BIGVERN1966Love that proviso, ‘could be made to fly if missing items are fitted’, oh yes, it needs engines as well! It won’t be flying in the U.K.
That BAE will not support a flying civiee Jag in the UK, which kills any chance of getting a CAA permit to fly is well known. However somebody else in the world does still support Jaguar. Would a foreign company be allowed to do what was done with the Vulcan the UK?
BIGVERN1966Not so much techno thillers, but an excellent series of books emersed in Aviation and Military would be Richard Herman (depending on the Publisher Richard Herman Jnr), His first was Warbirds and just keep going from there…the early ones aren’t easy to get a hold of now though.
The Warbirds, set in the late 1980s before the fall of the Berlin wall, the trials and tribulations of a fictional UK based USAF Phantom wing, which deployed to the Gulf to support the gulf states in a second Iran / Iraqi war. One of the best fictional books on Air Warfare period, though the next book,
Force of Eagles, is in my view, even better.
After that, the rest of his books were a bit tame in comparison, and seem to follow the same format. take a good but ill disciplined fighter jock and turn him into a professional war fighter and leader, and in the next book get him command the rescue of somebody (bit like the first two books in fact).
BIGVERN1966Not so much techno thillers, but an excellent series of books emersed in Aviation and Military would be Richard Herman (depending on the Publisher Richard Herman Jnr), His first was Warbirds and just keep going from there…the early ones aren’t easy to get a hold of now though.
The Warbirds, set in the late 1980s before the fall of the Berlin wall, the trials and tribulations of a fictional UK based USAF Phantom wing, which deployed to the Gulf to support the gulf states in a second Iran / Iraqi war. One of the best fictional books on Air Warfare period, though the next book,
Force of Eagles, is in my view, even better.
After that, the rest of his books were a bit tame in comparison, and seem to follow the same format. take a good but ill disciplined fighter jock and turn him into a professional war fighter and leader, and in the next book get him command the rescue of somebody (bit like the first two books in fact).
BIGVERN1966The Larry Bond ones I’ve read are not bad (Red phoenix (Second Korean War), Vortex (US, UK and Cuba fight it out in South Africa after a ultra right wing government take control, written before 94) and Cauldron (US, UK and Poland give the French a right royal kicking)), which are not surprising seeing he played a major hand in co-authoring Tom Clancy’s second and in my view best book, Red Storm Rising.
Enjoyed both of these by Eric L. Harry – Arc Light (accidental WWIII between Russia and the US) and Protect and defend (NATO and China fight in Siberia after collapse of the Russian government) both from the mid 1990s.
Loved Flight of the Old Dog, but don’t think much of the rest of Dale Brown’s stuff.
BIGVERN1966The Larry Bond ones I’ve read are not bad (Red phoenix (Second Korean War), Vortex (US, UK and Cuba fight it out in South Africa after a ultra right wing government take control, written before 94) and Cauldron (US, UK and Poland give the French a right royal kicking)), which are not surprising seeing he played a major hand in co-authoring Tom Clancy’s second and in my view best book, Red Storm Rising.
Enjoyed both of these by Eric L. Harry – Arc Light (accidental WWIII between Russia and the US) and Protect and defend (NATO and China fight in Siberia after collapse of the Russian government) both from the mid 1990s.
Loved Flight of the Old Dog, but don’t think much of the rest of Dale Brown’s stuff.
BIGVERN1966Strength in numbers doesn’t seem to be helping the Russians, perhaps the strict drug testing is having an effect.
They will be third by the end of the games Pete, Can’t see Team GB winning more than another couple of golds max, The Russians have far more prospects for gold in the remaining events and are one gold behind. However UK sports target was 35 to 41 medals with 10 to 12 Golds. As of now Team GB have 40 medals (plus a minimum of 3 bronze medals from the boxing to add to that total) and 17 Golds. The former head of the Italian Olympic Committee, Luciano Barra correctly prediced that team GB would be 10th in 2004, using the results of of the last world championships in each sport and Barra’s perdiction for Team GB this time round is 4th with 48 medals. I think we would have had a not bad chance of almost making that figure with the medal chances we had, until the Mens Sprint Relay threw a very good chance of a medal away.
BIGVERN1966Strength in numbers doesn’t seem to be helping the Russians, perhaps the strict drug testing is having an effect.
They will be third by the end of the games Pete, Can’t see Team GB winning more than another couple of golds max, The Russians have far more prospects for gold in the remaining events and are one gold behind. However UK sports target was 35 to 41 medals with 10 to 12 Golds. As of now Team GB have 40 medals (plus a minimum of 3 bronze medals from the boxing to add to that total) and 17 Golds. The former head of the Italian Olympic Committee, Luciano Barra correctly prediced that team GB would be 10th in 2004, using the results of of the last world championships in each sport and Barra’s perdiction for Team GB this time round is 4th with 48 medals. I think we would have had a not bad chance of almost making that figure with the medal chances we had, until the Mens Sprint Relay threw a very good chance of a medal away.
BIGVERN1966But has that not always been the case, why should things be different this year. I agree that the system seems unco-ordinated, but there has always been a well known, familiar athlete that has done the business, not anymore it seems, the media seems to be too obsessed with money making sports. Perhaps some of these footballers who earn more in a day than most of us do in a year should help out the athletes rather than spend it on their bloody kitchen tiles, they can always top up their earnings from exclusives to Hello Magazine if they feel that skint.
Well that’s the problem, BBC used to do primetime coverage of AAA events back when Coe, Ovett and Cram were in their prime (Goldern Mile meet, for exmaple), hence everybody knew who was who. I haven’t seen that outside major competitions for years, bar the odd Sunday Grandstand on BBC2.Football is one of the major problems, too much focus on that one sport.
BIGVERN1966But has that not always been the case, why should things be different this year. I agree that the system seems unco-ordinated, but there has always been a well known, familiar athlete that has done the business, not anymore it seems, the media seems to be too obsessed with money making sports. Perhaps some of these footballers who earn more in a day than most of us do in a year should help out the athletes rather than spend it on their bloody kitchen tiles, they can always top up their earnings from exclusives to Hello Magazine if they feel that skint.
Well that’s the problem, BBC used to do primetime coverage of AAA events back when Coe, Ovett and Cram were in their prime (Goldern Mile meet, for exmaple), hence everybody knew who was who. I haven’t seen that outside major competitions for years, bar the odd Sunday Grandstand on BBC2.Football is one of the major problems, too much focus on that one sport.
BIGVERN1966This passage is key. The original Patriot was established as an AD system against airplanes, helicopters and cruise missiles that flew a profile similar to an airplane. To design to defeat ballistic missiles (like the Soviets did with S-300) was a violation of the ABM treaty.
The interceptor missile maneuver and fuzing requirements are radically different for airplanes (mach 5 closure rate) vs ballistic missiles (mach 20 closure rate). If you remember the numerous videos shot by Israeli citizens of Patriot intercept attempts of Scuds over Tel Aviv, the Patriot warheads detonated after the scud had passed by. In other words, the fuzes were too slow. Other Patriot missiles did not get close to the incoming scuds because interceptor missile launch limits were tuned to airplanes and the interceptors were launched too late. Scuds were hit low to the ground and Patriots that self-destructed after missing their target showered burning propellant over Tel Aviv neighborhoods.
Patriot PAC3 and software updates to PAC 2 corrected those deficiencies after the ABM treaty was declared void. The ABM treaty was voided because one of the signatories no longer existed (USSR).
ABM Treaty was still complied with until 2002 when the US formally withdrew. A MoU between the US and the four largest CIS states was signed in 1997 to formally take the place of the Treaty, however it was not ratified by the US Senate.
BIGVERN1966Bombers were the main Soviet nuclear threat to the US until well into the 1960s. Look at when Bomarc, Nike Ajax & Nike Hercules were developed & fielded, & when they were retired. They mirror, with some delay, the shifting of the threat.
The SS-6 wasn’t deployed until 1959 – and only a handful, never more than 10, because it was so poor as an ICBM. Stood a good chance of being destroyed on its launch pads while fuelling. The SS-7 wasn’t operational until 1961, & still wasn’t up to much, though vastly better than the SS-6. First SLBM (SSN-4) was deployed in 1961, & was so good they started retiring it in 1965. Range was tactical, not strategic. Even the SSN-5 (1963) couldn’t reach all of the USA even if the subs were tied up in US ports couldn’t hit Chicago from New Orleans. The SSN-6 could – but wasn’t in service until 1968. And it wasn’t until the 1970s, & the SSN-8 that Soviet SLBMs could hit anywhere in the USA without having to get uncomfortably close to the US coast.
Indeed the US ground based air defences against soviet bombers was extensive, with nearly 3000 Nike Hercs and 700 Bomarc SAMs on within what became the NORAD area of operations. However by the time the SAGE system to control it came on line, The US was already cutting back on CONUS ADGE assets (not all of the SAGE centres planned were built), after they had hard intel from U2 Overflights that the Bomber gap was massively in there favour (what they had, could handle most of the threat). Likewise when the ICBM threat came about and the full costs of a practical ABM system were known (totally unaffordable), that was the death of the land based SAM in the US, especially after the ABM treaty came about (and seeing that 2000 of the Hercs and most of the Bomarcs had nuke warheads) that finally lead to their retirement. Soviet Union on the other hand, knew what they were facing, and knew that in the short and medium term, their fighter force was not up to the job (having failed to shoot down a number of over flights ranging from RB-45s, though Canberra and B-47 to U-2) needed the SAMs to hold the line until fighter and AAM development could do the job. Having studied UK SAM development in some depth from primary sources (i.e. Official documents), The British play on SAM’s was that to shoot down an aircraft flying at Mach 1 before it reaches weapons release from detection, the interceptor had to be capable of a speed of Mach 1.5 at the bare minimum. There was no way it was though that the time, that a manned aircraft could be developed within the time scale required that could do the job. In the case of the British weapons, the target that the specs were based on was the Tu-4 Bull, and the weapon range was to be a minimum of 20 miles and a max speed of Mach 2. Pulse radar beam riding /SARH chosen, because development was easier that Pulse Doppler/FM-CW (though that development was started almost at the same time in the case of Bloodhound as problems with pulse radar guidance were well known at the start of the program). By the time development was finished, the original plan, formed when the British army was running the show was for defence of 4 port cities in the UK had been dropped, The IRBMs were the main threat, and the projected procurement was slashed resulting in SAM protection for the bomber bases and Thor sites. (RAF was in charge of the project by this time, and the original procurement was mainly to provide a measure of defence for the deterrent bases, plus provide a weapon to gain experience in the operation of SAMs within the RAF to a follow on weapon with a better guidance system and longer range, that mission being finally met by the Bloodhound Mk 2, which was deployed to defend the V-bomber bases in the UK, Cyprus and RAF bases in the Middle and Far East). When the Deterrent moved to Polaris in the late 1960’s and the RAF pulled out of the Far East SAM defences in the UK and overseas drew down, and most were moved to West Germany to provide low level defence of the RAF Airfields on the German / Dutch boarder, Though they could provide higher level defence of German airspace, along with the German and Dutch Nike Hercules force. A number of NATO countries were equipped with both fixed site Nike Hercules and Hawk / I-Hawk systems, especially those on the NATO front lines which formed a SAM belt over the central NATO region until the end of the Cold War, when most systems were retired, including the Bloodhound in the UK whic had all been placed in East Angila, to provide a SAM belt on the east coast of the UK.
BIGVERN1966Looking on the forum, esp. “Military situation in SO/Georgia” thread, seems many questionable claims about air defense/western air force/Patriot SAM systems have re-emerged after being beaten in the past, so I thought it may be of use to post some things (with references) to combat few popular yet untrue myths. Even had to re-register since lost my account info from old times 🙂
So, this thread is about ‘Patriot r INVincible no Myssile to go by’ and ‘EM on Israel plane pwns any SAM’ myths 🙂
If you already know the true situation about those, then sorry for posting, but feel free to post a link to this thread for those still infected with those myths 😉Some facts, for the starters:
Debunking the “near 100%” Patriot efficiency myth (proudly invented by George H. W. Bush, w/o any reliable sources, yet cited everywhere)
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/gao/im92026.htm
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992_h/h920407p.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/19/60minutes/main601241.shtml
The Fifth Estate: The Best Defence [Television program]. Toronto, Ontario: CBC. (can be downloaded from various torrent sources)
and other links, just google ‘Patriot controversy’.
In short, some things about Patriots that can be extracted from various sources:
1) Up to 4 Patriots were fired at each incoming Scud due to confirmed high unreliability of 1-v-1 interceptor-vs-missile situation.
2) Israel was not satisfied with Patriots and even wanted to develop their own system instead (read: SpyDer).
3) Patriot had many software flaws that ultimately led to friendly fire in several cases (taking down US and British aircraft), and false detections in many cases.
4) Most of those speaking about interceptors in ‘popular newsletters’ doesn’t understand how exactly interceptors work.
5) Patriots, prior to PAC-3, were hardly ABM systems at all; those were ‘classic’ AD systems, and quite bad when tasked with destruction of missiles; even their anti-aircraft capability was, hmm, only shown by taking down friendly aircraft.As for another myth, “aircraft-based Israel ECM completely defeats Russian SAM during Operation Orchard” (claimed once, then debunked by any serious military analyst, yet also cited everywhere):
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/world/middleeast/12syria.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7463044.stm
3) http://russiatoday.ru/scitech/news/17783/video (interview wth Pantsir developer)
4) http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003771.html
and again, others.To put it short, there are much more evidence that
1) Pantsir systems weren’t present at the time of raid at all.
2) There were no air defenses and even no barbed wire around ‘mystery target’ (so it doesn’t look like military facility at all).
3) Israelis claim to have breached SAMs by ‘network hack’ and even ‘taking over as system administrator’ (!) Obviously that implies intelligence success and possible infiltartion of Syrian SAM teams by Israelis agents. Hacking SAM sites from the aircraft, afresh? No, please.
4) There was no ‘jamming’ detected by Syrians; their radars showed… nothing (not even EW interference). For those familliar with idea of jamming, it pretty much means there was no actual warplane-vs-SAM engagement; that only supports idea of command posts being hacked to ignore radar data.
As an exaggerated and fantastic example, think of the following: your spy sneaks into enemy SAM post, and then takes off radar screen and replaces it with exact – showing ‘all clear’ – yet totally non-functional copy. Even if the radars in question would’ve worked perfectly, no one will see what they are reporting.
Yet again like in case of Patriot myth above, DEBKAfile and others started shouting ‘Israelis jam any SAM!’ way before any credible information could be collected.There are also a collection of other myths around, usually coming in two shapes: overrating US SAMs (on pro-US forums) and overrating Russian air force (on pro-Russian forums). To put it simply, both are believed to be quite weaker than their competitors (US SAMs weaker than Russian, Russian jets weaker than American).
Here’s a greatly simplified way to understand why.
During Cold War, Soviets had no reasonable way to get an military airbase near US borders (obvious when looking at the map), while US had a formiddable naval carrier fleet and could’ve encircled USSR with military air bases given its allies in Europe and Asia.
So US invested into aviation, asking its allies to research various SAMs (Stinger missiles anyone?) while USSR invested into SAMs, positioning its aviation facilities in non-Russian SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries (Ukrainian ‘largest jet in the world’ anyone?)
When looking deeply onto developments there, and including recent developments, there are quite good collection of facts to realistically judge performance of corresponding aviation and SAMs.
Yet, unfortunately, most stick to the beaten-horse myths spread around instead of actually researching the subject.
Posted in hope that all this info (nothing new actually) may help those coming with only basic, newspapers-based knowledge of SAM systems. For those familliar with the subject, yet still reading 🙂 hopefully it was still interesting 🙂
Totally Wrong, Only countries in the west bar the US that really developed long range SAM’s were UK, France, Sweden and the Swiss (both neutrals). US SAM development equalled all of the above combined near as damm it. US covered by a massive number of SAM sites (Nike Ajax / Hercules – Bormarc) plus two good systems on ships (Talos and Terrier), plus HAWK for the Field Army. British had Sea Slug (Naval), Thunderbird (Field Army) and Bloodhound (Fixed site / Semi Moblie). French, Sweden and the Swiss had their own systems in development, but in the end went for US/UK systems in the shape of Hawk (Swedish Army / French Army) and Bloodhound (Swedish Air Force / Swiss Army). Everybody else got US systems. USSR went for SAMs in a big way because of the area of airspace they had to protect. US canned US based SAMs due to the fact Soviets didn’t have the bombers, but ICBMs. Stinger is a US missile by the way.
BIGVERN1966Brit Girl has just won a Bronze in 400m hurdles, just missed out the Silver. Another medel for the Track and Field team.
BIGVERN1966Brit Girl has just won a Bronze in 400m hurdles, just missed out the Silver. Another medel for the Track and Field team.
BIGVERN1966How can you win Gold at events that you didn’t even enter last time round, or were utter rubbish?
Easy, Have a population of 1.3 Billion, pick all the good ones you can, and throw billions, the best coaches you can get and four years into training them, got to win more that anybody else just on the averages, though I wouldn’t mind betting that some dodgy things have been happening in the background. Though the Chinese seem to have done what the UK have done, targeted a lot of their resources in the areas where they knew they could win the most medals.
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