New START still covers heavy strategic nuclear bombers. On-site inspections still take place.

Indeed, but the point I was trying to make is that people write that Backfire’s inflight refueling capability was removed as a condition of SALT II or START. That is not correct.

The Soviets chose to remove the capability to reclassify Backfire as non-strategic and therefore not counted in the strategic launchers tally.

In no treaty does it say “remove IFR from Backfire”.

As for the treaty.. well one would presume that since the USSR doesnt exsist anymore all these treatys are no longer in use?? Or did it specifiy Russian and other Eastern bloc countries by name?

The question of Backfire IFR was originally raised in SALT II back in the late 1970s. It was deferred to SALT III which became the START series at Reagan’s insistence.

Edit: from a web search it seems that he kept bunging more and more stuff into SALT III proposals until eventually it made sense to rename it

Once condition that Russia made on ratifying START in 1989 was that nuclear-basing successor states ( Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus ) from the break-up of the USSR would also have to be bound.

Edit: START was signed but not ratified prior to the break-up of the USSR; I think those are the political terms.

Edit2: Upon examination, the elimination of Backfire IFR was not included in the provisions of SALT II or START. It was stated in a letter from Brezhnev to Carter which:

promised the bomber would not be deployed in intercontinental mode and that its production would not exceed 30 per year.

This letter appears to have been drafted to ease ratification of SALT II in the USA; there were a lot os Congressmen concerned that Backfire would not count towards the “launcher” total even with semi-strategic range. As part of the ratification the USSR was requested ( and complied ) to sign and acknowledge the promises, but violation of them does not seem to have been sufficient to abrogate SALT II itself.

Of course the end-run around that was to develop Blackjack…

Edit3: START II did not have any reference to Backfire IFR. That treaty dates from the early 1990s.

Hi its been a long time since i last posted any photographs
so here are 3 of a Thai Navy Bell Helicopter in the British Airways Hanger at Glasgow and 1 of the AN-124 that carried it out of Glasgow.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75122977@N05/7408685402/

Thanks Hugh, I always like to see pictures of the 214. Not the most popular type but it has a certain charm.

Apparently the original 214 A through C were rushed in development and essentially had a scaled-up 205 dynamic system, which caused issues. For the ST like that shown they did a fair amount of redesign but it never really became popular; Bell had to be jolted out of the teetering rotor mindset.

Except for the Thai forces, who bought half a dozen. But I don’t think there are many types of aircraft they haven’t bought ( glad I’m not running their logistics )

“Stranded passengers – numbering 6,000 – will have the return half of their tickets honoured by British Airways, Pan American Airways, Air Florida and British Caledonian. ”

Am I correct in saying that only BA are still going?

Only BA remain as a name but BCal did produce an interesting gastric upset after being digested by the BA acquisition machine; they managed to break BA’s fascination with Boeing.

The last BCal-to-BA A320-111 was only retired in December 2007.

Anyway, here’s what I have scribbled inside the back-cover of my Aerofax ( no source for these figures though ) for the Tu-22M3:

In kg:

Empty 58,000
Max take-off 124,000
Max fuel 53,500

Hydraulics add roughly 600 kg by the figures Gordon gives. Plus crew and their lunch. Say 2,000 for all the wet stuff.

So Tu-22M3 with two Kh-22s ( each 5,800 plus two BD-45K pylons ) has already bitten one or two tonnes into its maximum fuel payload.

Dear Cherry Ripe !
If You want to know more about Russian Chetaks – try this link:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=87571&page=23

and look through that thread, beginning from post #670 and see the posts #675, 676, 677, 680, 708, 713. I feel sure, this will be useful for You.

Fantastic, thanks Flyer! I had just found an accident report about RA-01187 and had linked back to its previous identity AH-263 to find this:

When the C-in-C of of the Soviet Navy, Admiral S.G. Gorshkov, visited India in the early 1980s, he also rode in a “Chetak” of the Indian Navy. Gorshkov seems to have liked the agile helicopter, and as the Indians had always complained that the Soviet Union did not buy any Indian weapons while India bought a lot of Soviet ones, he decided to acquire some “Chetaks” for the Soviet Navy.

Six were allocated to the Navy, five survivors being transferred to DOSAAF. One each to Mil and Kamov OKBs.

At least one of the K-1s was serialled “92” in very pale tone, perhaps light blue or yellow.

According to a number of French sites, the French Atlantique 2 MPA have dropped GBU-12s on Mali during the last few days.

That’s a good idea, given the scale of northern Mali and the range of the airframe.

The French deployed Atlantics / Atlantiques quite extensively in operations in Central Africa throughout the 1980s, not just for endurance but also on account of their ELINT and C&C capabilities. They also acted as comms relay platforms for ad hoc strike authorizations which had to go up the chain to JCS and civilian authorities in Paris.

The ATL2 has a handy Tango imaging IR turret for surveillance.

Edit: aircraft deployed in the 1980s were fitted with a fixed FLIR pod on outer starboard pylon; type not specified. Wing hardpoints are stressed to 1000 kg inners and 750 kg outers and can be fully-loaded simultaneously, so plenty of scope there.