we already got what we needed – Musharaff has imposed a ceasefire and kept his dogs under control, so we are having a lot of fun completing the fence and hunting down and shooting like mad dogs whatever jihadi types we come across.

and we got it without crossing the IB 🙂 heh heh.

ofcourse the jihadis are p***ed and gunning for the good
General now. but thats his and the US’s problem 😉

> Pak has hundreds of Nuke facilities

very funny. I guess if the painted sign says “nuke facility” its one!

The US has complete control of Paks nuke facilities and no
more “activity” is permissible. As a concession Pak has probably been allowed to retain a few devices but with strict US oversights and PAL devices.

the “liaison group” in Dalbandin is the key 😀

being a Munna cuts both ways
* some free cookies now and then
* no control of strategic sovereignty
same uniform rule everywhere, not pak-specific.

the rotating phased array EMPAR and SAMPSON radars and their
associated combat systems will soon be the top naval air defence
systems. italy, france, uk.

China also has a phased array radar on 052C ships (2 building).
and top plate on other ships.

India has the top-plate phased array radar on 3 ships. the
ganga & godavari have a Elta phased array.

phased array radars are a commodity item now, but aegis-like
combat systems are not,

photo from latest FORCE mag of two P17 ships fitting out
side by side in mazgaon dock, bombay. dont know when the
photo was taken – it has no EXIF data so probably was a
film shot then scanned.

the 100KB limit on attachment is a pain though. I had a
larger colour photo, the ship sides are primer red.

any reports on how the new A53 Sylver module is coming along – this is supposed to bring Sylver on par with MK41 in ability to fire land attack weapons (thawk, apache) and ASMs.
Any TBMD version of Aster30 also needs the extra depth.

The Asters being active radar guided and TVC are far more capable of dealing with stealthy/small/fastmover/low targets than the SM2 methinks despite the higher raw range of the SM2. arent they also faster than SM2?

per a article I read some countries decided to adopt the lower risk & cost approach of using Aegies + SM2 (spain), some wanted a medium risk & cost APAR + SM2 (germany, netherlands) and the big3 wanted a high risk & cost SAMPSON/EMPAR + Aster (UK, France, Italy)

by risk I mean new technology development, cost overruns and time overruns.

as you can see high risk also brings higher reward eventually and though they will be last to enter service, the HORIZON and DARING class will be the worlds premier AAW ships until the USN fields its next generation.

searching for “AL 31FP engine single crystal blades” in google I
came across links suggesting the FP has single crystal and AL-55
also will have it.

Aerospacetech can you recall where you read of the changeover?