Probably has quite a bit to do with Africans complaining that they can’t sell their fruit to us because of trade barriers. To be honest, i’d rather not have an orange that looks like it has a tumour thanks.

Then the free market can decide and there is no need for trade barriers.

Also, don’t forget about the six aircraft carriers they’re building.
:rolleyes:

Obama killed the Next Generation Bomber back in April ’09, causing the design teams to disband and several years of work to be lost. And this is Russia’s response to Obama’s peace overture. Seems ol’ Obama cannot pull enough lollypops, flowers and fuzzy bunnies out of his @rse to keep Putin happy.

ETA: This is a dupe of a posting made by Austin under “Russian Aviation News”

The relevant technology is immature; there was no plan for a viable and affordable next gen bomber. Delaying the project was the only responsible choice.

^^

I can’t say anything about the engineering but the An-70 is a beautiful plane.

Yes but also no.

Join up and lose some freedom of choice (one reason why I think it is incumbent on the electorate to hold their leaders to account, its our part of the deal the other side being men and women who have agreed to die on our behalf in fights not of their choosing).

But ‘following orders‘ is not a legal defence, and following the Nuremberg trials its not hard to see why not.

A significant portion of the training of West German military officers was on the importance of analysing orders and being able to make a moral decision as to following them or not.

But a legal defense for what? War is legal. One nation attacking another nation’s military is legal.

For instance:

The U.N. charter, obviously, allows states the right of individual or collective self-defense in the face of an armed attack. Many international lawyers even believe that international law permits preemptive attacks, even before the other state launches a first attack.

http://magazine.byu.edu/g/?act=view&a=1204

So your going to pick a nice sunny clear day and basically play a massive game of “british Bulldog” with four typhoons? and lets face it a build up of 500 J6 would not go unnoticed so after a swift reinforcement from the UK of a couple of Typhoon squadrons, a flight of E3Ds and some tanker support you are going to have the shortest most one sided air battle in history.

20 odd typhoons vs 500 manned drones loaded with fuel, with no EW, no missiles, no radar….really?

Mission security would be a critical issue and I’m not completely sure how to handle that, but the element of surprise is critical. Otherwise the Argies would need to wait until the Brits were occupied elsewhere.

But remember, the dream of having an aircraft engage multiple targets at BVR and score multiple kills has rarely taken place in real life.

How do you invade with fighters? They land, & the pilots leap out, armed with whatever light weapons they can pack into the cockpit? They’d never get out alive. Or do they eject, & parachute into the desolate wilds, where they desperately try to stay alive while hunted by locals who know the terrain, outnumber them, & have longer-range rifles than anything you could fit in a MiG-19 cockpit?
…

Nice, you paint a funny picture.

But seriously, the idea is to use the J-6s to degrade the British defenses to the point where the Argies can conduct airborne and/or naval landings that are hassle-free. That means to neutralize all British combat aircraft, at least some of the air defenses, and any British warships that are in theater, and also to attack the British barracks. For the naval attack we might need to add a number of Q-5s to the orbat. Some of the Q-5s were armed with anti-ship missiles. I believe that these are no longer in service; the Argies need to get their hands on these. Here again, the Argies will rely on numbers to defeat the Brit naval air defenses. Now, if Britain has subs in the area Argentina will likely have to use airborne assault only, unless some of their other assets can neutralize the subs (admittedly doubtful).

Hmm yes if it wasn’t for that pesky, massive loss of life on both sides the US could go and do whatever the hell it likes. You might have more nukes than anyone else, but it only takes one to get through and you go past the point of acceptable losses. The fact is that no nuclear armed states have ever gone to war with each other (minus one border skirmish that both sides made damn sure did not escalate). Deterrence works, or there wouldn’t be nations spending billions on weapons they’ll never use.

You’re being very cavalier saying you’d just go ahead and nuke them before you went to war, that idea was only ever considered when the Soviet conventional military was too large to deal with in a conventional manner. That is not the case for Iran/NK.

The issue is what these nations would do with the weapons, having already proven themselves unstable, volatile and bearing a grudge towards others. Even worse would be who they give/sell the stuff to after they have the know-how.

Well, war, and of course nuclear war, is never a cavalier subject. I just wanted to make the point that acquiring nuclear weapons will not keep these countries safe from “regime change” if it becomes necessary. Yes, nuclear deterrence works, with some countries.

However, as you seem to indicate, one has to wonder about the sense of freedom of action or impunity that governments like the Iranian government may acquire if they become nuclear armed. The day may come when the US, or another nation, has to demonstrate to a new nuclear country that there is still a military hierarchy in the world. Iran has kidnapped British sailors and attacked US soldiers in Iraq and/or Afghanistan – and this is without nukes. After nukes they will just be further emboldened and we cannot be (and won’t be) afraid to go to war with them if they make themselves into a threat.

All in all NATO acted first in the internal dispute of a sovereign state and broke it up into pieces. Things like this make your Irans and North Korea’s go the nuclear path thinking if we had a Nuke these b*stards won’t be having a go at us easily.

In that case, we would just nuke them before going to war. The idea that nuclear weapons makes N Korea, Iran, or Pakistan immune from Western attack is baseless. We would have defeated the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis; likewise we could, relatively easily, defeat any of those burgeoning nuclear states (along with China). Russia is the only country that has any real ability to check American military adventures.

Friendly fire?

No wonder a Russian Su-25 Frogfoot can easily be destroyed by a Georgian one. IIRC, Georgian Su-25s destroyed the aircraft assembly plant they were built in!

Those were Russian Su-25s.