The problem is that Israel and everyone else knows what happened to the Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley when he was kidnapped and sent to the main hospital in Terhran, Iran. He was basically tortured and the doctors there kept him in shape for it. Weeks later all US agents in Lebanon started dropping dead. But it seems the Iranians went to far and he died. Many in the CIA believed that the US should have destroyed that hospital and to h*ll with any innocents.

Indeed, Israel is acting to stop the transfer of the two hostages to Iran – and for good reason.

I should mention that airstrikes apparently have been made to cut the Beirut-to-Damascus road to prevent the transfer of the hostages to Iran by way of Syria.

Iran has a bad reputation for torture. A couple of years back, a female Canadian journalist was beaten to death by the Iranian authorities. It also goes without saying that the treatment of Iraqi POWs was even worse than what Saddam Hussein could manage.

The government can’t immediately stand-down the fleet because there isn’t anything in place to take over. The SAR squadrons are kept very busy. Operating the CH149’s from a single location (as a SAR asset) is of course impossible logistically given the size of Canada.

Is civilan SAR really a military mission? Why not put civilian SAR up to bid with civilian contractors? Even the RAF has finally come around to this way of thinking.

Aviation!

Everybody has an opinion, but his is an aviation forum.

just how far will this go and will the UN step in to stop these attacks because it could cause a huge war in the region now that syria has started bad mouthing Israel again.

There is hardly any reason to worry about “a huge war.” The Syrian regime couldn’t even respond when the Israelis made a supersonic flypast over the Bashir Assad’s villa!

I really have to wonder whether the Syrians have a single operational interceptor?

Last time I checked, Hizbollah themselves admitted kidnapping two Israeli soldiers inside Israeli territory. Kinda seems like the bloody Hizbollah terrorists, burped the wrong note on purpose ?

Hizbollah threatened to “transfer” the two Israeli hostages to Iran.

Is it any wonder that Israel took out the runway at Beirut’s airport?

I just wonder how they initially diabled the runway? Media reports mentioned as many as half a dozen “rockets” during the first successful strike? Did they use unguided runway cratering munitions? Conventional laser guided bombs? It would seem that 76mm naval gunfire wouldn’t do very much damage to a concrete runway, although taking out the fuel storage tanks would seems like a brilliant move.

You really have to give the Israelis credit for the correct – and spectacular – use of airpower. When the Israeli’s took down Gaza’s only power generating facility, they did it one transformer at a time. When Hamas made the first ransom demand, the Israelis answered by putting a Hellfire missile right through their conference room!

from http://www.flightglobal.com

The unit price of the Hawk is astounding – very close to the delivery price of a F-16 Block 50! It is easy to see why the USAF has stuck with the updated T-38C – an aircraft which is more than capable of the advanced training needed for the F-22 and upcoming F-35.

The sad truth is that the Hawk is very close to the end of its production run and BAE Systems is deteremined to get out of the airframe manufacturing business. Buying British doesn’t save jobs in this case – it only extends them by a matter of months.

The UK would have been well advised to enter into the Eurotraining partnership, or even to have relegated training to the United States.

The EC-145 is a new design, though with strong family resemplance to the 117.

Not really.

A designation change and cosmetic reworking don’t amount to a new design. Eurocopter has done well to successfully promote a fundimentally uncompetive design.

A pity they are going for more Lynx – the NH-90 would have offered a lot more capability, though somewhat less manouverable.

The NH-90 doesn’t fit comforably into the helicopter market. In reality, the AB-139 is far closer in capabilty to the NH-90 than most would believe. It is also cheaper by a factor of five!

Like so many European collaborative programs, the NH-90 has suffered from long time scales – so much so, that off the self solutions are far cheaper and more satisfactory.

In any event, the UK has done well to purchase more Lynx helicopters. Of course, for other users the AB-139 (or S-70) might make even more sense…..