Sorry, pfcem was correct in answering many of your statements.

Don’t be sorry. Tell it like it is. I ain’t got no issue with that bit. Will have to go back and correct da list (made somewhat harder by the need to look at pfcem’s reply without loggin’ in and then loggin’ to correct but rods, backs, blah, blah)

A lot of your data/opinions seem to be wrong…

Twas an attempt to pick the (contrasting and contradictory) bones out of this and previous threads. That bits are factually correct comes as no surprise and twas in fact rather the point of the exercise.

and you’re not very polite stooping to insults.

Not sure I made any. In fact I’ve gone out of my way to state previously that despite the tenor of his posts (which I find needlessly aggressive, you may disagree) there may well be gold in his posts. Last post was just a hands in the air and give up moment.

I’ll give a point to pfcem…

Good oh

It appears to be Pfcem’s favourite expression.

Well its in a two way tie with “BS” but pretty close 😉

None of which means that he isn’t talking truth but I confess that I’m finding it harder and harder to keep an open mind.

A particularly handsome, charismatic poster of godlike intellect (username of ‘Al’ or something like that) previously posted that the drink in question wasn’t even Kool Aid which is a specific (different) brand.

Is this summary of previous posts purported by their posters to be facts correct?:

Boeing smaller but needs longer runway
EADS bigger but needs shorter runway
EADS has cargo capacity
Cargo capacity may or may not be useful
EADS will lift more fuel
That extra fuel may not be needed now
That extra fuel may not be needed ever
USAF moving to an (even) more expeditionary model so future fuel requirements are tricky to predict
EADS and Boeing both have a number of airframes (of varying ages) which might be better suited for conversion to the role
Boeing US-owned so money will stay in US hands if they win
The above is not universally agreed
Boeing would keep open an existing production line if they win
Boeing may build new civil airframes in this facility in addition
EADS will build new facility if they win
EADS facility might be used only for assembly possibly only final assembly
EADS facility may be used for future EADS civil aircraft
No firm figures available on US jobs secured by either proposal. Figures have been released not all are agreed
Both have finalised on having drogues
Thus either will support USN and/or other friendlies
Some Boeing employees are implicated in corruption wrt first round
But Boeing may have blown the whistle on this themselves
USAF not getting involved in some bonkers PFI scheme (PFI is a peculiarly British plan for paying too much for big projects but at least it keeps the expenditure on a different line in the accounting)
PfCEM has found a document with at least some lines which support his(?) favoured solution and at least some(?) which don’t
PfCEM has quoted from said document but is not prepared to post it or a link to it

Any FACTUAL corrections or omissions?

Al

what do you mean with this?

Clearly I don’t know what OP meant but my reading is:

There are consistent and constant rumours about RAF (with Foxhunter), USN (with SPS-48) and RN (with unspecified radar) realising that your big main radar set is absolutely the best antenna to use for ESM and ECM.

IFF Sampson can be used to selectively jam/intefere with incoming missiles and aircraft then you will not need anywhere need as many SAMs as one would first think.

I’m a big fan of softkill especially when it doesn’t rely on expendables (i.e. chaff and other decoys) or generating a big ‘here I am please come and blow me up‘ signature (various electronic noise systems)

Good spot.

And also good decision IMO to fit.

Presumably Millenium 30mms?

I think everyone agrees on this point it’s a bit daft to have a small hangar it would be better with a large double hangar to allow 2 large Helo’s to be carried.

Full agreement from me. It looks like faff for faff’s sake to me.

In regards to the Venator the davits are pretty daft especially as you have pointed out with the large garage space and the fact that there seems to be three launch points down there. I would like them gone and a larger permanent hangar for a FLynx in it’s place.

I’m only making a (semi) informed guess here. Are the seaboats going to deployable in rougher seas from the midships davits? Anything launched from near sea level from the stern is going to run the risk of shipping a significant amount of water.

The big limiting factor for helo ops is not so much how rough the ogin can be to launch and recover helo. But how rough to launch and recover the ship’s boat. One cannot launch the helo if there is not a boat to recover the aircrew should it have to ditch.

So the permanent hangar (good idea and I fully support) would be less useful without usable boats as the aircraft cannot be used anyway.

I think that sometime anti-Americanism diminishes the IQ.

Can do. Same as any rabid pro- or anti- ism

I thought that UK did buy weapons from US between sept 39-dec. 41 to fight the Germans. I find now that many in UK believe that it was to bail out US economy…

I may be misreading other people’s posts but I’ve not seen any assertion along those lines.

I think that its pretty clear that UK bought US arms coz UK needed US arms. I cannot see the Uk having had any room for altruism at that point.

The corollary of the UK buying lots of needed arms was that UK hard currency went to US.

There may have been altruistic arms manufacturers and suppliers in the US but I suspect that they made full profit on these sales.

I believe that post WWI was the first time that the US stopped being a debtor nation. It was only after WWI that she was able to pay back the huge loans taken out to industrialise (and in particular to lay down the railroads) mainly from Europe.

Then depression hit. (bad for all but particularly bad for US)

Then financial implications of arming the Allied Powers hit (good for US)

Only a Brit can turn around something that contributed to their continued survival as a nation to helping pull the US out of recession.

There are certainly great acts of individual US heroism which an awful lot of Brits and Europeans (and others) are very grateful for. A non-trivial number came about before the US as a nation declared war upon the axis powers. And there may well have been altruistic US policy makers and decision-makers who wanted the US to get stuck in in order to save democracy. But …… that don’t change the facts that:

the US joined WWII once she had been attacked by an axis power

US financial aid to the UK came with financial, territorial and sphere of interest strings attached

If it where not for lend leas and a whole host of American help you would be speaking German right now

Nope. Russian. Very few serious military historians believe that Germany would have beaten the USSR by the time the US joined the war. Don’t get me wrong I ain’t daft enough to see Soviet State Capitalism as being anything better or more benign than National Socialism so I’m glad that the US did get stuck in and that the US stayed engaged during the Cold War. But neither do i buy that US engagement was all about the common good or that all US corporate interests (any more than anyone else’s) were/are about making life better for the common man.

Yup, I do know who buys T-Bills, individual investors like myself as well as foreign governments.

I don’t know the actual hard numbers and I’d be fascinated to read them if someone less lazy than I were to post a link but I believe that a more than significant amount of US debt (and I’m sure that there are more economically precise terms to be used) is owned by sovereign wealth funds not private investors.

All of which has nowt to do with whether F35 will be a good or worthwhile or cost-effective warplane. But I’d argue has much to do with whether the programme is a Good Thing for the allies of the US or indeed for the US itself.

The only Argentinians I have met face to face have been anything but anti-Brit.

Now it maybe the circles I move in or just meeting polite, nice people or any other valid reason why this observation cannot be extrapolated across a national population. Certainly I expect grieving relative of someone killed in the Falklands War might not feel the same or to have more mixed feelings.

But ….. all of the flesh and blood actual Argentine nationals I’ve spoken to have expressed the feeling that UK beating the generals over the Falkland directly led to the juntas downfall. Some stating a (pretty surprising) sense of gratitude. A couple even mentioned that Argentine deaths during the war were a ‘**** off a cliff‘ compared to the number of people who disappeared.

Human beings have a depressing ability to repeat historical mistakes without learning owt, but would anyone gain anything politically from seeming to have something in common with Videla and the rest of his jolly cronies?