Back on topic, Eurofighter news :diablo:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/eurofighter_beaten_by_f16/page2.html

It’s a hoax, because it’s not in defencenet.gr. 😀 (if it was about Rafale or F35 now defencenet would have put it with colossal letters “F16 beat the pride of France” or “F35, a flying saucepan, now confirmed”!. Ahahaha.

Not true.

There are Christian Arab minorities in Egypt (several million – & a majority in some parts of the country), Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan & among the Palestinians.

There are Druze (Arabs with an obscure religion) in Israel, Lebanon & Syria.

The government of Syria is dominated by Alawite (a sect which some class as Shia, some as a separate branch of Islam) Arabs.

Iraq & Bahrain have Shia Arab majorities, & there are Shia Arab minorities in Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, & other states.

This is not necessarily a complete list.

Correct, but none have enough influence to do something to influence an operation against Iran. Syria even if wanted (that doesn’t) has her own trouble. Bahrain will side with the rest of Emirates. In Egypt the Christians have no power whatsover, as a matter of fact about a month ago the higher religious authority of the Egyptian Copt Christians in Greece, was telling to the TV that the Christians in Egypt are afraid and that have been victims of progroms by muslims after the fall of Mubarak.

He is obviously very skilled and self-confident, but one thing is to take a risk for himself and another is putting innocent bystanders into peril.

Anyway, this must be the lowest flying i have seen.

Ever heard about requirements? So if the Typhoon has crappy aerodynamics while being a souped up M2k, we must conclude that the Mirage had crappy aerodynamics as well and that it took Dassault some 3 decades from Mirage 3 to Rafale to get it finally right.:rolleyes::diablo:

Good point… And the Typhoon isn’t crappy in aerodynamics. The 1 of the 2 greek F16s pilots that dogfighted a Typhoon for the first time (I think it was in a german exercize), according to a defencenet’s article, said that the flight performance of the Typhoon reminded him when he was in A7s dogfighting F16s and that they had to use all their skill to counter it. And he must have seen Mirages in his service, so if anything, it must be a “very” souped up M2k. 😀 I simply think that Rafale and Typhoon can both kill each other and so this evolves in a neverending fight where both sides will make claims of superiority. Honestly, i think that up until Rafale gets more powerful engines, the Typhoon, if left to a free scenario, can have an advantage for the sole reason that it is optimized to fly high and fast and has no reason to go lower just to make Rafale happier. In lower altitudes the Rafale may be better today, but it’s probably also a question of pilot. This is why you get contradictory reports or exercize claims all the time.

Up high the Typhoon can be beat be many aircraft and down low it can be beat by even more aircraft. It is probably the worst fighter currently in production. Waste of money.

I don’t think it’s a waste of money, but i think it requires a lot of money that few can afford… That and the fact that at the end, while started with more momentum for upgrades, it fell into the trap of “two cooks spoil the broth” (where the cooks here are actually more, the EADS members), while the Rafale, although without exports, follows a more reasonable upgrade path.

P.S.: I can’t stand the targeting pod in the center hardpoint of the Typhoon instead of a fuel tank. It shouts “I wasn’t thought to bomb, someone forced me to along the way”.

Thank you Alepou, my memory of the event was weak. So he was picked up first by the “Century” oil tanker, greek rescuers board the ship, he pulls the gun in order to avoid being rescued by the greek team.

It would be interesting to see if they can salvage the fighter..a Mirage is after all a costly asset..I remember seeing an Indian Navy Sea Harrier being salvaged in rather good condition from the sea since it had lost power while in the hover. But I don’t recall reading that it was ever put back into service.

Personally i am not very optimistic because of the costs. Greek politicians aren’t fond of the armed forces anyway, so for them, one aircraft more one less, doesn’t matter much. HAI has put back in service a HAF Mirage that “crash landed” on sea some years ago, but it was in shallow waters and in very good shape. Here it is in deeper water and was abbandoned at 2000ft, plus, they ‘ve put HAI on the list for sale. I doubt they will want to spend money on that aircraft… We ‘ll see…

So is that an attrition rate of 1.36 accidents per 10,000 hours of flying? That is interesting, because its higher than that of the Indian Air Force and on par with that of the PAF..see this link that mentions the attrition rates of these 2 air forces

I don’t know. It literally says “indicator of air accidents”. One thing i know for sure, is that the fact the accident rate has declined is something “natural”. From 1991 to this day, HAF got many more new aircrafts. In 1991, we had less and less modern aircrafts, with the results of putting much strain to them, in order to intercept turkish aircrafts. So it’s not like HAF suddenly magically reduced accidents for a mysterious reason. Simply, in the 90s we had limited number of interceptors, that had to go to intercept again and again as well as perform their “normal” trainning schedules,disturbing their own regular maintenance program, while now HAF has the luxury to keep some in readiness for interceptions, have others do their regular (not involving turkish) trainning program and others to pass through regular maintenance.

That’s why they say “lies, damn lies and statistics” and why i will wait and see the trend this year before i take the words of that paper like gold.

Tsk tsk, your a to devoted patriot Mr. Aspis. That sh*t was and is uneatable. You know it and I know it.
A juicy Sovlaki on the other hand -straight from the grill- flushed down with a coupple of ice cold bright Hellas lagers.. Now that something to be proud about! Yummy…

It’s delicious! Simply there are too many eggplants on the same dish for a scandinavian to bare! 😀 We are trainned since childhood to eat our eggplants.

Suvlaki is an expertese. You can try make it at home, but it won’t be as good as the greek one. After all, WE are a PIG. Ahahaha! Only if you are of Irish descent you have a chance of making good suvlaki i guess, but even then, you lack the suvlaki tradition. 😀

why did he point the gun? did he want the Greeks to leave him back in the ocean?

He wanted to be saved by Turks. It’s a) better for the turkish SAR position, b) his career evolution would be over, once he ‘d become a “star of greek tv”, as greek journalists are fast and persistent like hyenas when they smell a story and in islands’ civillian hospitals there’s no way to avoid contact with them.

At the end he was picked up by a neutral ship (i think norvegian or some other scandinavian), so he was happy enough. Fortunately the Aegean isn’t “ocean”, but archipelago, so sooner or later many will come to the rescue… So he wanted to wait.

OK, we have the F16s B30 that HAF has decided that won’t be upgraded and if we search all hangars we may come up with some Mirage F1s. Also in HAF’s museum there are a couple of F104s. Oh and the RF4Es that are supposed to be retired this year, but we could arrange for a “hot transfer” to Libya… We need the money, we can beat any other offer. 😀

Samos… Its been a long time since I heard that name. It was my first “out of Scandinavia” vaccation as a little kid. And the last summer we spent together before our parents divorced. Gosh, time flies… I still remember playing on the rather stony/gravel-ish beach and eating that horrible Moussaka. And watching the old men playing Backgamon under the olive trees and drinking Ouzo in the evnings.. Beautiful sunsets. Beautiful island. Not totally destroyed by tourism back then (mid 80:s). Only local kids to play with. I also remember my ethusiasm and euforia of all the army vehicles you could see here and there in the countryside. The proximity to Turkey I guess…

Good to hear the Mirage guys made it out ok.

Ahaha! I like Mussaka, but not the creamy top of it (i remove it). But it depends on the restaurant. You can find some awful food specially in touristic locations. The problem with the islands is that… they want to be destroyed by tourism… Traditional jobs like fisherman, shepard, agriculture, aren’t as profitable as they used to be, because a) population decreased locally, with the younger going to mainland for studying-working and b) the “globalization” made their products become less attractive. Now we import lemons from Argentina, potatoes from Egypt, fish from Turkey, etc. There are still though some islands not so crowded by tourists or at least by teenagers, but they are the smaller ones and with less comforts.

The army vehicles are still there alright. The bigger eastern islands (Samos, Kos, Limnos, Chios, Rhodes, Lesbos) are the ones that are more seriously defended. The lesser ones have a more or less small garisson/detachment that rotates from the bigger islands. Limnos has the added bonus of having a military airfield too with F16s stationed.

Yes, the proximity with Turkey and according to Defencenet, the Mirage2000 was trainning in virtual shots with Exocet against some turkish surface vessels. 😀

Four Things:
1. Thank goodness the pilots are alive!

In deed.

2. Thank goodness there were no one else around when it crashed

Yes, fortunately it was over sea and i think i read they were at low level at the time.

3. Thank goodness the pilots were picked up by fishermen, not Turkish navy

Actually turns out that they were picked up by a speed boat of an Army Lt. Colonel that was trainning his SF team nearby. Defencenet in its rush to beat the others in details about the news, “invented” the fishermen (they probably learnt about a boat and logically thought “fishermen”). :rolleyes:

But it’s ok, in the past a dead pilot was found by a turkish ship, nothing bad happened. It’s not that they would put them in jail. The issue is more political in that Turkey wants the SAR area up to the center of the Aegean. So if you actually perform SAR up to the middle of the Aegean, de facto you enforce your position.

4. Thank goodness it was an older Mirage, not the upgraded one

Yes, considering how much the French charge to upgrade another 2000 to -5 again… 😀