Wilde

About the more advanced avionics I'd be skeptical. It has an AESA but apart from that there is nothing which implies it's avionics were better. The TVC doesn't make it lighter or immune to physics. In reality the aerodynamical profile of the Raptor is not even known. It could well be that the TVC only makes up for the stealth compromises. And don't ask me about the stealth part. Sure it decreases enemy radar efficiency somewhat. But I still believe it doesn't work against top tier militaries. Not in the way it was implemented in the Raptor. Or any other publicly known American stealth fighter or bomber. An unproven stealth system, that costs insane amounts of maintenance during peace time surely is not something I'd consider a game changer. In an actual war, where sorties and efficiency matter the Raptor would look a lot different from what people think of it now.

As I served in a tank platoon I have to say the regular infantry (called Panzergrenadiere in Germany) are my favorites. Without them our job would be virtually impossible.

The article from EF GmbH named the "493rd Squadron". So pointing out it likely might have been some lame bombers seems a bit strange. Meanwhile there is not much happening over the A400M discussions: threats, blamings, meetings but no results yet, also covered by Reuters

Bomb alarm at Munich airport You may not have heard of this fascinating story yet. Today Munich airport was paralyzed by a bomb alarm. The BBC article isn't very clear about what seems to have happened. Reportedly a man's notebook was identified to contain explosives during a normal check in. The officers triggered a bomb alarm accordingly. Yet somehow the man grabbed his stuff and walked into the terminal without anyone trying to stop him or even following him. Not knowing where he was the officials then decided to close the terminal and search for him. After a couple of hours of search they haven't found him yet. They suppose he might have entered his plane which then departed. Apparently they didn't stop planes from still taking off immediately. Looks like security is not only an issue in America as we have been told during the christmas days. Other authorities can fail horribly too. All those debates about the new generation body scanners are laughable when the people using them are just inept. edit: btw, the planes which took off from the respective terminal went to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo according to a spokesperson of the Bavarian police. They supposedly left Munich at about 15:50 local time (1450 zulu/GMT).

Hahahaha, that's just great. Dropping turds on enemy ground. Also that first article in your list gives a good read. About Topol's riddle I'd say it's Western, but not NATO. Looks like a 1960ies transport or trainer. If my eyes aren't fooling me the VSI reads m/sec as unit. Fuel gauge and some sort of flap indicator are in English. So I suppose it is an export version of a plane built in a country that doesn't use imperial units. In other words: I have no clue what it is. :D

C'est manifique, à la bonheur! It was well worth the time to wait for this wonderful mod. Chapeau!

Sad thing that Su-27 crash. After all flying fighter jets is dangerous even during peace times. Condolences to the pilot's family and friends. About T-50 I bet you there will be at least 3 more "fake" first photograph revealings before we finally get to see it. ;)

;) But seriously, weapons will never stay as they are. They will improve even without being used. In Terminator Skynet obviously was a mistake. But in reality a sophisticated AI will eventually be reality in every top tier military. It's only a matter of time. It's faster, it's deadlier, it's cheaper - all in all it is more efficient by magnitudes.

No, it will only drop back to a level where they have to do without it. A F-22 without satellite link can still defend an airspace or take down it's mission goal AWACS or whatever. Sure it would be much more difficult and dangerous, but still possible. A jammed drone OTOH would be lost outright. It would simply follow it's last order without suitable AI, i.e. course 316 or fly back home. UAVs might be the future. But with current technology they're not capable of replacing manned fighters.

For once I agree with GG completely. Unmanned fighters are not going to be really useful unless some insanely effective AI is employed for it. With the current systems you either need control posts near the battle space, which will be top priority for IRBMs, cruise missiles and so on. Or you need a satellite system, that allows you to do it from Virginia. Then again this system would be blown out of the sky faster than you can say "missile shield" once fighting starts. Even if you'd create a distributed system similar to for example the internet, maybe even incorporating the internet, than massive hacking attacks would make it mostly useless quite quickly. One way or another, you'd be out of air superiority, SEAD, tactical and strategical bombing, aerial supplies and so on immediately when the command system is crippled. The only thing you could do then would be to simply launch any missile you have in some missile bunker. Not particularly subtile.

As long as they've got nothing new in the pipe I bet you this number will go down to something like 0.0000001m2 or something with the years passing by. It's almost like a running gag how they put zero's between the dot and the one. :lol: If they are serious about stealth I doubt anything they state can be really believed. I mean obscurity is part of the design after all. ;)

Yes well, the Königstiger was a bad concept. It was superior to any other tank of the time - when the infrastructure allowed it like in Germany or Benelux/northern France. What I meant was, that despite sustained bombardment the military industry was able to produce more equipment in 1944 than any year before. And most of it was state of the art still, like for example the machine guns (massive numbers + quality), the planes (unique jet fighters in WW2), the submarines (numbers + quality) and so on. It's a bit flawed argument admittedly. Don't want to compare Russia now with Germany then. I just wanted to point out, that a smaller industry doesn't result in a guaranteed military production inferiority. Maybe I should have skipped it all together. :music_whistling: Yeah, the different calendars in use confused me. Though at least it made me go read up about it. Always nice to learn about things like that. :P

What does "New Year" mean here? Gregorian Calendar? Also, those speculations about price and ability made me giggle. You know, in WW2 the Allies bombed the sh*t out of Germany trying to end production of military gear. They ruined Germany's economy but that had no significant effect on quality or quantity of German gear. Meaning: the American economy is not automatically an indicator of quality or quantity in military equipment. Just because the total turnover is 5 times as big doesn't mean they can produce 5 times the planes or 5 times the quality. It just means they produce more food (cars, sneekers, houses, TV shows..) - and we all know they consume more food (cars, sneekers, houses, TV shows..) too. ;)

Thx Vekkinho for clearing that up. So this means the Su-47 is not really testing missile launches but something else about the weapon bay. If at all. The bay could as well be on it from a former test.

Is there a test firing range in Zukovsky actually? Or can they only do "dry" tests like simulated missile launches? Yeah, that's my guess too. I doubt it will look like a clone of something we already know. Only a few shapes like maybe the nose, the canopy or the tail fins will look familiar I suppose. If I'm guessing correctly, then it wont take long until people start asking for the reasons of the differences. Lot's of interesting stuff to be talked about then. Looking forward to it.

Well, a South African company contributed to it after all (some fuselage parts according to Wikipedia). Even if they opted to not buy it they still were part of it. Doesn't bother me much. Hope Airbus manages to produce it without any delays now (unlike that huge airliner they do). Maybe that would even end in South Africa getting their initial order too. One can dream. ;)

Well, not Christmas yet... ;) The bird looks good. But those insanely long delays are really bad. One wonders what they are doing there at Airbus.

Even if the PAK-FA flies this month I doubt we get to see pictures of it before next year. But it would make sense to start testing it now. Russians always liked to test their prototypes during winter months. From what I have read the first prototype has already been delivered to Zhukovsky for static tests in November.

This pretty much. The US consider South America as their rightful sphere of influence. They went as far as liquidating many people directly and running wars down there indirectly to keep their grip on it. This was happening until only 20 years ago, and it started over a century ago. So understandably they're pissed off if Southern American countries suddenly grow a pair, reduce their influence and even go for *communism*. ;)

Haha, initially I was scared by that too. I believed I would be upgrading my rack often. But as I found out the actual updates I did are not interfering with limited activations. As the engine stays the same I was merely spending money on displays and other gear. I'd say you'd have to be very rich or unusually keen on being up-to-date to actually run into troubles there. Accordingly you'd have to spend lots of money in hardware and new games for it being worth it. And then a few bucks would hardly matter.

Well, he's feeding a low instinct. What kind of newspaper is the Daily Mirror anyways? Writing such an article is one thing, but publishing it is something else.

I can't believe it! I have been googling the internet for a good Su-27 pit for almost 2 years without any success, only to find the most marvelous one right here in this forum! To not see the forest for the trees... Both the panel and the stick are really beautiful. Looking forward to buying the kits when you're finished with them (if I can afford it that is ;)). Rep inbound for all three of you. :D

Great news! Way more than I expected. Brilliant! :pilotfly:

I believe GG was making fun of a guy on another bulletin board. In an argument over how awesome the Rafale is that person explained how the Rafale can fly at such low TAS that if the wind is strong enough it would actually fly backwards. Quite funny to watch, beating any reality show I could think off.

Dare I say? This sounds familiar somehow. :lol: ;)