ijozicthe one where the West supports the “rebel uprising” in Lybia and Syria, which later turn out to be mercenaries and Western special forces (the UK denied SAS troops were present in Lybia until after the conflict)
The uprisings were legit and were not the first in the history of these ethnically divided countries. That the outside elements seized the opportunity and became involved is quite normal.
or the one where US generals propose to the US president for the CIA to execute terrorist attacks on US civilian targets as an excuse to invade another country
and before you tell me I’m crazy, you might want to read up on your Congress-declassified secret documents, you might learn a thing or two
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
This is all well known. You can mention other scandals like the CIA sponsored invasion of Guatemala or more relevant assistance to the British coup in Iran in 1956. etc. but I don’t see how it is a proof of anything in case of Iraq and Syria.
it is an established fact that the US has used proxies to fight its wars for it, including “terrorist” organisations (Taliban during the 1980’s, anyone?)
This is your own misinformation. US had nothing to do with the Taliban which were a product of Saudi sponsored religious schools in Pakistan training refugees and organized by the Pakistan ISI secret service.
it is an established fact that the US will publicly lie about its operations (“yes, we’re 100% sure Iraq has WMDs and wants to give them to Al-Qaeda”)
These reports were based on statements by some Iraqi dissidents and were selected among the sea of reports saying differently by the leading members of the then US administration who had an agenda to invade Iraq and bring down Saddam’s regime. Again, it doesn’t prove anything here. Every country powerful enough to exert influence has its own strategic interests, agendas, etc. and resorts to various means of achieving them.
ISIS was considered an “ally” of sorts until they invaded Iraq. even today they’re still exclusively fighting the US’s enemies
Yeah, right. They were fighting US forces in Iraq before they withdrew to Syria where they were fighting (however insignificant) US supported rebel groups in Syria, not to mention the Kurd forces which the US try to give air support to.
odd for an organisation that focusses most of its PR on showing how much they hate the West, that doesn’t make sense. if they hadn’t done that, the West might not have found the support to attack them with air raids in the first place
Of course it makes sense. They are fighting their primary threat which are the local alternatives to their rule. Once defeated, the US and others would have no allied forces on the ground and would probably be forced to give up.
and then the West executes a huge air campaign, yet somehow this seems to have no effect on ISIS’s war capabilities
Huge? 🙂 Huge was the air campaign in Vietnam and yet it had only a delaying impact on the final outcome. You need combined efforts with “the boots on the ground” to achieve anything.
at the end of the day ISIS is completing the US’s goals, namely overthrowing Assad (or at least taking his country out of the global equation) and fighting Iran and its Iraqi allies even if US isn’t controlling ISIS, strategically speaking it has no interest in stopping it
The US administration would like to see Assad gone (who wouldn’t apart from perhaps IRGC which need a supply link to their Lebanese proxy), but certainly not replaced by ISIS. The relationship between Iran and US is complex and they’re probably not happy about it expanding their influence, but it’s ludicrous to suggest that the US would like to see ISIS rollover Iraq just because they have relations with Iran. In fact, exactly because of ISIS crushing down the Iraqi army is Iraq falling more and more under Iran’s control because they are becoming dependent on their support (like Syrian regime is) so what you’re suggesting makes even less sense in that regard. And what would the US gain from ISIS turning back the clock for a few centuries and possibly igniting the rest of the Middle East? The global oil price would skyrocket and this is exactly what they don’t want to happen and why they got involved in the first place.
ijozicHate to agree with that but it seems likely. Between Iran, Iraq and Syria there was growing Shia power in the region following the ousting of Saddam and neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel was happy and so suddenly IS appears and begins destabilising Shia regimes funded from out of nowhere and extremely sophisticated. Al-Quaeda then realises this and denounces IS.
Just because they were given little media spotlight before, doesn’t mean they suddenly appeared out of nowhere. ISIS started as an Al-Qaeda local subsidiary (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) after the US invasion which in time became taken over by locals linked with ex-Baathists who had a somewhat different agenda from the main organization (e.g. fighting non-Sunni population, proclaiming an Islamic Caliphate in 2006., etc.). They proclaimed the Islamic Caliphate already in Iraq in 2006. against the wishes of its former main organization, only to be kicked out by the US forces by then much better organized (combined e.g. with paying off the Sunni tribes to switch support, Al-Sistani Shia militia, etc.). They then had years to reorganize themselves in Syria since the Syrian regime was too weak to control large parts of its territory and once the US packed up and left, there was no-one to organize and (more importantly) pay Sunni tribes to resist the revival of the insurgency not the least the army units which while badly trained and organized and not even regularly paid, were also comprised of mostly of Sunnis and Kurds in those attacked areas which had little motivation to fight for the central (Shia dominated) government. I’d presume that the rural areas of Syria and Iraq are still first and foremost tribal organized and those tribes shift their support to the strongest power at any given time to survive.
A simple google search can provide you various articles such as e.g. this one:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/03/isis-forces-exbaathist-saddam-loyalists/
But, of course, the story is rather complicated as is the history of the countries involved which is why it’s much easier to subscribe to a conspiracy theory which explains everything in a few sentences including only monolithic agents such as “US”, “Turkey”, “Iran”, “Iraq”, “ISIS”, “Sunni”, “Shia”, etc. This saves you from a lot of reading and even more mental effort to comprehend how multi-faceted and chaotic it all is.
ijozicIf true, that’s completely insane. Every unit should have anti-tank weapons. Not just every division, but every company. RPGs or the like (which would be perfectly good enough) should be standard issue to every platoon. It’s not difficult. For the cost of one fighter jet, enough could be bought for an initial issue. Supply is no problem: there are more countries than I can be bothered to count that make them. You don’t need huge numbers of weapons which can defeat M1s, just basic RPGs or similar all round, plus a relatively small number of guided weapons with more effective warheads.
There’s an interesting book available with the interviews with former Saddam’s generals – they indicate a complete organizational blunder during the invasion of Iran in 1980. The generals were not appointed according to merit back done and things could be even worse now despite all the US efforts spent on training the army.
ijozicGeneral Wesley Clark reported years ago that the Pentagon planned to take out 7 countries back in 2001
“Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”
since then war has come to most of these countries. some by direction Western invasion, others via rebel/local armies with Western SF/air power supportmost of them also ended up being US friendly after the conflict
with the exception of Syria, where Western governments did not find the support for air attacks (possibly because of Russian resistance) and in Iraq, where the government turned pro-Iranian
Please, not this conspiracy garbage. FYI, ISIS formed after the US invasion and they have already proclaimed their caliphate in Iraq in 2006, but they were kicked out when the US forces started paying local Sunni tribes for their support. Then the US forces packed up and left so there was no-one to organize and pay the local Sunni tribes not to fight the central (naturally Shia dominated) government, while ISIS reorganized in Syria only to triumphantly return later on to the Sunni areas with the help of the Baathist underground organizations. Reading these conspiracy theories, one gets the impression that Iraq, Syria and Libya were functioning and united countries, rather than ethnically and religiously divided countries held together by oppressive regimes (doesn’t help that they were minority dominated) which only shows a fundamental lack of history knowledge in people subscribing to these.
I wouldn’t trust everything this controversial ex-general Wesley Clark says in want of public attention (and thus money or fame or whatever). Even if the NeoCon parts of the Bush Jr. administration had such simple and straightforward secret “plans” (which according to Clark conveniently fill a single page A4 paper and are shown to passer by’s like him) to “fix” the Middle East by invading and replacing those regimes with democratically elected governments, such a plan would have obviously grossly failed at stage one in Iraq because of the gross mismanagement due to idealism and lack of knowledge of the local situation. Just think how many people are involved in day-to-day operations of these scales – it would be impossible to keep such secret “plans” secret. I don’t even want to comment these ISIS allies allegations. I thought this was a serious forum.
ijozicCan’t really make out the next hardpoint/pylon(APU-470 pylon)? Or is it that one with the incorporated self defence suite?
The inner wing station and under engine duct is something new, same as on the PakFa. It looks similar to AKU-470 pylons, but only slimmer?
AFAIK, these are AKU-170 catapult launchers used for R-77 missiles. I guess that means RVV-SD might be deployed soon.
ijozicSupposedly the first Su-25 with the SVP-24 (from Gefest).
Do you have a link for this? Never heard of Gefest being involved with any Su-25 upgrades (Su-25SM), only Su-24M and Tu-22M3 IIRC.
ijozicBut he said explicitly that Tu-160 production would supposedly happen alongside the PAK-DA program…that’s what makes it sound so nutty.
If they’re serious, they might just want to boost the numbers, both for strategic, operational and maintenance purpose as keeping this very small fleet operational is apparently not profitable enough for the company which made the engines and is considering to make a replacement engine.
ijozicLooks turquoise to me.
Some photos clearly do look turquoise, but the first one I posted has no such tinge. Conversely, the green in the video has no trace of blue and is purely emerald green. Ill-informed and pretty color blind as I am, I’d still have to conclude that the differences between those two opposite cases are too big to be just lighting or photo effects and that there is no one standardized color used on those planes.
In any case, didn’t the planes like e.g. MiG-21 had green, but on later planes, the color was switched to a blueish (kind of blue-green) color?
ijozicGreen like this? Looks blue to me and this is what I usually saw (e.g. in Yefim Gordon’s book):
On some photos it looks more like blue-green:
http://www.walkarounds.airforce.ru/avia/rus/mig/mig-31_cockpit/az_mig-31_15.jpg
ijozicAnd a nice vid of Mig-31 with huge missile under wing stations:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO7VR029ytk
Old R-40TD training rounds so nothing out of the ordinary there. Nice landing gear shots, though. I’m also surprised to see the green cockpit interior; all the photos of MiG-31 cockpits I’ve seen were blue.
ijozicI have never read that the Gardeniya was useless. When Russians pulled out of Moldova they removed these jammers from MiG-29 left there. If they were useless I don’t see the point..
They always remove sensitive equipment, so that by itself doesn’t mean anything. E.g. you don’t want the NATO to find out what are the exact capabilities of such equipment.
They mention several book references here, although not sure how reliable that data is.
ijozicI don’t think there were any issues rather than the SMT upgrade having been aimed at both 9.13 and 9.12 aircraft which don’t carry the Gardeniya ECM and therefore need a pod.
But the 9.13 carries the Gardeniya ECM. I don’t remember where I read it, but supposedly it was next to useless (maybe due to interfering with on-board systems)?
ijozicI didnot say pods are carried all the time. but this most important operational feature that differentiate Flanker from Fulcrum.
The MiG-29 9.13/S carried it internally, but apparently there were issues with it so it seems the ECM system for the SMT and newer variants will have to be carried externally (so, even less fuel or ordnance). MSP-418K pod seems to have been mentioned in this context.
I’ve read that the MiG-35 will have an internal mounted one again.
ijozicFitting larger wings and reworking the overwing louvres would require a structural update which goes way beyond the scope of the SMT programme which was/is a simple avionics upgrade + addition of bolt-on dorsal tank.. For that money you can order a new M2 right away..
I’m mentioning it because it used to be an option and IIRC it was initially considered when the SMT was the 9.17 variant, but they gave up on it afterwards (with 9.19)..
http://wiki.scramble.nl/index.php/Mikoyan_Gurevich_MiG-29#MiG-29SMT_.28type_9.17.29_2
Lol woot. SMT retains auxiliary air intakes and all the major airframe components.
I never said it doesn’t; I said it would have been a more capable upgrade (albeit more expensive) if it didn’t (one extra pylon with two heavy pylons on each wing, more fuel, etc.). MiG-29 is pretty limited in it’s base form without 4 pylons per wing IMHO.
ijozicDon’t think upgrading existing MiG-29s is the best use of funds at this point. Would rather they just focus on upgrading Flankers…or just save for new builds.
I’m sure they would, too, but I guess that depends on the associated costs and the required fighter airplane numbers on strength plus the need to give the MiG some work?
But, I’d agree on the SMT upgrade; always found it kind of a hack job since they gave up on fitting larger wings with 4 pylons on each and removing those auxiliary air intakes. I hate this unified cockpit thing on the M2/35 though. It’s ugly and the single seater kind of makes no sense anymore.
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