Qatar has F-16s now.

You might possibly be thinking of Bahrain or Oman, swerve……?

Best regards

Steve Rush

p.s. what Qatar do have is plenty of US infrastructure and facilities….

Quite honestly, the differences between Rafale and Typhoon are so marginal that your *comparison* in favor of the Rafale sounds almost comical. Rafale is, indeed a nice aircraft but to place it one league above the EF is ridiculous.

What do you expect, Flex? It’s PILOTGHT posting under a pseudonym.

Same old, same old….. :rolleyes:

As I’ve said before several times, the “rumour” of 48 + 48 Rafales for Saudi came from a single source in France: ‘Les Echos’. It has just been repeated and regurgitated (especially here on this forum, actually) time and time again. Is there any substance to the rumour? Probably about as much as every other French press story that had Rafale being sold to every North African Arab nation that you can think of……

Best regards

Steve Rush

How fast was the CV990?

Good call: when I was a kid and “into” watching the ‘Smartie Tubes’ at our local airports, I always thought that the Coronado was the fastest airliner. Used to see a lot of them back in the day, as a Spanish airline called ‘Spantax’ flew them into London-Gatwick.

Best regards

Steve Rush

why would they use foreign helos ?
are they still using them on current operations like afghanistan, irak, or lebanon? :confused:

The contracts are open to worldwide public tender: if you happen to own a few helicopters in the right class then you can even submit a bid yourself, Fanch 🙂

See http://www.un.org/Depts/ptd/pdf/tender.pdf for more details

Best regards

Steve Rush

The chopper is a Eurocopter EC725 HUS operated by the French Army’s DAOS (special ops unit).

Both shots look like they were taken at Farnborough this year; the EC725 HUS definitely was.

Best regards

Steve Rush

No i am not saying that i am demanding this and demanding that!! And Just to clarify it i wasnt the one talking about anti-american sentiment and bla bla bla so try reading up on who is saying what. Now as i understand it a report that is from official Sources has to have more credibility then rumours and Page 3 stuff . The entire gossip page 3 extraveganza began when some rumours *( not reports from RAF officials or those from the MOD) began flying that the EF picked the F-22 from 80km and what not . AW went to the Officials at nellis dealing with the F-22 raptor and printed that ACCORDING TO OFFICIAL THAT WENT ON RECORD the F-22 was not up in the air at the same time and that raptors do not ( did not at that point) fly routinly with their full combat stealth which in that enviroment is only understandable as the raptor was not operational or required to be in operational ( combat ready state) at nellis and was undergoing testing , integration work rather then performing combat squadron duties. Now as compared to page 3 rumours about i heard this from this dude who knows this squadron officer AW presented a quoted response from an official , If you wish to weigh the rumour in the same leauge as the OFFICIAL response it is up to you .

Almost all of that becomes completely irrelevant, however, as soon as you realise that the two Typhoons at Nellis are still there (and will be indefinitely).

More chance of aliens landing on the lawn at Capitol Hill than Raptors and Typhoons not being in the air at the same time over the Neliis Range….

Steve Rush

I mentioned this transfer in the “USAF Flanker” thread.

Although that UN register report from 2001 is intriguing, it doesn’t guarantee that the Su-27P ever came to the UK, or that a UK Gov’t agency was involved. Recent transfers of aircraft like L-39s, Su-25s and Mi-8s has confirmed what some of us had suspected for a few years: that private companies acting as brokers (middlemen) are often declared as the final destination by the exporting country.

It is possible (although perhaps unlikely) that the Su-27P mentioned could have been bought-up by a UK company and sold as a “paper transfer” immediately to another state.

Hope this makes sense.

Best regards

Steve Rush

A couple of points for consideration:

1) Anybody point us to photos of US SOCOM’s U-28A aircraft? If not, then I guess they don’t really have them. :rolleyes:

2) Where are the photos taken of the F-117A before the programme went public? After all, it flew from Tonopah for several years prior to that event.

3) Where did the Su-27P declared as exported to the UK from Ukraine in 2001 go? This appears in the returns to the UN Conventional Arms Register.

4) Do any of the forum members who reject out-of-hand the idea that the US has flown at least one Su-27 in assessments, or similar, have any idea how much Soviet-, Polish- and Chinese-built equipment has been shipped out to Groom Lake (or other similar facilities) down the decades? At what point in time do we consider that the DoD decided this was all a waste of time, money and effort and they put a stop to it?

5) In the early 1990s a batch of Lim aircraft (Polish-built MiGs) turned-up at AMARC (Davis Monthan’s desert boneyard). It turned out that these had been in the US for several years and had flown in OpFor threat scenario exercises. So where are the photos of these taken whilst they were flying and “in-service”? There are none that I know of, so does this mean it didn’t happen?

Steve Rush