“Двухконтурный”… it means turbofan, plain and simple, referring to the two channels – hot and bypass.

That takes me way back to my childhood and all the aviation literature I used to read… They used to call it dubbelströmsmotor (twin stream engine) in Swedish back then, before the semi-anglicism turbofläkt (literally turbofan) eventually took over.

This jet, seems to have a different kind of winglets;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCmzqjALIA

That’s a Tupolev. They started using winglets back in the late 80’s/early 90’s already, on the Tu-204/214. Same with Ilyushin, they put winglets on their Il-96 way back in the late 80’s. In fact, they were pretty early in the world with that. But in both of those cases, they’re classical canted winglets, not the more high-tech blended kind.

The SSJ and the MS-21 both lack winglets despite being far newer designs, but it’s a conscious choice I reckon. The SSJ is short-medium ranged and mostly just dashes between cities spending very little time at typical airliner cruising altitude, so winglets add a lot of complexity and weight without providing that many benefits there. Now, they’re serious about the longer ranged version though, and winglets now make more sense. It’s also valuable from a marketing perspective really, as winglets are automatically associated with modern airliners.

I suspect the MS-21 will also receive them eventually, at least the longer versions, but they’re as of yet only at the project stage.

Smooth Tu-22M3:

Tu-160M rollout:

First flight in 02/2018 sometime.

What do you mean by “legit Soviet Navy colors” ?

Dark navy blue (as in service on the VTOL cruisers) or light grey (as here). Not this weird turquoise:

Of course, I’m not a Yak-38 expert (or any other kind of expert for that matter) so I may be wrong, but in all the Soviet-era material I have they are either dark navy blue or light grey.

I think I explained it well enough. Everyone cherrypicks from “original” scripture, whether it’s Christians or Muslims. The Koran Suras that Nicolas mentions above are a typical example as far as Islam goes – you can find things there that apparently condone crazy murderous things, and others that clearly disapprove of them. Pick and choose.

It’s the prevailing sense of morals that ultimately determines what to leave out and what to adhere to. It’s a fascinating thing.

You won’t find all that many contemporary Christians who think that this is a good thing to live by:
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.’

‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey'” (1 Samuel 15:2-3, Old Testament)

…But if some random Christian sect decides that this kind of ruthless vengeance is totally what God wants, then they aren’t really wrong are they? Sure, the Bible does say “thou shalt not kill” but then in another part it says “the Lord says go ahead man, they’re ***holes anyway, slaughter them all”. Pick and choose, haha.

It’s all cherrypicking and interpretation, and the interpretations can get pretty wild, and the things that are deemed “acceptable” in the mainstream interpretations change over time as society itself changes. Islam is no exception, it’s complicated. Also, just like you have all these Christian things, ranging from Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox (Oriental, Eastern/Russian, Greek) with all their schisms and everything, and even more far newer things like Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses and all that, that came into being rather recently, in Islam you have a whole bunch of similar things.

So who is more or less Islamic or Christian or whatever? Hint: Every single one of these are absolutely convinced that they got their particular interpretation right, and they can all explain why that is so, by pointing at the very same scriptures… Read the PDF file from Brookings above, it details the background to ISIS ideology and it’s comprehensive and well sourced. You’ll find that they all contradict scripture back and forth, because again – it’s all about cherrypicking and interpretations.

Excerpt on the origins of Salafism and Wahhabism, and waging jihad on the infidels:

A distinctive Salafi intellectual genealogy extends to medieval times. The writings of the Syrian Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and his students
provide the core Salafi theological corpus. Later significant Salafi thinkers came from the Wahhabi movement, or Wahhabism, a subset of Salafism founded in the Arabian Peninsula by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792). In the late 18th century Wahhabism was wedded to the Saudi political establishment, and remains so today. The Saudis helped the Wahhabis to impose their version of the faith across Arabia by waging jihad against perceived heretics for the sake of eliminating shirk and affirming tawhid. Wahhabi jihad involved the destruction of tombs and shrines and the enforcement of proper ritual practices, as well as cleansing Islam of Shi’ism.

You can dig up a whole bunch of Suras that could be interpreted as condoning this, and a whole bunch of others that could be interpreted as denouncing this. And then when it comes to ahadith, that’s where the real big schisms are, that spurred this all.

Russian Helicopters managing director Boginsky said in an interview the other day that the modified Mi-24 (white 271) flew quite comfortably at 405km/h with its new high-speed composite blades and everything.

That would be a new (true, i.e. not compound or rotodyne) helicopter airspeed world record, beating the 400km/h Lynx that has stood for 30 years.