inkI find this debate about MFDs in the MiG-31M cockpit quite irrelevant. As far as I’m aware; during its testing and preperation for service the Su-34 went through several improvements with regards to its avionics and ergonomics package. I see no reason why this should be any different for the MiG-31M should it ever go through state acceptance trials etc.
inkCome on Sean, stop being so unreasonable. Phil quite clearly meant that, in his opinion, the French and the British are exactly equally experienced in making high performance fighters. :dev2:
inkCool…..more stuff we likely won’t see in service for a long time.
Except maybe in IAF or PLAAF service – or on Russian Su-34s (when they eventually appear).
inkThanks Jai – clearly some news I had missed.
inkWow – I’m even more out of touch than I thought I was (pretty impressive considerring how out of touch I thought I was). Am I really the only one who didn’t know that MiG was still developing a light fighter? This is the first I’ve heard of it for years – can somebody fill me in please.
inkThis is just conjecture but could one of the reasons the Yak-130 didn’t entice the Indians be the fact that it has two engines? As far as I can see the only significant drawback of the design is the increased maintainence cost of operating an AJT/Light Attack aircraft that has two engines per airframe.
inkNow I could easily be wrong but were the Russians not planning to replace/augment their Su-25s with a Yak-130 attack varriant? If so it would make perfect sense to pick the ‘130 as the standard trainer too as it would increase commonality. Also, by actually operating the type in the RuAF it increases the chances of export orders (and cuts down the per arframe cost) – seems like a very sensible choice all round. Besides, I never really liked the MiG-AT.
inkHarry,
Excellent point. A decent paint job does hide a lot of the potential flaws of build quality. I was, however, hoping to draw you onto the point that these M2s might well be built or assembled in India which, if I’m right, could mean that much of the quality will depend on Indian production standards.
On a political note – India is already cooperating with Russia on a number of vital strategic projects and there is an increase in Franco-Russian political/economic cooperation as well. India might do well to take advantage of the present situation and buy French in order to build its relations with France even more. This shouldn’t annoy the Russians overly (as would a purchase of American equipment for e.g.).
inkRegarding build quality, the MiG-29M2 doing the rounds at the moment should be a bureau-made prototype and will, thusly, not be a production standard/quality air-frame (much like the Su-37 prototype which had an appauling looking finish). I don’t see any reason why Russian/Indian production MiG-29M2s wouldn’t be of a much higher quality.
Also, regarding the multi-role/ground attack advantages of the Mirage… Wha exactly are they? What is it that the Mirage can do that the MiG can’t?
inkAs an advantage for the MiG-29M2 you can add the fact that it will be able to be integrated with lots of Russian/Indian/Russo-Indian GPS guided weapons that will use the satellite array the Russians and Indians are working on. Of course its possible that the Mirage will also be integratable (a real word? I think not) with these weapons.
inkplawolf,
I’m sorry to dwell on this as it really is off topic but I do think that I have a right to defend my comments regarding this subject.
well there never were much concrete evidence to back that up.
I’m afraid that the exact opposite of this is true. they key players in Milosevic’s have given a multitude of interviews and much has been written on the subject – academic and journalistic journals are full of articles regarding this subject. I admit that I have only studied a fraction of these but I still feel that my opinnion is firmly based on reliable information both western and otherwise. Furthermore, relevant evidence has cropped up in the Milosevic trial in the hague and will continue to do so throughout the trial.
IIRC, the US and NATO were beating the war drum and ‘proparing’ for a ground offensive.
You do not remember rightly I am afraid. Only the UK was beating any ground war drums and, while I beleive they did convince the US to suggest that a ground war was an option that is very far from the whole of NATO being set for an invasion. No significant military build up, geared for an invasion, ever occured during the bombing campaign. Indeed, the end of the campaign and the entrance of NATO into Kosovo showed that NATO hadn’t even deployed all 50,000 troops that it agreed to move into the region for peace-keeping duties. Considerring that the VJ and MUP commands in Kosovo alone had over 100,000 men under arms (a figure that doesn’t include paramilitaries and volunteer groups) I think NATO would have needed more than 50,000 troops for the invasion. If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me 250,000 was the number banded about at the time.
if i also remember correctly, milosovic was deposed, and while i cant be sure of whether it was before or after the pull out of kosovo, i think it was before.
Milosevic resigned his presidency after a popular revolt by civilians on October the 5th 2000. The NATO bombing campaign ended on the 10th of June 1999.
if that is correct, then it was the civilians that had enough and ended the war, and the US/NATO ground offensive propaganda would certainly have been a key factor.
It is certainly true that western countries, the US and UK in particular, did actively support oposition groups financially, through propaganda and in other ways and that they very significantly influenced the removal of Milosevic. But this is not what ended the war.
inkplawolf,
I’ve decided to get involved in this discussion again simply to knock back a couple of assumptions on which you are basing your arguments as, again, I don’t think they are sustainable.
Firstly,
well actually it was only the threat of a ground war that made the serbs cave it since the air strikes were doing very little.
This is a myth. NATO was very very far from being ready for a ground war of even a limited scope. There were essentially two options for a ground war: 1. Iraq style thunder run across the Vojvodina plain from Hungary (a new NATO member at the time) to Belgrade to remove the pesky Milosevic regime. This option was untenable as it would have required hundreds of thousands of troops and an invasion of the whole country. NATO simply couldn’t have mounted the necessary political will in all of its member states to manage this. Especially as the US wasn’t overly keen on deploying ground troops and invading a European country (which hadn’t threatened it or any of its NATO allies).
2. A more limited operation aimed at ‘taking’ Kosovo and then agreeing peace with the rest of Yugoslavia. Seemingly more viable except that it would require moving large amounts of troops through Greece and stationing them in Macedonia (both countries who were largely against the air campaign and much less likely to support a ground campaign). This would not only risk causing very risky tensions between NATO members Greece and Turkey but also would have caused political strife in Greece and probably between Greece and NATO. Any ground invasion would have risked the support of non-NATO Europe, damaged NATO’s credebility and respect, caused no amount of problems with Russia and China and in the UN and would have been difficult and cost casualties. Basically, apart from the UK, no other NATO member considerred it to be a serious option.
From Yugoslavia’s point of view a ground war would have been, politically at least, potentially quite positive. A chance to cause casualties to NATO, a greater chance of civilian casualties caused by NATO (and therefore a bigger victim card to play) and the chance that political differences within NATO could cause the alliance to wacer if not collapse.
The real reason Milosevic backed down was that the Russians quite candidly said that they would stop supporting him politically and that the US said it would start bombing more and more civilian targets until Yugoslavia was destroyed beyond repair.
Secondly,
anyhow forgetting the economic side, why would iran want flankers in the first place? the Mig29 and FC1 are also BVR capable, and im sure they can make their indiginous fighter BVR capable if they can make or import a missile for it; in terms of cost the lighter fighters are far more attractive; in terms of mobility and stealth once they are on the ground the smaller fighters are far superior; in terms of the kinds of places the planes can land the smaller fighters (the Mig29 in particular) is superior to the flankers; in terms of manoverability, the flanker is hardly head and shoulders ahead of the Mig29, and the other two contestants shouldnt be no slouches either; both the Mig29 and FC1 can also be multirole fighters…
and
to hit something you need to find it first, and F5 sized planes are easier to hide then flanker sized ones.
I don’t know this from personal experience but I imagine that from 15,000 feet an F-5 under camo netting and a FLANKER under camo netting look pretty much similar – i.e. you can’t see either. You can’t see a BTR-60 from 200 yards if its concealed properly, I doubt very much that you can see a camoflaged FLANKER from 15,000 feet. This basically means that when looking for hidden and displaced fighters you’re relying on TI and radar – which make the size of said fighter a much smaller element of the equation.
Esentially what I’m trying to say is that to assume, as you seem to, that you can hide F-5s but you can’t hide FLANKERs is an excercise in painting the scenario in black and white.
Furthermore, I seriously doubt the vast difference you seem to think exists between the ability of smaller fighters and larger fighters to operate from ‘shake and bake’ air fields. however, I am not enough of an expert to make this judgement so I will leave this last question open for discussion by the better informed.
inkplawolf,
Of course the comparison is unreliable – there can be no doubting that. However, I tend to think of it as being unreliable in Iran’s favour.
first and more importantly, while the former yugoslavia was very small, the climate and geological conditions there provides them with far more numourous and better hiding places then iran, which is mostlt flat desert with clear weather most of the time.
Sure the weather was bad during the beginning of the campaign but a lot of NATO’s ops (almost certainly the majority) took place in clear spring and summer weather. And I hardly think Iran is short of places to hide in – probably because it is such a large country it will be very difficult for ‘western’ (Israeli/US/NATO/some coalition) forces to track down dispersed and camoflaged targets.
secondly, the US has show huge improvement since kosovo, with GPS-guided bombs now become the normal instead of being rareties.
Again true but Iran is also, militarily speaking, a much more advanced country that was Yugoslavia (probably with – or soon to be buyin/developing – lots of GPS jamming equipment). And GPS bombs are still just as fallible when it comes to hitting cars with pipes stuck through the window (i.e. decoys).
i never said that the USAF can total destroy iran’s military in minutes, but it can certainly take out all the airfeilds and high ways big enough to accomodate flankers and keep them out of action for as long as they want.
Um…
the US can kill all major airfeilds (and the flankers based there) in a space of minutes to seconds. not nearly enough time to get any of the planes airborn.
I question the very vast assumptions you make in both of these quotes. Even if we assume that the US can take out all of the major airfields during the opening minutes of a conflict I still doubt that they can keep them killed throughout the conflict.
the flanker is designed as an air superemicy fighter, its designed to domonate the feild of battle. but clearly the iranian AF’s cant hope to do that, and to try is just stupid. as such the flanker is the wrong plane for the kinds of mission the iranian AF is likely to fight.
I too think that buying FLANKERs now would be a waste of time and effort so I won’t argue with you there. All I wanted to do was to counter the opinion that the US is capable of crippling Iran’s air force in the first few minutes of the conflict. If we are to see a conflict between Iran and ‘western’ forces which involves a protracted air war then I predict that Iranian combat aircraft will still be flying missions weeks into the air war and that the Iranian air defense system will still be putting up a fight throughout the conflict. Don’t get me wrong, I am impressed by US (or maybe ‘western’) fire-power and I do respect its abilities and capabilities but I still think that a healthy (i.e. not crippled by years of sanctions) and able military like Iran’s will be a tough nut to crack.
inkplawolf,
Don’t allow yourself to be overly impressed with the US capabilities to cripple an opponent like Iran so quickly. The air campaign against Yugoslavia showed that taking out an air force and an air defense force isn’t all that easy even when your opponent is a small country with seriously ageing equipment. Although it is true that the Yugoslav air force was decimated by the NATO attacks it did manage to operate combat aircraft and helicopters well into the 78 day bombing campaign. Air fields, as shown during Allied Force, can be repaited and be useable only a few hours after a strike. Decoys can soak up a certain amount of enemy firepower. The Yugoslav air defense system functioned, to an extent, throughout the war.
Iran is a whole different ball game. Its a much bigger country, with a better developed (and possibly trained) military. It has more up to date equipment and more of it. Stealth is great but it isn’t invulnerable – you don’t have to even shoot down an F-117 – its often enough to know roughly where its going so you can move things into bunkers or camoflage things better (or, if your airforce is still functioning you can try to intercept it). Crippling Iran’s military would, theoretically take longer than 78 days (if at all acheivable from the air) and they have a much better chance of striking back in all sorts of ways.
inkTora Tora Tora gets my ‘best’ vote but (apsolutely cracking movie – why isn’t it considerred as being up there with Zulu etc?)…
Worst vote has to be shared by:
Tears of the sun (where F-18s take off with nothing on their hard-points, fly over African country side with nothing on their hard-points and then kill some bad Africans with Harpoons apparently fitted with napalm warheads).
Behind Enemy Lines – the already mentioned scenes.
Independence day – no comment, simply a bad movie.
Airforce 1 – the whole thing (in aviation terms and otherwise) was just downright cr@ppy.
Pear Harbour – simply amazing that they could make the movie so bad considerring how good Tora Tora Tora was.
… I’m sure I’ve missed a couple – there have been so so many bad aviation scenes over the years…
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