Agh! the golden archs of Mordor…take it away. take it away.
*cringes into cave*

does the E2 have a galley, bunk and toilet ?

Jonesy, pls see my question for you in the ‘area defence’ thread to rate the present AAW ships.[later – thanks for the reply]

DF-31 is costly. china cannot afford to field 100s of these nor proliferate to usual partners like Pakistan or N.korea. already
the 2nd arty is larger than most countries armies and maintaining
it cant be cheap or easy.

If a system exists to take care of IRBMs countries like india, taiwan would be most interested. Arrow2 and this SM3 look like the only serious contenders around. russia blows some hot air about S-400 but has never backed that talk with some demos unlike the other two.

well this is probably PLAAFs future AJT. nothing wrong with that.
note the IFR probe for IFR training also.

quite a big a/c for a trainer.

From Jane’s:

Pakistani perils
ANDREW KOCH JDW Bureau Chief
Washington, DC

Faisal Khan, a fictitious young Pakistani-born ‘volunteer’, was unknowingly about to test the fragile Indo-Pakistani relationship and the overall stability of the South Asian subcontinent. He was on his way to fight for yet another violent group that had splintered off from the main Kashmiri militant organisations.

‘He sprinted up a steep mountain trail and into Indian-held territory, following small footpaths that fellow infiltrators had used for decades. While the already dangerous journey had become increasingly perilous in the past few years as Indian border guards learned how to use their new unmanned air vehicles, improved radar and better thermal imagers, Khan knew he would make it. He had to. He, like several of his madrassa classmates, was a key cog in a wave of suicide bombings that would shake the hated rulers in New Delhi to their roots.’

Such an eventuality would have a range of consequences, from a nuclear cataclysm to strengthening forces that could tear down the governing structures in Islamabad and rip the already precarious Pakistani state apart. It is no wonder the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) calls the region “one of the most dangerous places on earth”. Although much of this concern has been focused on the tense Indo-Pakistani security situation centred around the long and bitter dispute over Kashmir, increasing attention is also being paid to sources of instability in the Pakistani state itself.

In wide-ranging interviews, numerous US and Pakistani officials, as well as regional security experts, outlined their views on Islamabad’s future. Many agree that the most likely near-term political threat to President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s rule comes from within the military establishment rather than from radical Islamist groups and political parties that, despite gains in recent elections and a vocal presence, currently hold little sway in the key political and economic province of Punjab. Those groups have been unable to muster the street power or political muscle necessary to topple the existing governing structure. As Air Chief Marshal (ACM) Kaleem Saadat, Pakistan Air Force Chief of Staff, notes, Jihadi groups can make trouble for the ruling government, but “not to the point that the issue [could] get out of control”.

Still, Gen Musharraf’s position is far from secure, primarily because his military-dominated government has failed to establish a formula for truly handing-off power and allowing civilians to rule the country. That, many of the experts and officials say, is ultimately required. As one retired US intelligence expert says, “the military has clearly worn out whatever welcome it had” among the Pakistani population, but at the moment there are no viable alternatives. He warns that “the real danger now is there is no political centre”, noting that the military remains the central force of integration in the country. Of particular concern has been the marginalisation of moderate political forces within the opposition parties. Without that political centre, militant groups or radical anti-Western populist leaders can fill the void.

And Gen Musharraf cannot rule forever. He has bet his future squarely on the post-11 September 2001 relationship built with Washington. If that pro-US stance does fulfil the promises of a better economy and improved security, a backlash could occur within the wider society, explains a top US intelligence official. Continued US operations in Afghanistan are already feeding such a trend, creating an anti-American focus among Pakistani radical groups that have traditionally been more interested in the plight of Kashmir, he notes.

The fear that these militant groups could conduct a terrorist attack so horrific that it sparks the South Asian powder-keg is what earned the region its CIA label. The concern, US officials say, is that such an attack would go too far. That is a very real possibility as violence has been a regular occurrence in the Kashmir valley for over a decade. A horrific attack, in turn, could create intense public pressure on Indian leaders to strike back at the militants’ camps and sources of support across the Line of Control into Pakistan.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) would conduct such an attack. In recent years it has become not only superior to the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in quantitative terms, but its ambitious modernisation programme is quickly making it technologically superior as well. If current trends persist, by 2010 the IAF will have more than sufficient capability to conduct punitive precision conventional strikes into Pakistani territory without much concern about the PAF, which has been crippled by a decade of sanctions and have little ground-based air-defence support.

Pakistan then would be under equal pressure to retaliate, lighting the spark for a wider conflict not easily controlled. Ultimately, unless the Pakistani military receives a fairly significant influx of high-technology weaponry in the next few years, it will have insufficient capabilities to stave off a conventional defeat at the hands of the larger and increasingly sophisticated Indian forces. Islamabad’s only option would be to rely on the threat to use its nuclear arsenal to settle the conflict. However, if trends persist, this nuclear deterrent could also be in jeopardy. India’s quest for ballistic missile defences from Israel and US suppliers has senior Pakistani strategic thinkers deeply concerned, as present trends will eventually leave India militarily superior in all facets of conventional warfare. If New Delhi is able to nullify Islamabad’s nuclear deterrent through ballistic missile defences, Pakistan could be left vulnerable.

If war did come to the subcontinent, concern about a nuclear conflagration of unthinkable devastation would focus international attention, particularly from the US, and pressure would be applied to both parties to de-escalate hostilities. A defeated Pakistani military, says the former US intelligence official, would have grave consequences for Gen Musharraf’s political survival and the health of the Pakistani state as a whole. With the military discredited by a defeat, there is a reasonable chance that an Islamist or populist figure could come to power as the country’s “saviour”, the official explained.

Defeat could also fracture the military itself: a troubling outcome as the institution has been a leading force of integration in the otherwise fractured state. The country is already under tremendous economic, political and demographic strains to its integrity, the long-term effects of globalisation will further undermine its stability as the flow of people, goods and information outside government control increase. If the military does split, the US officials say, the Pakistani state and society would be in grave danger of full-scale collapse, creating a vacuum in which religious zealots or provincial separatists would thrive.

Even short of this near worst-case scenario (the worst being an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war), other likely outcomes would also spell trouble. A Pakistani military defeat at the hands of India – even if limited – could precipitate Gen Musharraf’s fall from power at the hands of opponents within the military. While Gen Musharraf has been quick to sack or transfer any officers seen as overly pro-Islamist, his policies, such as jettisoning support for the Taliban and allowing US forces to use the country as a base for security operations, have been a source of bitterness among many Pakistanis both in and out of the military establishment.

The most likely short-term threat to Musharraf’s rule, US officials say, is in a political climate created by acts of violence carried out by radical Islamists that cause the Pakistani army to judge that Musharraf has become a liability. Under such a scenario, the military could remove Musharraf from power and the next military leader would be more likely to be conciliatory to Islamists and their causes.

US intelligence says Gen Musharraf has forced militant groups operating on Pakistani territory to move away from the Kashmir border, both to please Washington and guard against an uncontrolled conflict with India. Since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US and the December 2001 suicide assault on the Indian parliament, the Musharraf government has ordered Pakistani and Kashmiri militant groups to “cool it”, a US intelligence official explains. However, he says, while past governments in Islamabad have exercised considerable control over these groups due to their provision of assistance and training, that control has eroded over time. Now, the official says, one of the groups outside government direction could go too far and spark a conflict.

While US and other external observers are concerned, the Pakistan government does not seem to take these threats seriously. Such a scenario would not escalate out of control, ACM Saadat says, because even the militants “are not that crazy” to do something so horrible as precipitate a full-scale war. US officials say hopefully not, but note that mainstream Kashmiri militant organisations are splintering off into smaller and more violent groups less likely to take their cues from Islamabad and more likely to follow Al-Qaeda or similar radical movements. They seek not only to throw the Indians out of Kashmir, but also to change the government in Pakistan as well.

By 2010, the officials say, these radical groups could begin to become a serious concern to the health of the Pakistani state. The underlying problem is the country’s continued failures of governance. While Gen Musharraf’s rule has brought a re-alignment toward the West and greater economic discipline, the basic failure of the decaying Pakistani state has continued on a number of issues. These range from an inability to address radical teachings in the madrassa-based education system to establishing a formula for true civilian rule. Those trends leave the country in an untenable long-term situation. As a Pakistani general notes “for any system to survive, it must build a framework for justice”. Such justice, outside experts say, is sorely lacking in today’s Pakistani society.

Radical Islamists, Pashtun separatists or, most powerfully, a combination of the two could step into such turmoil and fundamentally change the complexion of the modern Pakistani state.

Any photos with the Mjoelnir gliding submunition dispenser – should be taurus sized.