way to perotect yourself from the Americans would be to buind a nuclear deterrent.

Saddam was unable to get the job done, and we all know how that ended for him…. swinging from the end of a noose. The Dear Leader set off a nuke and he is still in power. This message could not have been lost on the iranians.

Unless Israel decides to use nuclear weapons there is no way for them to do much other than slightly delay the Iranians.

Just looking at open source information on the IAEA website and on globalsecurity.org, I was able to confirm that there may be up to 25 nuclear weapon infrastructure sites that would need targeting in Iran. And that is just from open sources. There could be of course more sites than this not in the public domain that the Mossad/CIA may already be aware of.

Six to eight sites are allegedly involved in uranium/plutonium enrichment activities. Four of these sites are apparently hardened underground bunker type facilities. The Iranians appear to be hedging their bets by using gaseous diffusion/centrifuge approaches for enrichment along with calutrons and plutonium seperation. The centrifuge approach is the most effecient but the other approaches are much more low tech and easier to disguise. One would have to take all the way out these sites in order to knock the Iranian bomb project for a loop.

Three Dolphin subs, 40 odd F-15’s and some of those new F-16s they have would not be enough to completely flatten these facilities to the point where the program would be dealt a death blow the way the Osirak operation did to Iraq.

And going nuclear would be a gamble of the highest order. Who is to say that Pakistan for example would not use the “Islamic Bomb” and retaliate against Israel? Perhaps the Americans or Russians may intervene to try and “take out” the Israeli nukes conventionally in order to prevent some sort of craxy escalation?

I could see Israel using their nukes if they were only in the most imminent of threats. Iran is not there….. yet at least.

Who else in the region (let alone outside the region for a moment) would not like to see Iran acquire nukes?

The list is pretty long I would guess.

Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Turkey perhaps, Pakistan, etc.

Any number of these countries could be persuaded to turn a blind eye.

God grief:(
R.i.p. for the pilots & crew.
I have only one question!
What type of launcher & missile did the Taliban use:confused:

Thanks

It had to be a RPG of some sort.

Any Stingers still around in Afghanistan in the hands of rebels are long past their expiration dates. It could be an Igla, but I doubt it.

You are write about military copying but that only applies when they are enemies or rivals, on a civilized and commercial situation you have to respect rules and IP rights.
India shows they have a commercial obligation to fill, China shows they are not friends of Russia but at least Rivals like the USSR was of the US in the coldwar.
But the Russians know they want to keep diplomatic and commercial relations with China so they have declared they will solve it on friendly political ways, so still there is a change the matter will be settled friendly and the russian-chinese relation will remain intact and grow as partners rather than rivals.

But again you overtly choose to not answer the question.

Where or when did Russia specifically say that “… OK China, you can use our airframe, equip it with your systems and engines, and build it for your forces without our permission to do so…”?

Yes there are other issues between Russia and China that may require the Russians to let this issue slide. That does not take away from the obvious fact that this is theft of intellectual property that belongs to others. Whether the Russians choose to pursue it is besides the point. It is theft. And theft is dishonourable. How people cannot see this is simply beyond me.