Now that is a really stupid argument, unless you consider both were permanently sucking fuel from the tankers because that’s the only way to keep the fighters as fully fueled as possible.

Really, what do u think? They wait until the aircraft is almost empty before refueling over the North Atlantic? Now, THAT is a stupid arguement.

Easy win? Have you ever looked at the sheer size of both countries?

If there was no revolution in Iran (and subsequently no hostage crisis), there would have been no war, in the first place.. After Khomeini took power in 1976, US and Gulf dictators (SA, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar..) feared the same happening on their own backyard. So they were looking for someone willing to stop Khomeini’s attempts to support islamic revolutions all over the place.. someone strong and foolish enough to expose his own people to such tremendous war effort.. and that was Hussein..

Later when Hussein demanded at least partial repayment of his war efforts, he was turned down by everyone.. so he has decided to take it by force.. leading ultimately to the invasion of Kuwait.. the rest is well known..

Please, Please…. Don’t pretend to have knowledge of history. The above is an example of the post-911 internet revisionist history of the Middle East. While it’s obvious that your worldview was shaped by the events of the last 16 years (I’m guessing your in your early 30’s), don’t make the mistake of applying today’s attitudes and mores to view the past.

The U.S. played no part in Iraq invading Iran. In the early years of the war, Iraq was firmly a Soviet client state. Iran had supported the Kurds fighting a rebellion against Hussein in the early 70’s and there had been several clashes between the Shah’s forces and Hussein previously. Hussain wanted to be viewed at the leader of the Pan-Arab movement and to wipe the eye of Sadat. He wanted to ensure Iraqi access to the gulf by taking Shatt al-Arab, and avenge his previous rough handling by the Iranian military. He waited till the Ayatollah competed the purge of many of the trained staff of the Iranian armed forces before attacking.

The US gradually began to turn toward Iraq due to the Iranian counter offensive in 1982. Prior to that, there were still some in the US government hoping that Iran would swing back to the US camp (the U.S. even after the overthrow of the Shah, had an understanding with Iran that the U.S. would protect Iran from any hostile attack from the U.S.S.R- The rapid deployment force was created in part to form a blocking force in the Zagreb mountains to resist a Soviet invasion). After 1982, the U.S. was worried that the Iranians would win and many of the moderate forces within the Iranian military had been purged. The attitudes shifted toward propping up Hussein to prevent collapse. The major players in Iraq were, right up until 1990, the French and the Soviets. The U.S. material support for Iraq was minimal, not to mention that the US was still clandestinely selling arms to Iran (Iran-Contra ring a bell?).

Edit- always fight with spell check on Saddam’s last name Hussein, thankfully I rarely have to spell his last name anymore.

The U.S. can be blamed, along with the rest of the UN, for doing nothing about the invasion, nor condemning it.

Sigh..

We wont see any weapons bays on this bird being used anytime soon.

What makes you come to this conclusion? It is not exactly a security breach to show inert weapons drops. On the contrary, without showing the launchers, or inner bay diameters (dimensions) there would be little intel to be gleaned from “Pak-fa moves to weapon separation testing” with appropriate shot of AAM clearing bay doors. Hell, the J-20 (which IMHO) is not as far along as the Pak-fa has shown PL-10’s on launch rails. It is peculiar that there has been no (official) signs with state trials so close. Not a criticism- an observation, weapons trials take some time with internal carriage as every weapon has to be cleared.

Well as the update says T-50-3 is doing “weapon testing trials”, what that means exactly is unknown. Might be carrying dummies (even Su-47 has done that though), might be carrying real weapons, might be dropping dummies, might be launching real weapons. Although if it was the last then i think it would be likely we would hear about a launch happening. Basically who knows; if they want to keep actual launches secret they would do that with no issues whatsoever.

Thanks. I would assume that we’d have seen baffles or a fence attached in front of weapons bays for first drop trials, but as u say, we’ve seen transparency on Pak-fa turn opaque lately.

I’ve been around here for a long Time.
Don’t act like you don’t know the early LockMart SC stamp.

Yes it started with F-22.
Then F-35 started off as SC requirement very early in its development.
Guess LM thought the Huge F135 was a savoir, and SC was a fact.

Later in F-35 development, it quickly became clear that this was doubtfull.
Then the first report of F-35 KPP came out.

Heard you say this before. The fact is that SC was never a requirement of the JSF program, nor was the F-35 ever supposed to SC. L-M stated this, the AF program manager stated this. Separate forum rumor and wishful thinking from program requirements and statements.

Firstly, no one is disputing the integrity of the Department of Defense. However, mistakes have been made in the past (there is a catalogue of procurement disasters) as well as unnecessary pork barrel spending in not just aircraft and no doubt will be made in future.

We know that LM have to make attempts to refute the assertions made that the F-35 final product in the way it panned out is not the optimum solution to replace legacy aircraft. when these attempts are made by obvious bots like mig-31bm it can be frustrating is all I’ll say.

The F-35 will do just fine and carry out its mission objectives for the next few decades…while LM know of its short comings (of not being able to carry out all roles required because of the constraints of a single airframe) they cannot come out and say it and shot themselves in the foot.

Furthermore, counter measures and newer iterations of area denial systems against the F-35 will continue to be developed at a relatively cheaper cost that will negate any potential advantage. For example, it would be challenging for relatively short-ranged F-35s operating off the Chinese coast with S-400 or S-500 systems.

In light of the above it is legitimate to question the whole basis of the program and to ask is it even justified or required by many air forces other than the US.

Sure, but procurement disasters tend to start, IMHO, with congress delaying development programs, not defining caps requirements, and stretching out production ramp ups that lead to cost overruns. It is not a question of IF the F-35 is needed, there is no alternative, and really never was. The F-22, while obviously an extremely capable aircraft, would have killed recapitalization based on upgrade and maintenance costs alone. F-16’s/F-15’s? does anyone really think that a 100m dollar F-15E would be a better recapitalization asset than a newer multi-role fighter? The air force had no choice, nor did the Marines, they have hundreds of fighters reaching block obsolescence and airframe fatigue. The navy? let’s just say that the F-35C is not particularly attractive for the navy, but I would admit bias that I’m not in favor of the “c” model. Other air forces are getting a very capable fighter, with manufacturing offsets that make the F-35 an attractive procurement option.

As far as the whole countermeasure thing, claiming it would be cheaper for adversaries to develop counters for the F-35, I’ll just say that the media definition of “stealth” as some power onto it’s own is for talking heads and brainless sheep. LO technology is not, nor was it ever a magic wand of invisibility. What it is, and has been, is an advantage not easily countered when coupled with C3, cyber, and EM attacks. Anything that breaks the kill chain gives advantage to the attacker.

You really need to take Prozac because you are the one talking gibberish.

– P.S.- don’t quote Msphere if you want to be taken seriously instead of another child banging on the table yelling “i don’t care about facts, my opinion is that it is fat, ugly, so it must suck”