Ok.

I’ve now watched this 4 times in less than a year.

Daniel Day Lewis in one of the finest performances in cinematic history.

The wife and I were absolutely gobsmacked after watching this movie.

If you have not seen this movie, you are very much the poorer for it. Just watch it…..

There Will Be Blood

Below is gun camera footage of 2 Mig-21MF’s that Major Johan Rankin shot down whilst flying a Mirage F1CZ for 3 squadron SAAF. Also, a snap of a V3B Darter heading toward a Mig 21.

SA/Brazil missile programme achieves important milestone

By: Keith Campbell
22nd February 2009

A signficant milestone has been reached in the development of the fifth-generation A-Darter infrared (IR) homing air-to-air missile (AAM), which is being jointly developed by South Africa and Brazil.

Denel Dynamics, part of the South African State-owned Denel defence industrial group, has revealed that the AAM’s first series of programmed flight tests had been successfully completed last week.

These tests were carried out at Denel’s OTB test range, on the country’s south coast, near Bredasdorp in the Western Cape.

They served to check the A-Darter’s manoeuvrability and its characteristics under high g-forces.

In parallel, tests were also executed on the seeker head of the AAM, to evaluate its ability to track targets………..

Rest of the article is here:

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/sabrazil-missile-programme-achieves-important-milestone-2009-02-22

Erm, it’s our winter, and your summer. It would be nuts if it were reversed.

It’s our worst winter since 1964. This little poof of snow is only due to last a week. 64 was several weeks and colder.
However, in those days there were gritters, there were hoppers of grit on the small roads, where residents could get there own, knowing it wouldn’t have been vandalised. Every town had some sort of Army barracks so there was a lot of kit and a lot of “Hands” available to dig/scrape etc. With all that gone, this one is worse.

The two are linked.;)

The point is though that they could and do all the time in excercises, the Russians aren’t as well trained and equiped just deal with it instead of getting all uppity about it.

Uppity, JonJames?

I was replying to the comment that Russia hasn’t faced a well trained modern foe, to which the obvious answer is that neither has the US.

I couldn’t care less whether America trains a lot harder and more realistically (which they obviously do, having a much larger budget). I wanted the original poster to know that Russia not facing an enemy as such described is almost just like everyone else at present. :rolleyes:

Not that I really want to indulge in a discussion with you JonJames.. you were banned two or three times already so I’m not holding my breath…

[P.S.: Low intensity conflicts somewhere in Africa don’t really count as benchmark; I guess the Cubans had gratefully traded their MiG-23s versus F-5Es.]

Read up about the AD network deployed in Angola by the Soviets and the East Germans. One UAV had seventeen SAMS fired at it in one sortie! The final one destroyed it. And I’m not talking about SAM-7’s.

Back on topic. The Mig-23 had a flight time of 10 minutes to it’s combat area, whilst the Mirages were at the limit of their range and had only a few minutes worth of fuel when they arrived at the combat areas. The SAAF were handicapped by not having an AAM with an effective head on capability, something they rectified a little while later. The only Mig-23 success of the entire campaign came from a snap shot head on engagement that damaged the hydraulics of Major Arthur Piercy’s Mirage F1. He flew it back to base and landed it. Unfortunately, due to damage to the hydraulics and tail chute, he overshot the runway and ran over a rock which initiated his ejection seat. Due to it not being a zero-zero seat, Piercy was injured and is still confined to a wheelchair today. The Mig-23 was able to bug out of a couple of intercepts due to it’s higher performance and extra fuel as compared to the Mirage F1.

At no other stage were any of the strike packages ever threatened by Mig21/23’s, although this was due to the massive jamming campaign by the SAAF and therefore does not reflect on the Mig 23 per se.

Utterly pointless in an advanced trainer, as evidenced by how much the T-38 uses the capability.

It compromises other aspects of the design too much.

In advanced training only, probably, although with the potential advent of more “supercruise” fighters in the future perhaps there is a limited training role.

For smaller airforces that might want to utilise them in an intercept role in the case of hostilities, then perhaps the supersonic dash capabilities of some of the newer advanced trainers might make more sense,,,,