I wondered where he had gone :rolleyes:

What about deploying Jaguar GR3’s?

Word on the grapevine is that may just happen 😉

Who’s to say that the Harriers performance is the RAF’s fault. My Brother is on the last Jaguar Sqn and last year they were in Oman on exercise with 800 NAS (who now operated ex RAF Harriers as part of JFH). His view of the Navy’s CAS ability was that they are totally CR@P!!! I’d had a good lesson about how difficult CAS with unguided weapons with only voice targeting from a forward Air Controller is just yesterday, as my brother had a flight in a two seat Jag in Jordan a few weeks back which he filmed on video. Aircraft was carrying an inert 1000 pound bomb. He told me that on the commands from the FAC he would have been about 400 yards off target. (The bomb missed the aiming point by 75 feet). You have to remember that the closest that the aircraft will get to the target is about 2 miles. The remarks about the USAF are correct, as the A-10 is a much better platform for doing the task than a Harrier. Yes the Logistic tail is CR@P. The main people to blame for that is the ARMY, who mostly run the DLO and tend to pinch the majority of the limited budget for themselves (Classic case being when the Army took over the clothing supply for all three services, the RAF and RN couldn’t get basic items of uniform because the ARMY forgot to renew the contracts!!!). The other main problem as far as the RAF is concerned is that with the change in aircraft serving policy back in the UK. A majority of the personnel that we had on 2nd / 3rd Line to reinforce operational Units are now Civilians. The same for other trades. MT, GSE, Firemen , Cooks and most other ground trades. Opps. As for the Helicopters, yes more aircraft are required as the spares backup is not good enough to support the current force that is being flown into the ground.

One is in Alabama, one is in FLorida, and the other is in Texas. You guys should be able to find them in about 0.2 seconds with that info 😀

The one at KSC (Florida) was done up and put inside a purpose built museum building back in the late 1990’s, hence its not outside :p

Well, well – a total of 237 posts coming from the usual suspects and some others, debating whether a Foxbat could in fact catch up with a SR-71. Well, all I can say is, that if there is indeed so much fuel for doubts about the MiG’s ability to even reach the very target it was designed for – well then one would have to regard the Foxbat as a design failure, because an interceptor’s ability to catch up and over-haul its main potential targets is its most basic and fundamental design parameter that it has to be able to achieve – and be able to achieve it by a considerable margin. Otherwise it’s a failure

And the ability to achieve this design parameter should be obvious to everyone, even before the intercepter/air-defence fighter ever enters service

An analogy; There were many instances when the Supermarine Spitfire wasn’t able to shoot down that elusive German bomber, usually because of defensive fire from the bombers’s gunners, but if the Spit’s top speed was 10% less than that of a Heinkel He-111, well then we would have agree that the fighter has no hope in hell of shooting down the invader.

It’s the same with jets. Century series aircraft like the F-101 and F-102 all possess the necessary speed, acceleration, range and ceiling to be able to catch up and overtake the potential targets they were designed top take on – such as the Tu-95 BEAR and M-4 BISON. We automatically expect the fighters to be able to this much at least – but of course there are instances when there may be failures in other areas – we don’t expect the fighter jets to be successful 100% of the time. But if these interceptors were 10% slower and lower (capable of only… oooh, around 450kts and 30,000ft say) than the Soviet bombers – well then we would have to regard them as failures – even if the still had the same radars and AIM-4 missiles.

I think we can all agree.

The MiG-25 – perhaps the world’s very first interceptor which actually flies slower and lower than the very target aircraft it was created to shoot down – can’t catch up on the SR-71.

The simple fact is that a Mig 25 could kill an SR-71, had the following happend:-

1. The Blackbird pilot totally F**Ked up and put the aircraft where it shouldn’t have been.

2. The Soviet GCI controller and Mig 25 pilots were on the ball and got the SR-71 to within the Mig-25’s missiles no escape zone and the missile’s were launched at closest distance between the aircraft in a stern attack.

3. The Soviet GCI Controller had authority to allow the Migs open fire.

:diablo: I’ve found three Saturn Vs, a Saturn IB and a Spartan ABM. Found the Zshukovsky (or however it’s spelled) test center outside of Moscow but it’s low res. Several of the Blackbirds are indoors but I was using the list on Global Security and it lists about a half dozen still at Edwards so I’ll look for a newer list tomorrow. I hate it when the thing you’re looking for is just over into a low res section and you have to bust out terraserver. This thing is worse that crack. God help us all if they ever get it real time 🙂

— Off Topic —

3 Saturn V’s outside??? Where? The one at Huntsville is a 1/1 scale model so I’ve been told