It would be a shame if the Yak 130 was discarded for political reasons considering the deal we have made with Russia for the Mistrals. We can’t sign juicy contracts with Russia when it benefits us and shun them when it doesn’t.

Nic

Maybe France (Eurocopter) should get on board with the joint Russian-Chinese heavy lift helicopter program…

That’s why if you re-read my post a little more carefully, you will see that bit where I said many people in SA would like the UN to go stuff themselves.
Why deploy when the government won’t budget for it? And they won’t for reasons given above.
It’s just dangerous for the troops involved, with such idiocy.
Govt gives worthwhile operational budget, go for it.
They don’t, stuff it.

I agree. One step forward would be to separate the budget for external operations from the defence budget.

The U.S. Army will never get the A-10’s. The USAF would retire them first before they allow that to happen.

It’s probably for the best. If the Army got A-10s they’d eventually want replacements and you’d wind up with another joint cluster**** where the Super Hornet/F-15E/F-22 successor is required to have rough field STOL capability and stand up to 20mm cannon fire. :p

A-10s have to stay as long as possible and they should be transferred to Army.

Sure; there you go — give them to the Army, they can make the necessary cuts to accommodate them. Everybody wins.

The B-1Bs will eventually be replaced by LRS-B.

The A-10s will be replaced by nothing.

The A-10s should go.

However, according to The Independent, PM Cameron has told Russia to join in or face isolation on Syria, despite sharing many common grounds.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-tells-russia-join-the-club-or-face-isolation-on-syria-8662591.html

Is Cameron really deluded enough to think that threatening Russia with ‘isolation’ is an effective strategy? It’s like he thinks he’s talking to Australia or some other follow-the-leader country.

Maaarf considering that France itself did 2225 ground hits aka 35 % of the total, you are saying that RAF wasnt present? Noeither anyone else? Go to NATO site, more serious than a google sarch.

What? Nowhere did I suggest that only France and US were involved; I was merely comparing the spending of those two nations on the intervention. The article I linked has UK spending too, roughly the same level as France.

But this is getting off-topic. More interesting is rumour of Iran deploying 4000 Republican Guards to Syria!

Sorry to spoil it but the Libyian conflict ruined that theory a year or so ago but I guess one starts running out of valid material when every post simply must have a strong anti-US element to it.

Umm, Libya demonstrates the point. Once the French said they were going in the Americans fell over themselves to get involved. The same would happen if there was any hint of cooperative Arab/Turkic action on Syria.