I would think of putting Monica’s open mouth … to more pertinent uses. Thinkin of one ! How about a fly catcher….err some missile decoy/laser/teaser ?? :rolleyes:

haha is it called Monica because it has a big open mouth and fat lips? will it have funny stains on its paint job? 😀 think Lewinsky!

China has a licence to produce early model Kilo’s of the Type 877EKM range. The Type 636 are being aquired currently under a new deal that will also see some of the older PLAN Kilo’s updated to the Type 636 standard.

Some of the indiginous built kilo’s will replace some of the older Romeo’s that were built locally!

The Israeli Dolphin class were built in Germany to a British design with American money (go figure :rolleyes: ). There are only three in service as only three were built, these are INS Dolphin, INS Leviathan and INS Tekuma. These boats replaced a similar number of Type 206/Gal class boats. There was talk of them buying another one (not two) about six months ago, but the finances were diverted to their new Corvette program instead (which is also having difficulties).

AFAIK the Israelis paid for the new Dolphins themselves. they were denied FMS funding for the subs as they were not built in the USA…

well they picked the uglier plane back at the ATF flyoff in 1991. so now they give the cuter one a chance?

wasn’t HMS Battlaxe – the present-day Rademaker – the brit frigate iin Clancy’s Red Storm Rising?

not enough space!?!?! the Tomcat is so much bigger, mind you. the volume in the nose taken up by the AWG-9 was humongous. i bet you could put an APG-77 in there, and some F-22 CIPs, and ALR-94, and have room to spare. okay i may be exaggerating, but there was definitely space enough for off-the-shelf F-22 components without having to spend money developing APG-79.

not that i don’t acknowledge the other reasons for the Tomcat’s demise, mind. there are good reasons. but i dont think space is one of them.

technical aspects aside, i find the MiG-29 a much better looking fighter than the Hornet. hehe. more angular, brutish, bulkier and businesslike!

once SDB/Longshot/DAMASK and ATFLIR come online, F-18 will own MiGs in A2G. no russian system can match the long range, cheapness, flexibility (GPS/IIR), precision and huge loadouts (4 SDBs per pylon) the Hornets will have. i doubt MiG-29s are ever going to be able to independently bomb precisely 16 separate targets 60 miles away in a single sortie, something the Hornet will soon be capable of.

Hornet-B/Ds can be backfitted with APG-79, which will own everything from NIIP and Phazotron in the forseeable future.

IMO the russians have just about caught up with the generation of US air-launched weapons developed in the 1980s/90s- as Srbin and dionis have said. but they are not battle-proven, and lots of people still doubt if they’ll live up to manufacturer’s promises. those the russians have in development can’t match the weapons US planes are going to get in the coming years – SDB, AARGM, JCM etc. except A2A, where the KS-172 and ramjet R-77 will still beat AIM-120D. but then there are F-22 and -35, whose stealth negates the range advantages of russian AAMs.