So you don’t deny that the Soviet Union, for over forty years, had been exporting only second rate stuff to its allies, inside the Warsaw Pact or otherwise. Might explain some of the present day’s Russian Federation problems in exporting aircraft in general.

Deleting nuclear weapons compatibility and altering some systems such as the IFF does not make the overall weapon system “second rate”. Otherwise, the USA has been doing the exact same thing.

So how many FLANKERs were there in the Cold war anyway?:rolleyes:

Now you’re playing the numbers game, making my point for me 😀

Aeroflot might beg to differ.

The technological characteristics of the Tu-144 were NOT why it was dropped by Aeroflot.

USAF C-5s are a lot more serviceable than RuAF An-124s.

Yeah, I’m not so sure about that one. C-5s are notorious for maintenance problems. Infamous, even.

BTW, how many An-124 sorties did the Soviet AF fly to Syria in the 1973 Middle East war?:rolleyes:

Why, I don’t know, how many An-124s were in Soviet AF operational service in 1973?

There’s a good point. If Britain’s citizens want to condemn China for occupying Tibet, shouldn’t they also call for a withdrawl from Northern Ireland? And what about the movement for Scottish independence? If Tibet wishes to break away and become an independent state, surely Scotland should be allowed the same privilege?

I mean really, if the US can’t possibly handle having inferior equipment compared to the Russians how do you explain the M16… :diablo:

Come on now, the USA and the rest of the West have been dealing with inferior products for decades now. We’ve gotten over it (ok, those of us with any common sense have gotten over it).

Look at all of the Western products inferior to their Soviet or Russian counterparts:

M-16 (obvious)
F-15A (no AMRAAM? FLANKER eats it)
AH-1 (Mi-24, anyone?)
AH-64 (Ka-50 is arguably more potent albeit a later design)
Concorde (yeah, I said it)
C-5 (the reason for military charter An-124s in Afghanistan!)

I won’t even go into SAMs or other rockets/missiles, we’d be here all day.

Here’s the point: Russia and the West each had products superior to their counterpart. But all of the fanboy “well the turn radius is this XXX” comparisons are irrelevant and a massive waste of time. Garry is right; if technology won wars, we’d all be speaking German right about now. Technology is great, but you need to consider the real important elements that will affect your combat performance. Those would be things like off-board EW support, training, maintenance and spares availability, reliability, etc. Comparing the turn radius at 500 knots is a waste of everyone’s time because you’re biasing your argument by only focusing on the non-important aspects of warfighting.

Any speculation as to where they’re deployed? And where do they flight test these things?

Well, this author also refer that the df-31a was never tested, and also that the df-31 was only tested sucessfully in 2006.

Now how can the pentagon say that df-31a is fielded:confused: :confused:

That just destroys the credibility of that report

You have to take everything in context. I didn’t use unsubstantiated and potentially made-up internet message board postings to write the article, I used the publications listed as sources at the bottom. If they’re wrong, then so be it. And if you actually read it, you’ll find that I stated that the no test have been reported for the DF-31A. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been any, just that none of the available sources have reported any. If you follow the example of both Brigade 813 and the first DF-21 unit that I mention, you’ll also see that the DF-31 and DF-21 units were established well before they became operational with missiles (2008 and 1991). The DF-31A is believed to be being deployed, but the unit(s) may be far from operational as again, there have been no credible reports of a flight test to extablish initial threat availability. The 2006 DF-31 test is what established initial threat availability in the eyes of the Pentagon, implying that it represented the first, successful, full-scale test of the weapon and any associated systems. That’s how they describe it, and that’s why I referred to the 2006 flight test as being the first successful test as well.

That’s nothing. Napalm Death currently has none of the original lineup in the band.

Huh. Well, if they didn’t like that, then they’re probably going to be really irate when I post about the identified CSS-3 and CSS-4 locations :diablo:

With the kind of anti terror laws in place I wouldnt be suprised if some agency did turn up at anyones door for spouting hate against the UK government. Let me wake you up to the reality as you need a dose of it.

1) The government stopped anti war protestors who were legally trying to carry out a protests at a US base in fairford gloucestershire back in 2003 what happened to freedom to express there and to the civil liberties. Who was on board- old men and women and defenseless people who posed no threat at all. The US military had said they would fire on any protestors that breached the base….these are british citizens by the way.

Personally I think you raise a lot of valid issues, but not necessarily this one. Often times these protesters will actually illegally enter secure areas of the base (on one occasion they actually cut a hole through the fenceline at Lakenheath). That type of action simply cannot be tolerated by a law-abiding society. If this was the same organization, then I say the police may have been right to stop them before they did something really stupid or dangerous. And yes, breaching a military facility is most definitely grounds to get yourself shot at.

Also, the genius protesters at the East Midlands airport were also guilty of illegally entering the airport by cutting through the fence. In the current environment, searching their homes is a valid security procedure I’d think. Dunno if you can actually legally prevent them from meeting together, but the search was warranted. Some morons at Heathrow did the same thing, actually climbing on top of an airliner to unveil a banner.

Protesting is fine, I have no issue with it. But you have to be mindful of the rules, and your right to protest extends only so far as it doesn’t interfere with the rights of others. In both cases above they caused major delays at the airports, infringing on the rights of hundreds of passengers.

Lastly, protests have to be registered over here as well, if they’re large scale or in certain areas. This is not to prevent people from protesting, this is actually to help protect the rights of the protesters. That way police and whatnot are often deployed to keep people who don’t share their views from causing trouble.