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Not terribly surprised at this, given how things have been going. Isn't Putin due to stand down as President next year somepoint?
Yep, was actually surprised we heard about it before the press did! :P We're normally the last to know... :rolleyes:
Cold War military activities and Cold War politics :(
I still think this is more of a PR activity by the Kremlin, what with elections coming up and all, to try and show the Russian people that are still to be regarded as a superpower internationally; you know, basically show them that they still have the balls to the West... :mrgreen:
Nevertheless...
http://xs217.xs.to/xs217/07292/1184625196939.jpg.xs.jpg
It is a bit worrying really, and just another enemy we dont need.
Confrontation and aggression, it never goes out of style. Hopefully no other countries will feel forced to respond since we don't need cold war 2.0
Its all just sabre rattling for the russian people
Just too funny.
Indulge me.
http://www.ninesquare.co.uk/thebroad...Temp/putin.jpg
Of course they have no reason to feel at all threatened by the 'let's blow trillions of dollar\pounds\euros' Missile Defence scheme?
To be honest im very happy Russia is doing this. It takes countrys like Russia and China to show America that they arent the only big dog in the world. Otherwise america would be calling us all terrorists now and occupying us all.
Why shouldnt they patrol their skies and show their military might?
Edited your comment in bold for clarity. The Russians even offered the use of a radar base although I suspect that this was a bluff to undermine the project. Personally I think this shield is not strictly needed, it is more a polictical tool to fix Eastern European countries firmly within NATO and garner wider American influence in central Asia. Playing in what Russia still considers it's backyard? Sure. A direct threat to Russia? No (the shear number of Russian missiles and decoys would overcome the system).
The actions of Putin and the Russian government over the last few months is nothing more than bigging themselves up. Awash with petro/gas roubles the Russian government can now afford to start pulling these stunts. It's purely for domestic consumption bearing in mind the 2008 elections are coming up and forms the pompous part of the Russian psyche. I see it more as a small child seeking attention whilst the rest of the class moves on to bigger and better things. You can't beat Russians for pride.
All (repressive) governments need a boogerman. Blame everything on the boogerman and be seen to be standing up to him whilst quietly whittling away the freedoms the population has. It's only the degree of whittling away that changes. And yes it's happened in the UK under New Labour.
eg. USA has Al-Qeada, UK has domestic muslim fundamentalists, Iran has USA, Zimbabwe (Mugabe) has the UK, Venezuela (Chavez) has USA, Russia has "the west".
The more repressive the country the bigger the boogerman is made out to be so the public focus is on the boogerman rather than the corrupt, inept, asshats that rule the country.
Russia has nothing to fear from the west (read NATO) but unfortunately the Russians are a paranoid people and love a strong man such as Putin. German and French imperialism coupled with 80 years of communism has seen to that! Relations are obviously far better than during the cold war and you will be surprised at how much the two co-operate. Russia requires western investment and expertise whilst western Europe needs Russian gas. Putin is an authoritarian at heart, however, he does recognise that taking Russia back to a communist authoritarian state would lead to disaster. I only hope that the blind Russian public will be able to see that further reform is necessary and vote for a more moderate candidate in 2008, but if my cash was riding on the outcome I'd bet the other way. Russia has some serious domestic social problems non more so than the rampant alchoholism that is causing a rapid decrease in the population. It will have to put it's own house in order before it's considered a (conventional) militatry threat by the west.
America is still the world's only superpower. Russia and China cannot project that kind of force around the globe. I'll see your two long range bomber patrols and raise you 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers (with another under construction and another on order).
There is no logic in this statement and it's simply anti-American ranting. You might care to look at the history of the cold war to appreciate the American input. America did not save us from having to speak German they saved us from having to speak Russian. Critisize America by all means, I did in the recent IRG/terrorist thread, but realise that your freedom to critisize is in part due to American military might.
I have no problem with a soveriegn country patrolling their own skies. If they want to get a hard on by displaying their military might then fine, again I have no problem. But if they wish to fly their military aircraft towards another soveriegn country's airspace then they can expect the appropriate welcome.
http://www.siberianlight.net/wordpre...tornado-f3.jpg
Yes, this is bad. Bad Putin, Bad etc.
But I'm not especially worried. I am a bit worried of course, because peak oil will screw us all soon, and Russia has loads of gas and plenty of oil. But we'll deal with that when it becomes a major problem- say two years from now:O_o1:.
So, in the meantime, I'm just going to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu-160
:woowoo: Utterly awesome plane:).
I have no problem with a country defending itself, but surely Russia has a million and one better things it could do with the money spent poking and prodding NATO? Especially since neither side has any desire nor anything to gain from war. A huge amount of Russians live in poverty and surrounded by crime.
Then again, America isn't exactly the Garden of Eden.
Looks awfully similar to this. Did they pull another konkordski?
^ nice artists impression of the PAK-FA. Looks like the F35 and F22 which it is suposedly designed to take on. These 5th generation fighters are awfully expensive to develop and take around 15 years to come to fruition. Iirc this programme was started about 2001. Atleast the Ruskies can split the cost with the Indians and more units will keep the cost down.
ty, just thought it was a pretty plane is all
What, a Konkordski as in flying their version two months before the competition?:p
No, the TU-160, although developed as a response to the B1 program, is a lot bigger and a lot faster than a B1-B.
M.O.D. picture
http://server3.uploadit.org/files/KewlBee-Typhoon1a.jpg
what annoys me amazingly, is the media coverage not even 3months ago about Trident renewal.
This is costing us less over 5 years, than the NHS it system bungle cost us in 1 year.
Bargin!
Remeber us british invented so much of the scary bomb. Silo's been my personal favourate!
RAF must be pleased as punch to see the Bears in the air again, makes the Typhoon look like a good idea. Hadnt realised the range that the Bear has, nearly twice that of the Nimrod or AWACS. As to photos, heres a good one
http://swisshornet.bleublog.ch/files...1145738369.jpg
Typhoon is turning out to be a very capable aircraft even in the air to ground role, which they will be performing in Afghanistan next year. Can't keep flying those Jags (now gone which was stupid cos they had a recent upgrade and are really good CAS platform) and Tornados forever. Airframes have a fatigue life and there's nothing you can do about that. As aircraft age they become very expensive to maintain a bit like an old banger that struggles to pass it's MOT. I used to work as a repair engineer for Roll Royce primarily on the RB199 (with a bit of pegasus and adour thrown in) and I can tell you that at the time out of 230 ish aircraft the UK might have been able to put up about 60-70 due to spares issues, mainly caused by inadequate government funding - good job the cold war was over.
Replacing it with F16/F18 gains might have been cheap but they are the same generation of fighters so gained nothing at the time. F22 - I doubt the yanks would let us in on it and we could only afford about 3 1/2 of them :p. Wait for F35? Well F35 was not even a program when Eurofighter was being drawn up in the eighties.
Shame that Konkordski crashed twice way before the concorde accident. The Tu-160 is a superb aircraft. A Times defence journalist was supposed to have some evidence of Russian espionage with regards to the B1, which was cancelled then reinstated so many times it's not true.
It does perform a slightly different role to the B1 variants. Russia has claimed that it has successfully penetrated US airspace.
Well, at the beginning of last year there was a lack of wheels for the Typhoon! As soon as we got a new one in, it was out on jacks and had the wheels nicked for another jet whilst going through acceptance. Even now there are jets that get robbed from to keep the others in the air. And this is normal for all the jets the RAF has. I even heard a rumour (this is how information gets around the RAF btw) that BAE even had stock issues and has to delay delivering the new jets for XI.
The Typhoon is a very capable aircraft for how much it costs. The only aircraft that's supposedly more capable is the F22, but the increase in cost isn't matched by the increase in capability. In fact, we aren't allow to send the Typhoon up at the same time as the F22 any more after a test "that didn't happen" between the two :rolleyes:.
It's also very loud. So loud in fact, that submarines can pick it up with sonar!
Spares and equipment for all the services is a national disgrace. All political parties are to blame although Nulabor, Bliar and Broone really have screwed the Army big time and it's going to take a decade to fix it only if there is a proper increase in defence funding, so maybe a bit of Russian sabre rattling can help. Having said that we are engaged in two medium sized wars and yet that still hasn't managed to jolt the government into action.
I remember seeing WAH-64's come off the production line and have flight testing delayed cos they may have needed to strip some spares for those in service. It's a bloody expensive and inefficient system of providing spares support! It's crap and anyone connected with the services knows about it.
F22 is state of the art but so expensive, the costs outweigh the benefits to all but the USA. I'm not going to get into the F/A22 v Typhoon willy waving thing.
Speaking with some guys who go and test the Typhoon in the US (far easier to get permission to blow stuff up in the Nevada desert than one of the Scottish islands) said that they put both of them up against each other, to test things like detection and dogfighting ability. However, if you were to ask the American MOD about it, this never happened as both aircraft have never been in the same airspace at the same time. I don't know the details about it, but it obviously didn't go that well for the F22 otherwise the Americans would be screaming about their victory.
Of course, this could just be part of the RAF rumour mill, but I believe that they are probably quite equal in a dogfight. If the Typhoon ever gets upgraded with the thrust vectoring that it was originally designed for, then I believe it would excel over the F22. Especially as that would allow the fin to be reduced in size, or even removed completely. Of course, costing half as much, it might be better to ask whether 2 Typhoons are better than 1 F22?
Another thing that the Typhoon could well exceed at is ground attack. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tornado GR4's eventually get replaced with the Typhoon, which by that time will have been a more tried a tested platform than the F35.
Typhoon was always built to be a multirole fighter, allowing it to fight its way in, bomb and fight back out of its target packages. Its first role was to replace the Tornado ADV though hence not many ground missions (and the lack of aircraft).
Its never a case of whose best these days, most aircraft are specialised and perform there role more than adequatly. As 99Flake says the Typhoon is a multi-role aircraft and the company likes it to be called a 'swing' role aircraft for the exact situation 99Flake describes.
And i think Iranu is right, there is no point getting into willy waving since its pointless, two different aircraft two different roles.
As for F-35 we are buying those to replace the ancient Harriers in the fleet, looking at 8 years ahead the RAF/RN are going to have a very capable and very effective force to use, sure expensive but what isn't these days.
He,He, Well at least the RAF got their Typhoons into the air yesterday to escort the Bears away --not like last month then 2 Tu overflew Aberdeen. :):)- Must have caused the RAF a lot of embarrassment .
I have no idea as to whether that is true or not, nor am I able to produce ballistic tragectories/data for that purpose (not surprising really!!!). I would be surprised though, if a location in Poland or central Asia would matter compared with a location in the UK or Canada or Alaska/North US or any other northern "missile" base. The Chinese developed and successfully tested a system earlier this year so I would have thought that both the Soviets and United States had similar capabilities during the cold war (and today).
If NATO launched to destroy Russian sats then a similar response would happen (and vice a versa). I can't see the reason for a launch on Russian comms other than an outright conventional attack on Russia and we all know that previous attemps have failed dismally let alone the fact that NATO simply hasn't got the capability for that kind of victory. (even if they had Russia would launch nukes if they thought they would be defeated). First nuclear strike by any of the nations capable leads to MAD.
The US defence budget has an awful lot of "pork barrel" politics associated with it. Couple this with a few decades of American foreign policy, domestic politics and you never quite know what the overall implication of such a system is.
Just for the record I would say that I'm pro American. I think that they are our closest (military) allies, however, that does not mean to say that I can't criticise their foreign policy or agree with every Whitehouse statement. I am appalled by the lack of thinking, planning, preparation, follow through and clear goals for both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns (irrespective of right or wrong - that's another valid debate).
These polictical failures (and the consequent focus) allow our Russian friends to quietly step up their activities in order to increase the political pressure whether on the international front or Russian domestic front.
Ooops - sorry, longer than intended but I got into the flow.
Im not sure its purely for domestic consumption, apparently the Soviets have been snooping around the British Isles with submarines as well. Which as at the moment the Royal Navy is kinda teeny isnt great news
Neo they arent patrolling their skys.Quote:
Why shouldnt they patrol their skies and show their military might?
They are flying in and near NATO airspace around Iceland/Faroes/Scotland
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrogant American, BBC News article
:rolleyes: Typical.
Sir Max Hastings wrote a very good article about Putin and this pseudo-cold war posturing in the Daily Mail (I know!) yesterday.
IIRC the idea is that destruction of russian satellites would be the first response to a conventional large-scale russian invasion of eastern Europe or a former soviet republic, preferably an oil-rich one. This would have the effect of immediately taking down communications with/between advancing russian units. Location of the missile sites is critical apparently, as the satelites are in geostationary orbits and presumably the missiles have limited range.
What worries me about the grandstanding and willy-waving going on is that it would only take a small mistake or international crisis to raise the threat of war. We all still have enough nukes to make the ground glow for the next few centuries.
I've got some info about that from another site I frequent..
There's also something a while back about the B2 at an air-show when a demo Rapier unit picked up the B2 and locked onto it for over 9 minutes, the B2 apparently got spooked, cut it's airshow demo short and buggered off back to base..Quote:
"There was little suprise that Typhoon, with its world-class agility and high off-boresight missile capability was able to dominate "Within Visual Range" flight but the aircraft did cause a suprise by getting a radar lock on the F22 at a suprisingly long rate. The F-22s cried off, claiming that they were "unstealthed" anyway, although the next day´s scheduled two vs. two BWR engagement was canceled, and "the USAF decided they didn´t want to play any more ."
Source: "internatinal AIR POWER REVIEW" - year 2006, issue 20, page 45. - ISNB: 1-880588-91-9 (casebound) or ISBN: 1473-9917.
*update*
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6981541.stm
There increasing in numbers 8 this time.
'Under established Nato procedures the MoD said it launched quick reaction alert aircraft in order to identify the bombers, as is routine.
Four F3 Tornados were launched in two waves from RAF Leeming, in North Yorkshire.
A Boeing E-3D airborne warning and control aircraft and a VC-10 refuelling tanker supported the operation, the MoD said.'
They are playing it fairly careful and staying in international waters though, thus far. I suspect they are figuring out what happens when you poke a stick into a hornet's nest...
Cheers,
Stephen
what concerned me is the numbers now involved, 1 then 2, now 8.
Lol :rolleyes:
What suprises me though is the fact that the Russians are still using obsolete technology.
And on a slightly unrelated note, Ive got back into playing Defcon and hopefully its just the game but Im starting to feel slightly uneasy and a bit more paranoid than normal!
have you seen a P-3 Orion? hardly cutting edge!
http://www.globalaircraft.org/photos...otos/p-3_4.jpg
Cheers,
Stephen
Nothing wrong with this -keeps 'everyone' on their toes. :):)
true . . . but Tornado or Typhoon V.s Bear will only have 1 outcome.
But before any1 says it, I know it will never come to that, going back to the whole cold war debate. Which is just each side are just using scare tactics, unless we want thermo-nuclear war to start!
Bring Back Greenham Common!
Yes but it's nothing new and the cost's are nothing new. It's games and it does not matter what it 'costs' each side has to play. I'm quite happy to pay knowing that each side has no 'nukes' as I have seen the opposite in this situation. :)
Just out of interest what do we have as strategix bombers these days?
Having a quick look around it doesnt appear like we have any 'heavy' bombers as such, all the results I seem to keep getting say that atm its a Tornado varient, and is being phased out to be replaced with the Typhoon.
Although seeing what payload they can carry it doesnt sound like a bad idea having small agile fighter planes doing the bombing.
Arnt all of are cruise missles/ICBM contained on subs nowadays anyway?
We only have 'subs' or at a push ' nimrod' . Nothin wrong with 'nimrod' it can do the 'bis'. :)
I.se,can see yee's nato ' igloos'' gettin re-filled fast'. :):):surprised::)
Now that's a point. I posted earlier that 'bears' had 'overflown' Aberdeen last month. Forgetting that MOD hade 'stut down the main listening post . ' BUCHAN' . Well ye get what ye pay fer. :):surprised::), Happy new year. :)
I'm not sure we got good value when we paid for your English lessons merdat.
It's not obsolete technology. These aircraft have many variants, I expect that the ones we are seeing at the moment have alot of sophisticated equipment in them for snooping purposes. The bear is a very capable platform. Russian bombers have always been used in the "stand off role" so they don't actually have to get that close to launch missiles. America still uses B52 variants and that was designed in the 50's. We are still using Nimrod albeit an upgraded version.
Not anymore. Our last stategic bomber was the Vulcan. The Vulcan saw action for the first time in the Falklands War when it attacked Port Stanley's runway. Lovely aircraft and well ahead of it's time, it had superb flight characteristics at it's operational level and had a crazy rate of climb too. There is a project to get Vulcan XH558 back into the air for airshows etc. More info here on the restoration project.
Our main strike aircraft is the Panavia Tornado GR4.
We don't need strategic bombers as our nuclear deterent is submarine based, however, there is a case to be made with regard to CAS in places like Afghanistan where a bomber such as the B52 or B2 can operate for longer periods of time and carry larger payloads that the smaller ground attack aircraft being used. Unfortunately our government won't pay for the armed forces we have let alone look at a separate bomber force in a conventional role. That's why we rely on the yanks.
Thats what I was thinking, I used to be heavily into Air Rec back in the day but the last thing I could think of was the Vulcan..
As for the Typhoon I've never been a massive fan of Multi Role aircraft, I'd much rather have something that does a job and does it properly than something thats "acceptable" at the job, look at the Bucaneer for instance or the US A10...
They could probably modify a StormShadow to carry a strategic load if they needed to. Then Eurofighter could carry it ;)
Well, it was only last year we got rid of the Canberra, and that started flying just after WWII! Even the Typhoon was designed on 70-80s technology (still uses 90 min cassettes!).
We don't really need a strategic bomber. We let the Americans do that. :P At a push, you could use AAR with GR4s for longer missions.
The Typhoon should turn out to be a very capable attack bomber in comparison to the GR4. It can carry far more weapons and has much better survivability with its integrated defensive aids (GR4s have to use 2 pods on the wings). The only slight disadavatage it has is the amount of fuel it can carry. However, as it's more efficient and this more or less gives it a similar range. I can honestly see the RAF just having F35s and Typhoons as the only fixed wing attack aircraft in 20 years time.