Now the Airforce Magazin has a piece on their March website called “Unified Response”, about the Haiti aerial HA/DR mission. On eight pages of pdf they have four pictures of paradropping stuff. The same paradrops they stalled for days and days during those vital first 72 hours are now big picture topics. What a ******* joke and what warping of reality!!! And they even say so: First airdrop on 18Jan – the quake happened on 12Jan. Rapid response. MY ASS!!! 😡

Actually there was a reason for that. They intentionally held off on the drops because they couldn’t secure the drop zones for 1) safety (people have a habit of running towards the aid and if it happens to be falling form the sky they might get hurt) and 2) they couldn’t make sure it got properly distributed.

You seem to be getting very angry over what was probably one of the largest short term aid operations in history. What more could people really expect?

I agree that the F-15 seems the most likely one — however I am wondering about your “anti-shipping” theory — does the Typhoon have anti-shipping capability?

Why do you think Meteor could be a weak link? AFAIK the latest test flights have been quite succesful. The Rafale AESA may be a weak link though?

Also, as said before, I think the F-35 may have lost on timelines not capabilities. F-35 should be as capable as any of the others (if not more so), once it gets finalized, both in a2a and anti-shipping. The fact that it is also more capable in deep strike does not necessarily mean that it is less capable than the others in the other roles 🙂

I hope we can get more details from this evaluation…

Typhoon is eventually supposed to get Harpoon, so it will have an anti-shipping capability.

I can’t see Meteor as a weak link, it has a lot of potential.

Do they never deploy fighters to bases up in the North there?

And what is there in that area is there to protect? No point in defending Siberian wasteland.

Anybody?

I went and watched it after I read your post. As always, the stupidity annoyed me.

No, I (and millions of people who doesn’t agree to the British point of view) was insulted by his lies (as saying that Argentina never owned the islands and many more), ignorance (as for example, that was an unconditional surrender and many other things that I simply don0t have time to enumerate) and lack of respect to the others’ opinion (saying that I shall call the islands as Falklands, you must respect that this name is not accepted by the whole world. as I respect the name Falklands, you must respect that millions of people call them Malvinas). That’s why I stop participating on this thread.
I will not discuss with extremists, it’s not worth and it’s a waste of time.
At last, Argentina always respected the interests of the silanders. If they want to still be British, they can be, but as the UN recognizes (and this means the whole world community) they were there after the British occupied the islands by force, and that’s why the world recognize the right of Argentina to claim that they are not aborigins of the islands and that the only rights they have over the soil of the islands is the rights over their private properties. So, they have the right to chose their nationality, but they have to recognize they are on a land of which the sovereignty is in dispute.
At last, England recognized three times the Argentine sovereingty over the islands: First, when they recognize the Argentine independence over the territories of the Virreynato del Río de la Plata, including the islands, in 1823by then occupied by Argentina. Later, in 1825, when the Friendship agreement was signed by both countries, again England recognized the independence of Argentina and its sovereingty over all of its territory (the islands were still in the hands of Argentina. At last, in 1840, when Louis Vernet claimed the property of territories on the islands, purchased to the Argentine government, England recognized the power of Argentina to sell the territories, as England paid for them to Vernet, recognizing he was the owner, because he buy them to Argentina.
It’s sad, I found the same kind of extremism in some people in Argentina but I didn’t think that England was also full of extremists that only accept their way of thinking.
We live in a globalized world and you have to hear the other people. Not everyone see the world as you see it and not everyone share your points of view. I thought that the British, being an older and grown up country, had overcome this, but I see some people don’t.
I have a lot of friends in England, and because of my researches, many of them being veterans of the 1982 war, and fortunately, with them I have more mature conversations about the islands.
Unfortunately, this thread changed from a thread about the today’s situation aroudn the islands, to a British manifesto of his position over the islands and to a place to insult the other party’s position. Very infantile…

And yet you continue to ignore valid points put forth by people here.

To you what counts as an indigenous population? There has to be some kind of timeline in your head that at some point, an inhabitant becomes an indigenous person. For me, that’d be after 1-2 generations. For example, my Indian friends were born here in Britain, so I consider them as British as I am. For you it seems to mean that they have been in a place for over 200 years. In my eyes, the first people to permanently settle have the right to be called indigenous to one area as well as those who have lived there their whole lives and have lived nowhere else.

If these people are not Falkland Islanders, what are they? Who has more right to determine what happens to the islands than them. The Argentinians don’t, the British don’t, no one does. You yourself admitted in that post they have a right to be there (in their private property), by extension they have a right to decide what goes on there. Saying they have right to live their, but not what goes on there is counter-intuitive to democracy.

But if a final agreement is reached, why Britain has to keep a big garrison? As for example, since Chile and Argentina has settled down their discussions over the Patagonia, both reduced their military garrisons there and the true is that since then, the economic, social and cultural relations between both countries increased a lot and now we are partners in many things and only the extremists still have some kind of feeling between them.
Argentina has to offer not only the cease of a military threat (and it’s economic consequences to England) but also a restore of the economic and military relations that both countries had before 1982, which were very important (and this was more important during WW2, when Argentina send millions of tons of food to England).

As I recall, Argentina already has said they won’t act militarily (it’s also enshrined in your constitution isn’t it?) and yet we keep a garrison there. We simply don’t trust you enough to take the risk that you’ll go against your word when the islands appear weak. Again, it’s cheaper to maintain the garrison than sail a task force south if you do. And that trust simply can’t be restored and get these relations back to normal whilst Argentina claims British territory and even then it’d take time. It took Britain 9 years to remove it’s troops from Northern Ireland after the Good Friday agreement, fortunately our leaders do have some notion of realism.

You have to see that the consequences of the problem between both countries are not only limited to the islands and the surroundings, but to the whole relationship between bith countries and also between England and most Latin American countries. Also, as the Brazilian president stated yesterday, the actual situation led to other discussions, as the role of the UN Security Council, the permanent members and the vetoe.
Unfortunately, the discussion now is beyond the oil problem and is still raising. The possibility of war doesn’t exist by now, but the main problem is that this discussion could led to bigger ones and an increase of tension between too many countries, with the conomic and social consequences of it (which are more important than the islands and this was not considered by you).
Despite the British Foreign Office said the Latin American support to Argentina always took place, this time the support was stronger than ever and included countries that never had supported the Argentine position, as were the Caribbean former British colonies. Leaving behind Chavez’s statements, which are ridiculous, the statements of the Chilean and Brazilian presidents are very important, as they meant a too much bigger support than ever. This could lead to a deterioration of the relation between Europe and Latin America and this is not good for both sides.

Brazil is using the opportunity to push it’s own agenda. It wants to be on the council. They are shooting themselves in the foot really because Britain was one of the 5 members that supported expanding the council.

And it’s a shame that we can’t simply ignore Chavez. He might be a clown with no notion of the the real world, but he is a dangerous clown. So far he’s the only leader who has given any inkling of actually getting militarily involved if things deteriorate. The ramifications of that would be huge.

And this could very well deteriorate Euro-Latin American relations, my argument would be that Latin America has more to lose in that than Europe. They’d also come off worse in economic/military standoffs.

On final and crucial point: If Britain were to cede sovereignty to Argentina tomorrow, what would Argentina do for the citizens of the Falklands? Would they forcefully remove them from the only home they’ve ever known? Would they force them not to have the same democracy that Argentina claims to love, because any democratic choice would reject Argentinian control? Or would they let them have that democracy that Argentina now holds so dear and just let the islanders vote to rejoin with Britain? I don’t think you can come up with an answer to this that wouldn’t either violate your own arguments that Argentina loves democracy, or without destroying people lives and breaching their human rights.

If they are planning this, they really will have to buy substantially more airframes. The GR4 fleet alone is nearly the size of our total current Typhoon buy. They’d also need to do more than just add an AESA.

With the right funding for upgrades and new equipment I think Typhoon could be an excellent A2G platform (especially if complemented with UCAVS as necessary), but that investment just won’t be there, neither will further airframe buys to get anything like a decent number in service.