Were the Russian’s doctrine *purely* a result of their technological limitations, or there were other reasons for the way they were doing things. For instance, their relaince on GCI can be attributed to the lack of the “good radars in air”, but one can also argue that GCI is an extension of the AWACS concept.
So what may be the possible explanation.

duxfordhawk,

I wish (and pray) that your sister has a long & happy life.

I have been also thinking about strict religious rules.. Especially for women, it must be quite an achievement to prevent the others from seeing a sq cm of your skin or a cluster of hair comin out of your chador, especially when you are carrying three shopping bags and your three children are jumpin and screamin around.. Do these women live in constant fear that one day they hear brake squeeling a black car stops by and ten armed Pasdar (or how the religious police is named today) members jump out to beat them down?

But still, I am thinking about countries like Sudan, Rwanda or Somalia to be very hard places to live in.. Do strict religious rules apply to those, as well?

I am sorry to say that you western people have a tendency to create elephant out of mouse. I have never been to Sudan or Somalia, but have a spent a fair amount of time in a very conservative country and let me assure you that typical western perceptions of religious police holding canes and running around to get a chance to beat any one are’nt very accurate. I am not accusing anyone, just that what ever u see in media is’nt 100% accurate.

Interesting diagram!

http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/mig25.html

In the above picture, why the curve that represents “Best Foxbat climb out”
shows a strange behaviour past 8 minutes, is the curve going up or down.

Guys, let’s be honest here. There is no such thing as a catalogue price for a combat aircraft. Period. Offsets, support, negotiation skills, bribes, politics, production, economic needs, all are very important variables all being very important in the actual amount of money which needs to change hands.

Thinking that the price country A pays for an aircraft should automatically mean country B gets the same deal is really, really naive. Such instances are very rare (POSSIBLY the combined F-16 purchase by Belgium, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1970s), if they exist at all.

While what you have said is obvioulsy true, the political factor is always there. but an should’nt engineer with some some sense of economics should be able to come up with some approximate number by doing some simple analysis like
cost of the type and amount of the raw materials used in construction, cost of converting raw material into parts, initial R&D costs etc