Absolutely. When I first heard about UAI, my first thought was astonishment that it hadn’t been done before. Failing to develop it earlier was almost criminal stupidity & negligence, IMO. As you say, it’s a no-brainer. I’d have imposed it as a requirement for all new weapons & anything that could fire them as soon as software interfaces made it practical.

That sounds logical indeed. Also, I don’t know exactly how the UAI works, but the hardware should be standard too. No need to develop a new datalink hardware for each missile and each aircraft.

11 new dance flies just in Lapland; http://www.finlandtimes.fi/national/2014/11/21/11804/11-new-species-of-dance-flies-discovered-in-Lapland

Finland had recently 456th new bird from USA ( The American Golden Plover ) landed here ( 30 km from my house ); http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/archive/news/new-bird-species-landed-in-hailuoto/

Looks like they are invasive species, they might have important impacts on the ecosystems in the long term.

I think this is the most dangerous thing..cause the oceans produce the most oxygen as well. Messing up that system will end “the life as we know it”. Otherwise I agree with obligatorys link…this system is so complicated to understand that both ways denying is possible. Trees need CO2 to grow !

Winters in USA are colder says dr. Don Easterbrook..is this also part of the “global warming” ? It is not actually normal is it…8.7 degs colder ?

There was a study in Finland 2003-2007 and they found 1400 new species prior unknown in Finland….and 200 totally new species or organic life forms ! http://www.mtv.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/artikkeli/suomen-metsista-on-loytynyt-satoja-uusia-eliolajeja/1964786 …this may be due to global warming.

Climate science in detail is very complex, but the basis is simply that GHGs warm the planet, which has been known for over 150 years. If the Earth had no GHG, its surface temperature would be 33 deg C colder than it is. Stating that increasing the GHGs would increase the temperature is not a farfetched claim, it is actually the contrary that would be surprising.

The vast majority of climate scientists think that AGW is really happening. You have to be carefull with other types of scientists. Science is very compartmentalized, the opinion of say a geologist on climatology doesn’t mean much.

As for the colder winters in the US, as I said before, this might be due to the change in the jet steam. Watch the video I posted before with Jenifer Francis. Her work is talken more and more seriously by scientists. There are other videos or articles about her work that you can watch to better understand. Besically, it is colder in the US in the winter and at the same time it is warmer in the arctic. You cannot isolate just one country, you have to get the whole picture, this is also a classic tactic of climate skeptics.

I couldn’t read your article because I don’t read finnish, but yes the planet is warming and species are moving north. This is happening in many places.

I love it, first post where you have to confront facts and you start crying about resources. Face the facts kid, the F-35 will be operational earlier in its life than the Rafale with almost every major capability.

From day-1 the F-35 will have an all weather (JDAM) and moving target (GBU-12) capability. It will have a working targeting pod/laser designator. These are capabilities the Rafale didn’t achieve until 2009, necessitating embarrassing deployments of Rafales in which they had to relying on earlier jets to accomplish the most basic of strike missions.

‘crying about ressources’? The rafale has received a funding that was far less than the F-35, maybe around 1/5 to 1/4. Don’t you think, maybe, that the introduction of guided a/g weapons would have happened faster with more ressources? Or said differently, don’t you think, maybe, that if you cut the ressources of the F-35 by half or more you’d get the same capabilities at a later time?

This tactic of comparing apples and oranges to make the F-35 look not as bad is pathetic. The rafale has had little TECHNICAL development problems. It has been delayed because funding has decreased at some times, that’s it. The F-35 has been a nightmare to develop.

I say again, the air to air capabilities of the rafale was extremely important for the first variant because it was replacing the crusader, which was a pure fighter with no a/g capabilities. The F-35 on another hand will replace aircraft that carry PGMs, so it is no wonder that you have to equal that capability.

Btw, it’s not that I hate the plane, I see some value to it, but I can’t believe all the problems that it’s had, and how slowly it is maturing. They are still at what 60% of the flight test, after all those years, I mean, WTF?

Palm trees in England is a bit surprising.

The Greenland ice cap is melting more rapidly than expected. What happens is that the water enters the ice sheet through holes and cracks the ice from below. This phenomenon has surprised scientists.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/15/greenland-ice-melt-underestimated-study-says

As the sea ice disappears around Greenland in the coming years and decades ( in september first, then the window of ice free arctic ocean will increase ), this will warm the area above Greenland significantly, and the ice sheet will melt faster.

As for the antarctic, the ice cover has been increasing in the eastern part somewhat because of more precipitations, but scientists are concerned about the stability of the western ice sheet. If it desintegrates, it could increase sea very significantly.

http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/2014/05/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapsing/

We have to be carefull with the models, they might be too optimistic. As I said, it turned out that the models that had been used to predict arctic sea ice decline were completely wrong, as well as the models used to describe the greenland ice sheet melting.

So you’ve know for ‘quite some time’ that the SDB II is a Block 4 weapon, but you kept the outrage bottled up so far… until it simply burst out in March 2015?

huh what?

There’s only one logical reason for thinking that 2 Aim-120Cs are insufficient until 2018, and that is if you’re deluded enough to think that the aircraft will be deployed in combat before that, which isn’t surprising given that you think the Aim-120D will be an old missile by 2022 (as opposed to all the ‘new missiles’ being delivered before that).

So the F-35 will not be deployed before 2018 now? Your arguments only get better. 🙂

And a 10 year old missile will of course be new in the mindset of the fanboy. Quite funny.

And yet you blow hot air anyway.

I blow hot air on the fanboy…

Most rational people would define 16 SDB IIs between two F-35s as a ‘lot of smart bombs’. You apparently subscribe to some different metric.

Since you haven’t figured it out yet, air campaigns typically start out with a focus on securing the air space against both air and ground based threats not by dodging SAMs to hit trucks and technicals. And with hundreds of other fighters still available there’s no operational urgency to have the F-35 perform BAI (instead of strike and SEAD/DEAD) in a unsanitized environment before 2022.

100% of serving JTACs never had to worry about the enemy’s air force or air defences.

Well, the F-35s will NOT have the 16 SDB IIs, so I really Wonder where that comment comes from.

If there is no problem with enemy defenses after a few days of operation, why would they even bother with integrating the SDBII internally?

The JTACs have been in combat and know very well, much better than you incindently, how CAS works and the relative capabilities of the planes, fanboy.

If the USAF was worried about some ‘much more difficult scenario’ that’s likely to come up before 2022, it would direct the program office to move up the SDB II integration. No ‘normal’ person is worried about 500 USAF F-16s being lost in combat before 2022.

Of course they could accelerate anything on the F-35… fanboyism in its purest form.

How many planes have been lost in vietnam again? Did they see the vietnam fiasco coming?

The Eurofighter is very much a multirole aircraft (it too can hit six targets in a single pass). And whining about budgets doesn’t change the fact that the Europeans have the option of immediate integration of the Meteor on the EF & Rafale and have still opted not to. Apparently they haven’t heard about the Third World War being scheduled to break out in 2020.

Ridiculous. European countries don’t claim to be superpowers and are not preparing their armies for a potential large scale conflict with China or Russia. The US military is built for that.

A high intensity conflict will start with the targeting of enemy air defences, air bases and command and control nodes. Once the air space is secure, the F-15E will able to employ SDB II without any assistance from the F-35. As for what I was ‘basically saying’, the Eurocanards operating even in a low intensity conflict, required hand-holding by older jets. If their operators could live with it and felt no urgency to upgrade aircraft ahead of schedule, the F-35 operators can do the same without the sky coming down.

That’s wishfull thinking. It would be very hard to eliminate the enemy mobile radars and SAMs. Good luck with your F-15Es.

The strike role is very important for the F-35, don’t compare it to a typhoon or the first variant of the rafale. The Charles de Gaulle protected by crusaders would have looked more like an aviation museum than a combat ship.

And the F-35 operators will do what they can with this boondoggle of a program.

Which would be the FOC unless you’re suggesting the Rafales delivered between 2000 and 2004 were simply mothballed.

They were not mothballed at all, they were used for training. The first squadron became operational in june 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Rafale

In December 2000, the French Naval Aviation (Aéronavale), the air arm of the French Navy, received its first two Rafale M fighters. On 18 May the following year, the squadron Flottille 12F, which had previously operated the F-8 Crusader, became the first squadron to operate the Rafale after it was officially re-activated prior to the delivery of the sixth Rafale.[98] Flottille 12F immediately participated in Trident d’Or aboard the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle with warships from ten other nations. During the maritime exercise, the Navy tested the Rafale’s avionics during simulated interceptions with various foreign aircraft, in addition to carrier take-offs and landings.[98][99] After almost four years of training, the Rafale M was declared operational with the French Navy in June 2004.[100]

The limiting factor was the Damocles which became operational in 2011.

The rafale can use its radar and electronic warfare suite to find target coordinates.

The oh-so-old JSOW can destroy aircraft shelters and radar sites with a BROACH warhead from considerably longer ranges at a similar cost. The JSOW-ER will be able to do so from hugely longer ranges, with the SDB still available as a low cost alternative.

The basic JSOW is not powered so is not as good at low altitude. The ER has a small warhead. The AASM uses the BLU-111 so it has penetration capabilities in a smaller package than the 1000lbs JSOW, so that 3 can be carried per pylon.

What else, it’s really tiring to debunk all that crap…

Even ignoring the costs from the CPRA report from 2010, the unit cost will still get revised upwards to €300,000, since the total order has been reduced from 4200 to 1728 units.

Egypt has ordered 180 AASMs and the production will remain open until 2018. And it is being integrated on other planes, like the F-16 and mirage 2000. So the production may well continue.

I’d say you’re welcome except that I’m not Boeing and you’re not my subcontractor i.e MBDA.

Nice that you are not Boeing because it would be rather embarassing to admit that you can’t make a wing kit. :apologetic:

The humidity factor must make it seem colder in the winter and warmer in the summer I imagine. It is the same in Montreal with the Saint-Lawrence and the lakes around.

Geez I don’t think I would hold long in Iqaluit. Temperature felt now, -46C.

I don’t care if it’s a bit cold as long as I can go outside without too much disconfort, say not colder than -15C. Colder than that it gets boring.