Lucas_From_Hell

Funny how the F-117 - with the aerodynamics of a matchbox and defence armament consisting of prayers and an ejection seat - was revered as a force to be reckoned with, and a commander's worst nightmare. Enough aircraft were lost over areas like Baghdad because of SAM/AAA, in situations where the F-35 would have come out unscathed, and the F-117 did so repeatedly. Make that supersonic, more maneuverable and able to bite back and you have a lot of trouble to deal with. Stealth was always a pain to deal with. Remember, German troops were extremely demoralised by slow defenceless training biplanes dropping lead on their heads with the engines off at night. The Bf-109 outran, outmaneuvered and outgunned the U-2, but it couldn't see it in the first place. As they say, lose the sight...

While I have some reservations on the F-35, I think people behave like over-expecting parents with it. The degree of pickiness is just gone overboard. The F-35 doesn't have to be better than all of the aircraft in every single aspect, and people don't seem to grasp that. Its purpose is to increase the overall battlefield capabilities of the air forces it will equip, even if that means some performance trade-offs. Example: the F-4 at its inception also had terrible maneuverability (a 'jaca', as Brazilian pilots would say), no internal cannon and missiles with less than enviable performance. It still was a substantially more capable aircraft than the Century series aircraft it replaced, despite many of the latter being much better dogfighters and having a gun to finish their business once the missiles run out. Even if the F-35 fights worse than all present teen series aircraft, it can infiltrate heavy air defences more easily and probably without getting shot down as it happened to so many of the F-16s, F-15s, A-10s and so on in the same situations. It may indeed be in trouble if it flies low enough for IR SAM coverage, or if other fighters manage to scramble in time, find it and avoid getting shot down before being able to engage. Then yes, you are in trouble. In all other situations however, I would rather be in the F-35 than the F-16.

A curious bit is that the USAF Have Doughnut evaluations of the MiG-21 (albeit an F-13 version) were not so confident of the advantages of their designs except for the F-4, to whom they gave a manoeuvrability edge despite IIRC reports of the contrary by USAf pilots in Vietnam. Teamwork was deemed essential, and if mutual support is lost, go above M0.98 and run away fast. In the same evaluation the F-5N was said to perform better under 15,000 but generally the aircraft perform nearly identically (it was also recommended that the F-5 be used for DACT, which happened). It was noted that while mil power and turn capabilities were about the same, the MiG-21 was better at afterburning acceleration and instantaneous G turns. Another interesting thing is that the fire control capabilities were found to be the same, when the F-5 was regarded as superior even against latter MiG-21 models for its modern HUD.

ANG F-16 flown by Iraqi pilot crashes in Arizona No additional information so far.

Pacific Fleet drills: two P-270 Moskit hit target ship. Someone call Michael Bay :D

The Mi-24 always feels so appropriately huge. Great photos!

I didn't think the AT-802U would go so soon. The concept is good though - good weapons suite, low speed and high endurance, plus cheap acquisition and operational costs. It's everything you need to hammer enemies who don't have modern SAM systems to annoy you with. I wonder if the wings, cockpit or fuselage are armoured to some extent. The wings and cockpit layout bear an extreme resemblance to the early series Il-2.

Roundup of the Russian Air Force incidents this week: Su-34 flipped over during landing MiG-29KUB exploded mid-air, fleet grounded until second notice (unclear if this means MiG-29 family, MiG-29K or all VVS MF MiG-29 family units) Tu-95MS overran runway due to engine fire, fleet grounded until second notice (again, unclear if this extends to the Tu-142 or only Tu-95) On the (very) positive side, despite all these dangerous incidents all crew are alive and well!

I logged in just to share that video - so we're back to swing-wing two-seaters flying low over US navy vessels? :D

I recognised that photo from somewhere, it's from the Lansen's Wiki page actually. Who knows, maybe the navigator AI is the feature they are working on for the future? It would make sense to start light after all, considering the complexity of the F-14. Either way, here's the full photo aptly named Robot_04_Lansen.jpg. Besides the name, the camouflage (or lack thereof) points towards a 32 too.

Link: http://rt.com/news/262141-mistral-russia-france-compensation/

An extra selling point for the Viggen is that we currently have no fast and highly capable aircraft. We are so busy with the CAS/MRF bubble that we often ignore the Cold War love of supersonic attack planes. Viggen, Aardvark, Su-7 all the way to 22, MiG-27... It will be a blast to work interdiction and defense missions while knowing I am not dead meat against a fighter :D PS: That photo Cobra posted, we are positive that is not a Lansen right?

Dudikoff, check out the Il-2 1946 Baltic Sea map. It was a thing of beauty, and covered from St. Petersburg to Helsinki and Tallin. Lots of airbases, land and islands too. If they did a similar one expanding onto Eastern Sweden it would be perfect.

Finland was flying the MiG-21 back then as well, it's a good plane set already. I think it's also worth considering peacekeeping missions if to be as realistic as possible. A little civil war here or there, both sides get scraps of the armed forces, civvy casualties are high, there goes a composite peacekeeping mission.

If we do see a Viggen I will be in flight sim heaven. Just make sure to give us a Blackbird to intercept too :D Scenarios with the Viggen aren't hard to come up with - after all, we've played all sorts of invasions of the Caucasus from all directions for all reasons, mixing Sweden in the bunch isn't that hard.

Are you sure? Sources are a bit murky but you can consistently find references to MR capabilities being in the package for the new BM (not the 90s M that was supposed to be MR capable after the initial upgrade). Main pointers are towards ARM capabilities indeed. Could be one of those cases of 'capability there but never to be used'. Tirak, no one is downplaying the SR-71, the fact is though that most air forces today would be unable to afford its operational costs and pick the -25 instead as it still delivers excellent recce for a lower proce tag.

As far as I know the MiG-31 wasn't made out of dissatisfaction but as the alternative to the MiG-25M upgrade because the needs and opposition had changed so much in that decade they needed a more drastic redesign. Plus, usually new airframes have more room for development and improvement, and a 4th generation interceptor was the right move - now we're seeing that same old MiG-31 extremely upgraded with multirolecapability. The PVO regularly got the budget it needed to do whatever it deemed necessary, air defence was taken very seriously.

The Ka-50 is a production helicopter that had its run cut short. Go on the DCS website and download the flight manual, it has a really nice introduction chapter about the history and design of the helo, good read. What you see here is its improved form, the two seat Ka-52. It's a big departure from the Shark, and it is in production on both regular (AF) and Ka-52K (navalised) versions.

So far the trailer is a let down for me. Looks like another Avengers-type action movie with little development but loads for flashy stuff. I'd love to be proven otherwise, but Disney hasn't treated Marvel too well lately and I doubt Star Wars will be different.

It is still single role: ground-attack. The MiG-25 wasn't a multi-role fighter even though it could do many roles like escort, intercept, CAP... The A-10 can only perform the A2G mission satisfactorily, and that's what it was meant to do. There is a difference between will replace and was designed to replace. The pro-A-10/anti-F-35 lobby keeps trying to play it up as if the F-35 was an incompetent attempt at a A2G aircraft, which it's not. Everyone knows you have to sacrifice specialised performance when designing a multi-role plane. It's a fact of life. A pack of F-35s even with reduced capability will still be able to infiltrate enemy airspace, take out/evade air defenses and air-to-air threats, and drop the bombs on target. That is something the A-10 will never be able to do. So no, it is not inferior in capability to the A-10, and it's not the GAU-8 that will save the Hog from a network of S-300 batteries. I would be softer on this if they just argued the A-10 must be kept together with the F-35, but proposing an Air Force sticks to 40 year old single-mission airframes because its 5th gen. replacement performs a little worse in one aspect of air-to-ground despite beating it at everything else is nonsense. See this example: the Brazilian Air Force in a few years will have retired the Mirages III & 2000C, the F-5EM and the A-1M, replacing all of them with the JAS-39E. The A-1M is a dedicated low-altitude strike and recce fighter with two 30mm cannons that has just been modernised, and I am sure it can do those better than the 39, but no one is arguing against the replacement. The A-10 issue is definitely a touchy one, but just like the F-14 as unique as it was a country has to move on. Old planes are expensive, particularly when you're keeping the because of love.

The problem with the Hog in the kind of low-intensity conflict the USAF is always in today is that it's just overkill - much like the F-35 will be too. These aircraft are expensive to operate (due to age foe the A-10 and complexity for the F-35), it's no wonder so many light attack aircraft are being made (AT-6, A-29, Scorpion, ALCA, etc.) COIN is important, but money doesn't grow on trees and even if it did the parliaments of the world would find a way to waste it before it reached the forces. If you can drop the same bomb on the right place with half the expenses, you should. But opinions opinions, lobbies and personal interests within the US govt. will settle the matter, and the USAF will have to just deal with whatever they got.

I'm not particularly a lover of the F-35, but is this the best military journalism can do? The Wording in these articles is on par with British tabloid media - the F-35 wasn't designed as an A-10 replacement as people tout. It has a wide range of shortcomings but it sure as hell is more useful and survivable in the modern battlefield than a slow single-role attack aircraft. The A-10 is a great aircraft, but it is not a strike fighter and thus cannot be compared to such. Everyone knows a dedicated platform is usually better at its function than a MRCA, but if the latter can still perform the job to a good standard it's time to let go. F-35 critics need to attack it for what it is, the next thing I'll see is a "APACHE HOVERS BETTER F35 SUX" headline the way things are.

I'm running out of options here, and this post is in the hopes that some of you may know a solution or two :helpsmilie: My PC (HP 6050ru) is running Windows Vista, and since I moved to a new place it hasn't been connecting to the WiFi network here. Four other devices running OSX Lion, Windows Phone, iOS 8 and iOS 5 connect just fine. The network runs from a Thomson TG784 through a Netgear W2000RPT extender, and the computer receives it with a dLink DWA-125. Sometimes - although this stopped yesterday - the PC connects just fine when launched on Safe Mode w/ network. When Windows is operating normally, it will supposedly connect to the router but not to the internet (yellow triangle with '!'), but I am unable to reach the router at 192.168.1.1 (other devices can access it normally). The computer was scanned for Malware (1 confirmed, 5 suspicious - all removed) and viruses (0 found). Does anyone have any idea what to do? If you need me to run any cmd or program let me know and I will gladly do it and post the results here :) I need this mighty junk to work for work and... well... you know. :joystick:

As far as I know the MiG-29K already packs that capability. I don't know how feasible that is though because I don't think you will have the Kuznetsov around the Mistrals too often (considering that the MoD offered the Georgian War as an example of conflict where they would have played a part). The Mistral itself should have a strong defense suite already, but the Kh-35 capability seems like a way to strike a threat before it gets close enough to be a problem rather than an offensive asset. Putting them on the Ka-52 instead of the Ka-27 is probably due to the former's better defense equipment I suppose. Don't Seahawks have the Penguin for this sort of duty as well?

I am not going to put any opinions out because the implementation of it as a rule (opposed to a recommendation) depends mostly on the feasibility of it financially. It is worth mentioning that last year's Ethiopian Airlines 767 highjacking (pilot wanted asylum, landed in Switzerland instead of destination Milan) happened the same way: pilot went for a wee, got locked out.