A couple of questions spring to mind, they might have very simple answers but I wondered if anyone could fill me in.

Firstly would it not have been more effective and efficient to have airborne refuelling assisting the search rather than only getting an hour on station and then having to travel hours back to base each time?

Secondly the aircraft have spotted debris of some sort today but have now got to return home and hope a ship can re-find it on Saturday. Is there nothing that could have been dropped into the debris field to help guide the ships? At least it would move with the currents unlike a gps fix.

Thirdly would this kind of thing not benefit from a seaplane SAR that could actually land (in appropriate conditions) so that things could be collected? Sadly not the case this time but if survivors were in the sea I’d imagine it would be a bit disappointing to see the Orion heading off for home again.

Ahh… the aircraft mostly involved here of the coast of Australia are the P-3 Orion, which cant be refuelled air to air….
Next the Chinese have two IL-76 here…. and did not bring a tanker with them.
They are dropping beacons/ smoke markers to assist in marking items as well as passing on the GPS info.
There are also civilian aircraft involved.

Its a big ocean out there and unless you have ever done a sea search you wont understand just how difficult it is to actually see something (I have done about 12 many yrs ago, as far as 500km offshore)

As for a seaplane? What seaplane out there has a 2500km range?? Not to mention that conditions are not smooth and would be extremely difficult to land.

There are several ships both naval and civilian in the area as well.

They have only been there a week and given that the plane went missing over 2 weeks now (?) there would be little chance of finding any survivors given the ocean conditions should a successful ditching had occurred, which it would not have (again this area they are looking at now is not nice)

Sadly that imagine is what all the media outlets seem to be using.
When I saw it on TV and they said Mig-23, I looked and thought that looks like a Mig-29!
But yes definitely Russian Knights Su-27, white front section and can just make out the red.

Great reporting by the media as per usual.

(A recent article in Australian newspaper about the government announcing itll buy some more F35s showed a picture of a F22…!)

If what the media is reporting true…. then it just gets better and better!

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/malaysia-airlines-missing-jet-thailand-gives-radar-data-10-days-after-plane-lost-20140319-hvk7i.html

Bangkok: Thailand’s military said on Tuesday that its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just minutes after the jetliner’s communications went down, and that it didn’t share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn’t specifically asked for it.

A twisting flight path described on Tuesday by Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn took the plane to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked Flight 370 early March 8. But Montol said the Thai military doesn’t know whether it detected the same plane.

Thailand’s failure to quickly share possible information regarding the fate of the plane, and the 239 people aboard it, may not substantially change what Malaysian officials know, but it raises questions about the degree to which some countries are sharing their defence information, even in the name of an urgent and mind-bending aviation mystery.

With only its own radar to go on, it took Malaysia a week to confirm that Flight 370 had entered the strait, an important detail that led it to change its search strategy.

Advertisement

When asked why it took so long to release the information, Montol said, “Because we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country, so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it without taking actions.”

He said the plane never entered Thai airspace and that Malaysia’s initial request for information in the early days of the search was not specific.

“When they asked again and there was new information and assumptions from (Malaysian) Prime Minister Najib Razak, we took a look at our information again,” Montol said. “It didn’t take long for us to figure out, although it did take some experts to find out about it.”

Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.40am Malaysian time and its transponder, which allows air traffic controllers to identify and track the airplane, ceased communicating at 1.20am.

Montol said that at 1.28am, Thai military radar “was able to detect a signal, which was not a normal signal, of a plane flying in the direction opposite from the MH370 plane,” back toward Kuala Lumpur. The plane later turned right, toward Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca. The radar signal was infrequent and did not include any data such as the flight number.

He said he didn’t know exactly when Thai radar last detected the plane. Malaysian officials have said Flight 370 was last detected by their own military radar at 2.14am.

The search area for the plane initially focused on the South China Sea, where ships and planes spent a week searching. Pings that a satellite detected from the plane hours after its communications went down have led authorities to concentrate instead on two vast arcs — one into central Asia and the other into the Indian Ocean — that together cover an expanse as big as Australia.

Thai officials said radar equipment in southern Thailand detected the plane. Malaysian officials have said the plane might ultimately have passed through northern Thailand, but Thai Air Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong told reporters on Tuesday that the country’s northern radar did not detect it.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/malaysia-airlines-missing-jet-thailand-gives-radar-data-10-days-after-plane-lost-20140319-hvk7i.html#ixzz2wLe81cPS

I figure F-35 is a complex system that can have both VTOL and STOL version…and go supersonic in stealth manner..that is 10 fold more difficulty than a F-8.

What is apparent is that instead of focusing on one airframe to come to a conclusion, how about you look at the entire military machine and see just how many projects run over budget, don’t deliver the product as specified, how many “upgrades” it needs before it enters service.

Blind freddy can see that these days more and more projects are ballooning out and delivering a rubbish product to the military.
Its about maximizing profit and keeping the contract going for as long as possible.
And you honestly believe this isn’t the case then you I have a stealth fighter to sell you at a cheap cost.
(oh and don’t tell me contract clauses are always in the governments favour, because they aren’t)

a side by side configuration provide more body lift

True… but (and I haven’t read up on the lightening much) but its possible that given this was a design from the 1950/60s that engines were still not that reliable. Mounting them on top of each other would mean no asymmetric thrust issues during engine failures, also spooling up time would vary possibly between engines. so that during take off it would be hard to keep it straight down the runway ….

Wasn’t it shown somewhere that the photo of the T-50-1 is a photoshoped one ? (IIRC)

(Happy New Year guys)

Yes sadly I really cant fathom why that old (2yr old picture) night time photo showing the intake ever so clearly has popped up again….. if people cant see the photo is a fake, oh well cant help some.

I suspect that the problem with trying to sell to the UAE is that they have no pressing need to buy new fighters (their existing fleets are not running out of hours / becoming much more expensive to maintain). I think UAE is in a strong position as a buyer. UAE can ask for an awful lot and if the seller does not want to play ball, UAE can say they do not want to talk about a deal any more.

I think the decision in Brazil has not made things any simpler for Dassault: 2 or 3 years ago Dassault might have been able to take the UAE M2K’s and sell a lot of them to Brazil so a big FX-2 spend could be deferred for a few years. Assuming that taking the M2K’s back would be part of a Rafale deal, to whom could Dassault sell them? Some of the Balkan / ex-Yugoslav / South American states?

Perhaps UAE will approach Dassault again. They could also just opt to buy another squadron of F-16’s.

no no no…. the brown paper bag wasn’t big enough!