Some thoughts
5. Is the UK able to field the escorts and support ships (again with escorts) to really take on a first rate enemy who could field aircraft superior to the SH in numbers.

Well, who are you going to be fighting (alone) that has aircraft clearly superior to the SH?

The Su-27/30/35 aren’t clearly superior. The PAK-FA? Could the F-35 wind up in hostile hands?

The UK isn’t going to fight Russia, China, or India alone. So putting those aside, there are some significant militaries that are hostile, or could turn hostile in coming decades: Iran, Syria, possibly a North African country, and of course Argentina. Will any of those countries have planes superior to the SH, and would the F-35 fair better?

I think the F-35 is the better plane, for the UK; but the SH is not a horrible option.

And a few more:

inside the ATR-42MPA

Politically, Taiwan has and is being snookered more and more as the PRC bets more economically, politically and militarily larger and powerful. Unfortunately (and sadly!) the United States is turning the supply line off and on that many times to appease the waking dragon!

We’ve had a One China policy for decades.

Israel had been (and should be more than useful in being shafted i.e firstly by Britain, then France, and when it suits it, the United States! How and why it has tolerated this, I have never been able to get my head around (apart from the U.S $$$$$$$$)

“Tolerated this?” LMAO. Israel owes its existence to the USA; it survives because of American money, technology, and diplomatic support. The question is why has America tolerated this traitorous “ally” and why does America continue to support this “ally,” which provides nothing of strategic value to the US. Our relationships with the Saudis and the gulf states have more strategic importance than that with Israel.

The Israelis can buy the J-10 (smirk).

Continuing from where Aspis left…

5, Be without Nukes. Americans will not attack any country which has Nukes. Or else a certain nation would have already been occupied.

6. This is the single biggest reason why some rogue states (in American book) is trying to go Nuclear.

OT: There is no need to lay crap on any country. People who can read can go to Wiki Leaks and see first hand what role Pakistan is playing in Afghanistan.

Did you miss the Cuban Missile Crisis? The US is perfectly willing to attack nuclear armed countries if the situation warrants it. The idea that a few dozen nukes, that cannot be delivered against the continental US, will make Third World backwaters impervious to US attack is one of the biggest falsehoods going.

Who said the prospective stepping stone basing would be in northern Saudi? That’s new.

There’s this:
The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6638568.ece

And this:
Israeli Air force aircraft landed during the past weekend at a military base in Saudi Arabia and unloaded large quantities of military gear, according to a report published Wednesday by Islamic website Islam Times.

The report, which has questionable credibility, claimed the equipment was unloaded at a base in the city of Tabuk, in the north western part of the country, ahead of a possible strike on Iran.
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3909732,00.html

Flame all you like.

What has Pakistan got to do with an Israeli strike on Iran?

Reporting this to mods (assuming we have some).

The fact that Pakistan has the “Islamic Bomb” is obviously relevant to the long-term geopolitics and balance-of-power in the region.

The Iranian Nuclear program is highly dispersed. You could probably hit key sites in the system and disrupt it’s efficiency, slow it down considerably, even slow it to a crawl for a while but I’d be disappointed if there was some single “spider at the center of the web” type facility that would completely bring the Iranian program to a halt if it were destroyed. One study estimated it would take an air campaign of between 1000-2000 sorties to do any significant damage to the Iranian nuclear program and that’s probably optimistic since the Iranians must be well prepared for this eventuality. Such an air campaign would leave the US (or Israel and thereby inevitably the US) effectively at war with Iran. These attacks would also be happening in the middle of the worst recession since 1929, with the USA having it’s hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan and it would destabilize the oil producing middle east (and Iraq/Afghanistan) at a time when nobody needs that to happen. People also tend to forget about the fact that the US fiscal situation is FUBAR. I doubt the USA can really afford the economic consequences of attacking Iran. There is fairly little chance of solving this dilemma with firepower and if a major air assault on Iran does happen anyway it is unlikely to do more than slow the Iranians down and reinforce their belief that they need a bomb.

That estimate is absurd. The Israelis could do “significant damage” to the Iranian nuke program with 50-200 sorties, and Israel can manage that – especially if additional tankers and/or other resources are made available to them.

And a US attack on Iran would be economically insignificant to the US. The cost of an air campaign – even one lasting several weeks – is trivial. We made mistakes in Iraq and Iran by occupying those countries and engaging in state building, now that is expensive. We won’t do that in Iran.

Btw, the problems with US finances are greatly exaggerated. Japan has more debt as a percent of GDP than we do; Europe’s banks are in worse condition and need to raise more money than ours; and China is full of empty buildings that will hurt its banks. Investor Doug Casey on China:

L: Are there any hard stats on that?

Doug: You can’t trust the figures from any of these governments, least of all China, but there are more problems. As we discussed in our conversation on real estate, I recently sold my apartment in Hong Kong for about 25 times what I paid for it. I’m convinced there’s a real estate bubble within the larger China economic bubble that could rival, or even surpass, the U.S. real estate bubble.
I read that there are now 65 million vacant apartments in China, owned by investors, not people who plan to live in them. The people who put their money into these things think they have made safe investments, but they could get wiped out. With demand for China’s products likely to decrease and stay low for years, and an oversupply already glutting the upscale Chinese housing market, many of those apartment buildings are likely to become decrepit, ill-maintained, vertical slums. The same is true for the world’s largest shopping center, built by the Chinese, still empty. Many giant office buildings as well. We’ve run a video clip before on China’s empty cities. That middle class you spoke of is going to take a serious downsizing, and in China, that could lead to social upheaval. I did a long article on this some months ago in the Casey Report, and since then prices have come off considerably. It feels good to have picked the top, but we’re a long way from the bottom.

L: I’ve seen this misallocation myself. The last time I was in Beijing, I went to the central business district, and from one street corner, I saw not one, but five or six brand new, empty, padlocked office buildings – and more new buildings being built within sight.

Doug: It’s going to be a disaster – one the Chinese have no experience dealing with. They’ve had plenty of experience with disasters, of course, but this will be a new one. It’s said that China has something like 10 billion square feet of office space currently vacant, under construction, and in final planning. It sounds like every man, woman and child in the whole country is going to have a private office to shuffle papers in all day.

L: My Chinese friends tell me the country needs to maintain 8% GDP growth or better, or they face serious social unrest.

Doug: China is so large and diverse as to be completely unmanageable – not that it should be managed, which is itself a ridiculous conceit. It amounts to a domestic empire; it is no more one nation than the Soviet Union was. There’s a great deal of ethnic and cultural diversity in China, with the two main languages of Mandarin and Cantonese being just the tip of the iceberg. Regions like Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinchiang, and Tibet aren’t integral to the country; their native populations are extremely resentful of the Han. Even within Han China the ethnic and cultural differences are huge. It was a place basically ruled by various warlords until the communists took over. I wouldn’t be surprised to see things devolve back to the way they were in the ‘30s again.

L: I just saw on BBC news that the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang are preparing for possible trouble this month, being the first anniversary of the rioting there a year ago that left 197 dead.

Doug: Whether or not something happens there this month, it’s likely to get worse. That province has 100 million Muslims of Turkic and other ethnicities. The global crisis may or may not push China over the edge soon, but I could see China breaking up into a number of smaller countries and autonomous regions, and Beijing losing control. That wouldn’t, incidentally, be a bad thing, at least after the initial chaos and confusion that would result. China’s tremendous progress of the last few decades is entirely due to less central control, and more freedom. The breakup should accelerate the trend. Trying to run an empire is counter-productive.

http://www.howestreet.com/articles/index.php?article_id=14065

SAM’S eventually have to reload. SBD’s seem to be pretty cheap to me. If a B-2 can carry them, I wonder how much they could carry. Probably a lot.

The answer is apparently complex:

Proponents claim that by 2007 the B-2 could carry 216 [some accounts say as many as 324] of the 250-pound SDBs. Each BRU-61/A smart pneumatic carriage holds four SDB weapons, the rack weighs 320 pounds (145 kg) empty, and 1,460 pounds (664 kg) loaded with four 285 pound (130 kg) bombs. In principle, the B-2 has a total of 80 attach points for the 500-lb MK82 GBU-30 JDAM, each of which could accomodate a single BRU-61/A rack, for a total of 320 SDB weapons. In practice, the resulting 117,000 lbs (53,000 kg) weight would exceed the B-2’s nominal 40,000 pound (18,000 kilogram) payload by some wide margin. The bomber could of course trade up for somewhat more payload by trading off against fuel and un-refueled range. The widely cited 216 SDB carriage would result in 54 BRU-61/A racks, 27 in each bomb bay, for a total 78,800 pound (35,800 kilogram) payload, roughly double the nominal value. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-2.htm

Sounds pretty nifty…I always wanted a seat that would turn into a bed. Does the jet come with a flight attendant who can serve the crew meals? That would be a nice thing to have on those global missions.

Only one little question, though. What country did you have in mind that needs a global mission capability?

While not necessarily concerned with global missions, doesn’t Australia need a longer range capability with its F-111s retiring? And aren’t they not completely satisfied with the capabilities of the F/A-18 and F-35?