Well, certainly the Singapore F-16s have Israeli ‘spines’

How is the enlarged spine Iraeli when it was first seen on the VISTA F-16 in the late 80’s?

And correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the F-16I’s delivered to Israel without the indigenous systems installed since Israel didn’t want us to install them? If that’s the case, How can LM offer those systems they aren’t allowed to touch to a third country?

MiG-25!

And T-72!

He was one of the original triplechangers. I had him and Astrotrain (the train/space shuttle one) too.

Why the heck is the US being so idiotic?

The problem is the US Congress full of old men and women raised in a culture or paranoia about technology sharing, all fighting to get the most for their constituents and by doing so keeping themselves in their positions of power. The fact that a foreign nation being an equal partner in something originating here is an anethema to them. They are the ones who add delays, cost, and make the procurement process so painful.

Do you know why the majority of the Lockheed Skunkworks projects (U-2, SR-71, F-117) were able to be made so advanced and so quickly? Because they were outside of the goverment’s review and 435 House Representatives and 100 Senators didn’t have their fat fingers in the projects trying to take as much as they could for themselves. Do you know why the F-22’s procurement and now the F-35’s development is so screwed up? Because they want hearings about the alternative engine, they want the procurement numbers reduced, they take away funding already granted, then re-instate it 3 months later (just so they could look good to some of their voters who think the project is a waste), they want to cancel projects on the verge of production when the development costs have already been spent, they want a delay so the “technology can mature” (not caring that those delays end up costing more than upgrading early examples later), they want the supplier base spread out as much as humanly possible (and as much in their districts as they can get) so long as it’s all here in the US.

If they would let LM and it’s foreign partners run the project like a business transaction, you wouldn’t have all these problems. They should have done a fixed cost project so the incentive to make it work as inexpensively as possible is LM and it’s partners motivation for design, development, testing and production efficiency. They better they do that, the more profit they receive in the end.

Sorry… I just had to rant.

Very impressive, but I’d like to see the video of these launches:

and

Well, i love the A-4SU from Singapur. Has any other Air Force sent their A-4 for this modification/upgrade or was it only available for their contry? I bet some small-budget AF (like the CentralAmericans) could buy a dozen of A-4s and send them over to Singapur, so they can extend life and be sure that they will have an aircraft for 10 or 15 years more.

I started this thread because of the Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan Air Force. As for the Salvadoran the only jet available its the A-37B, these were donated 24 years ago and never saw any upgrade. So, its been a while since El Salvador hasnt seen a fighter…the Kfir, F-5 and A-4 have been evaluated but never got to something. So i believe that AFs like the Salvadoran, will have to stick with turbo-prop attack aircraft like the Super Tucano (if they want to buy new aircraft) because of their tight budget. With this in mind, theres a small market available for a low-cost fighters in the small budget air forces.

Saludos.

I’d love to get my hands on some of the A-4’s that New Zealand recently let go. IIRC, They were some of the newest Scooter modifications and quite capable.

That’s why the worst situation for a missle is a tail chase. The target typically is bending the throttles forward over the stops trying to get every single bit of thrust and accellerate while most missles will be rapidly exhausting their fuel. The practical range in a tail chase is MUCH less.

Another thing to take into account is the flight profile of the missle. Some missles are “direct fly” meaning the fly stright at the target- typically WVR missles. Others are “loft” missles in that they use their rocket’s burn to climb to very high altitudes (~100K ft for the Poenix, IIRC), then coast before starting their terminal dive. Some missles can do both depending on the range of the target.

I was at Dyess AFB in Texas during an ORI which included an alert takeoff. Imagine 12 Bones taking off fully loaded within ~4 minutes.