It does seem that when QE enters service she will be operated along the lines of the old HMS Hermes during the Falklands.

The Eilat was an ex RN ww2 destroyer………her radar was on but the Komars that fired on her were in the harbor and the set may not have been able to descriminate them from background clutter…….in any event the crew did not detect them on radar but did sight them visualy. It took a total of 3 Styx missiles to sink the vessel and the were engaged by the ships 40mm guns, although it is obvious that they missed the targets….

The excersize my unit (2AD FWD) was involved in towards the end of 1988, FREE LION, was part of a series of excersizes that were going on in West Germany from Aug to Nov. It was pretty massive. Here a link for a book about it. http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/FREE-LION-88.htm

You might look up some cold war era NATO excercises such as REFORGER. I was in one of those and it was pretty big. My unit also was in FREE LION and “Ofens Visor” (sp).

Well said, Bmused.

Oh my!!!!!! (yep…..its fake…..but still…..)[ATTACH=CONFIG]218738[/ATTACH]

Any chance of Taiwan starting a (hypothetical) IDF 2?

Well…….its air combat…..stranger things have happened, and documentation in that war was….”sketchy”…..at best. Probably never know exactly what happened.