It’s clear that CAS would have to pick their battles. A few of those MANPADS on any battlefield would definately color things. In today’s climate, you only have to lose one or two aircraft for them to be pulled from the fight.

What is the cost and cost per shot of one of the more sophisticated systems? I wonder if you could run into the situation where your missile costs more than the aircraft it is shooting down?

Doubtful. A Stinger missile is about 1/1,000th of the cost of an AH-64E and 1/500th the cost of an A-10. Even larger MRAAMs are only circa $1-2m.

So the J-20 has its CoP behind its CoG?

Not from where I’m sitting.

The J-20 first half looks like F-22 and Rear half like Mig-1.44 and has PAK-FA all moving tail , with perhaps a take off weight of Mig-31. Looks like Chinese Engineers have studied these design well specially the F-22 and Mig-1.44 before they set out to design J-20

And the intakes are an F-35 knock-off.

Think of the absurdity of what you are writing. A datalink would need a missile-mounted antenna. If the missile had such an antenna, I would have seen it. The ‘short’ missiles I saw had no such antenna.

Of course, it is possible that once I had left the assembly area, the completed ‘short’ rounds that I’d been shown were put back on the line, stripped down, had the antenna installed, and were then reassembled. Not exactly a convincing hypothesis, is it?

It is possible that the engineer who explained the ASRAAM dome heating problem to me had taken too much LSD in his mid-morning coffee, or that the company had decided to pretend it had a non-existent problem just to confuse my client of that time, but once again neither constitutes a realistic hypothesis.

Your suggestion that I have somehow changed my story is also absurd. Is seeing missiles being assembled somehow incompatible with having been briefed on the programme? A trip along the production line is often a stock part of any visit to a company. In practice, the ASRAAM programme has been running for more than 30 years, and I have had a number of briefings over that time.

Time to turn on the TV and watch a few episodes of the old TV series “The Prisoner”. The fact that the programme didn’t make sense was part of the fun. Can’t say the same for this thread…

Not necessarily. Until recently you claimed it was only a briefing, not a production line tour. And not only that but you were there long enough to see an entire missile being put together. How absurd does that look/sound?

Or it’s possible that none of what you’ve written even happened. Let’s face, you have the status of ‘guy on the internet says he heard something.’ Note that I make no claims one way or the other on this issue, I simply point out that every other missile with LOAL capability has a data link, draw your own conclusions. I do a search on ‘ASRAAM dome heating problem’ and the only hit I get is IRIS-T issues…. oh and one guy on the internet who frequently changes his story. I also search on ASRAAM test footage and see a video of it hitting a plane as seen through the eye of the missile – specially fitted data link for test or LSD?

Yes it is completely incompatible. A production line tour != Briefing, and don’t try and twist it to fit. You also would have mentioned it much sooner in the debate, rather than waiting until I’d thoroughly discredited the validity of seemingly official information. Has all the hallmarks of changing your story, so I call it like it is.

Indeed a production line tour is often a feature of a factory visit but not a ‘briefing’.

Can’t say the same for your story either, nor equating ‘very extensive and lengthy production line tour’ to ‘briefing’.