My understanding is that the S-500 is a new system, that has been in development since the 1980’s (halted for a bit due to funding issues). The S-400 should represent the penultimate iteration of the S-300P family I think, with the S-500 being something new, possibly using one of the new MARS modular radar systems to provide long-range acquisition.

Also, regarding limited ABM capability, there should not be anything preventing the systems from accepting EW or preliminary targeting data from the LPAR or BMEW radar systems in Russia (Dnepr, Daryal, Voronezh, etc).

No offense but do you think it would have been better to have sat it in front of the U.N. for ten years and have to attack anyway because the U.N. did nothing?

And what right did the UN have to monitor Syrian weapons development?

From his location, I think he is suggesting that this is an everyday occurrence, of no small consequence. The fact that it happened to professional people, relaxing on holiday and not far from their responsiblities is probably not something that will be appreciated on the other side of the pond.

First off, my being American and these people being European has absolutely nothing to do with what I think about the situation. The fact that you think that I have a certain mindset based on my nationality actually says far more about you than what I said says about me.

Regardless, my problem is that these social interest stories are becoming the norm in the news media. When one person out of four billion or so goes missing, why in the world is that a major international headline? What about the fact that oil has hit a record high? Or the fact that, in the USA, the moratorium on not taxing the internet is set to expire November 1st? Somebody went missing. It happens. And you know what? If I wasn’t inundated with the details every thirty seconds I might be moved to actually give a damn anymore, rather than get irritated at the latest attempt to keep real, pertinent information out of my hands.

“From his location”…sheesh, get off your high horse. You’d think, sometimes, that people on the Eastern side of the pond had some sort of serious superiority complex.

Oh cool, I see you guys have discovered just what is wrong with Western society these days. One person out of a few billion goes missing, and it becomes an international fiasco. People just have no faith in good old social Darwinism anymore.

Dude, go back and take a good look at the first few frames. It looks more like it’s being pulled out of the back of a plane than falling out of a bombay. Pay particular attention to the front of the bomb.

It looked like the rear latch released first, and the bomb was pulled to the rear by the parachute after the forward latch released. People seem to forget that while the Tu-160 has been primarily a strategic missile carrier, the two bomb bays are actually rather enormous. The Kh-55 launchers don’t even fill up the bays. Fitting something like this into a BLACKJACK’s bay would probably work, and probably occurred given the video footage.

Futureweapons on the Discovery Military Channel has some aviation-related stuff sometimes. They covered the F-22A once, and the visit to the THAAD site was great stuff.

The Discovery Science Channel has a show called Building The Ultimate, and they documented the assembly and operation of a Nimitz-class carrier. Seeing how they build those things was pretty interesting.

Apart from that, there are some aviation-related shows on the Discovery Military Channel on a pretty regular basis still. Not nearly as cool as the old Wings show, but still worth a watch every now and then when they cover something interesting.

Given the current situation, I thought this might be appropriate:

http://geimint.blogspot.com/2007/09/syrian-sam-network.html