The Hong Kong media has proven in the past to be notoriously unreliable when reporting, or making claims about the PLA and it’s various arms. I have had the word from some more reliable sources on China’s arms not to trust Hong Kong rags.

Does Kopp not know this, or again, is he just producing dribble to get paid?

The HK papers follows the Murdoch way of doing things.

They don’t necessarily lie but they do tend to jump to the most sensationalistic conclusions possible to sell the most copies. Sort of the reverse Occam’s Razor Principle 😀

American (and Australian) “China Threat” analysts tend to use the same deducing methods 😀

Laser dazzler = Satellite Killing Space Particle Beam
700 Chinese oil workers = 700,000 PLA soldiers in Sudan
etc.

The A400M’s future is practically guaranteed, imho. The An-70 would have been an alternative if Germany had opted for it.

The C130J is considered too light and C-17 too heavy (a classic excuse to say a particular plane is chosen already even before competition starts :D)

There is a huge difference between the A400M and the EF2000. Airbus has a track record of success. The plane will be built and the members will buy – over 200 are already agreed to by member nations (France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy.)

The UK might possibly opt for C-17 since they’ve leased four and are very happy with them but they have earlier commited to the A400M also.

Nope, I can’t see anything but a success even if its Europe alone unless they really screw up during development like losing a prototype. I don’t it’ll happen. Not under Airbus and not with a lock on the home market.

Also, the A400M is tied into France’s and Germany’s dream of a standing European army. The vision is that a massive fleet of up to 300 A400s will be able to airlift the European rapid reaction force to Africa, the Middle East or even Central Asia (though that might make the Russians angry.)

Airbus also uses a ship to ferry the most massive pieces of the A380 around Europe.

The Ville De Bordeaux was delivered from Nanjing Jinling Shipyard to Airbus around April.

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Notes:
(1)http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?prod=34541&session=dae.4856522.1094166907.QTepe8Oa9dUAABRuL-c&modele=jdc_1
“The Airbus A380 program has reached a new milestone with the christening of a roll-on and roll-off sea (ro-ro) vessel built for the transportation of components of the aircraft. The vessel was named “Ville De Bordeaux” at a ceremony held today in Nanjing in East China’s Jiangsu Province.

The 5,200-dwt roll-on and roll-off vessel measures 154.15 meters long, 24 meters wide and 21.85 meters deep and features the largest-ever watertight stern door on a ro-ro vessel (22 meters by 14 meters). It has a cargo deck space of 6,720 square meters and holds as much as 1,805 lanes meters. It incorporates special features tailored to the loading and transport of aircraft components like stern mooring system, cargo hold environment control, lashing arrangements and control of accelerations.

Airbus will charter the vessel to transport A380 sections by sea from Airbus sites in the UK, Germany, France and Spain to the French city port of Bordeaux. The vessel is built by the Nanjing-based Jinling Shipyard and commissioned by FRET/Cetam, a subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA) of France, and Leif Hoegh of Norway. “

Shrink and post them!

Say, Alastair, the Nimrod is very unfortunately named for a descendent of the pretty Comet. In American parlance, a “nimrod” is a common playground insult.

Of course, the R1P version of the Nimrod is almost as bad as All Nippon Airlines’ ANAL logo in world of aviation designation and naming.

Macau Defense= Mob Guys

Who won the last round of mob wars in Macau?

IIRC, it was a four-way struggle between the local Macanese (Chinese-Portuguese) mob, the Big Circle Boys from China, the Hong Kong 14K Triad and the Macau police. There was a cameo performance from the Russian mafia who were importing blondes for the casinos.

The gangsters from either side tried to get the Portuguese police chief, Baptista, several times. But the real big war was between the HK and local mobs.

I’m not sure who won and whether Macau is under control of the HK Triads.

Of course, the PLA provides “protection” for both HK and Macau.

“Our chicken exports have been hit by bird flu,” Thaksin told reporters on Tuesday. “When we can’t sell in our traditional markets, we need to penetrate new markets by bartering. We can’t leave all this chicken in Thailand.”

It is obvious that the driving issue for Thailand is how to get rid of tons of chicken meat it couldn’t sell in its traditional market, not any specific hankering for Sukhois.

“We can’t leave all this chicken in Thailand.”
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Sorry.

The F-15 can sprint to Mach 2.5, which is a completely different animal than cruising for over an hour at Mach 3.17. Heat is a big issue.

Quite true. In fact, cruising at such high speed was made possible only by titanium (heat-dissipating ceramics like those for the space shuttle were not in use for aircraft then) so the leading edges won’t melt from heat caused by friction.

Because titanium could be gotten in the amounts needed only from the USSR, procurement is a great story in itself.

On the other hand, the Russians themselves didn’t use titanium for Foxbat but extra-heavy nickel steel, almost certainly because the MiG-25 was to be mass produced unlike the Blackbird.

Nickel steel would melt at a much, much lower lower temperature than titanium. There is no chance that a Foxbat could sustain anywhere near the speed (and endurance at such speeds) of a SR-71 airframe even if its engines could take it.