Latest F-35 flight tests finish – and US stops accepting new jets The F-35 fighter jet has completed one of its years-long flight testing programmes – just in time for the United States to suspend all deliveries of the new supersonic aircraft. The final flight of the F-35's System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase took place earlier this week, flown by British BAE Systems test pilot …
How do you conclude that? That pair of crooks Brown & Blair financed the Voyager tankers by their trademark con-trick of PFI, so the actual ownership of the aircraft is widely distributed, and probably mostly owned by foreign banks and debt investors..
As is usual in defence procurement, the complicated structure and bungled procurement increased costs. In this case by about £2 billion.
The bottom line is that governments p**s themselves at having their "Credit rating" lowered by credit rating agencies and banks.
The same credit rating agencies that said CDO's which were made up 95% of mortgages from "John & Jane Q Crackhead of Sh**hole, USA" were AAA rated.
PFI is not "live now, pay later," It's live now, (taxpayers) pay forever.
But, on topic. This is another "triumph" for the 23 000 men and women of MoD Procurement.
Whilst I had absolutely no time for Blair & Brown's shenanigans with PFI (being a rather traditional old style centre-left Labour chap myself) I pose a little question with regard to political history. Who was it and which party was it that introduced that goldbricking scheme PFI? Clue, it was not either of the aforementioned nor was it the Labour party ("Nu" or otherwise). If you need further guidance I will simply say that the shysters concerned are the current governing party of the U.K. I repeat, that I hold no brief whatsoever for Blair and Brown's use of that piece of hows-your-father but let us not pretend that they were the only guilty ones here.
Whilst I had absolutely no time for Blair & Brown's shenanigans with PFI (being a rather traditional old style centre-left Labour chap myself) I pose a little question with regard to political history. Who was it and which party was it that introduced that goldbricking scheme PFI?
They did indeed pioneer this form of shystering. BUT they actually made little or no use of it when they first invented it, and have signed few if any contracts since we were rid of B&B. So on a purely technical basis, you're correct, the Tories invented. On a practical and legal basis, the answer to "who knowingly fucked the British taxpayer with PFI?" the answer is simply "the Labour party".
And looking at the that worm Corbyn parroting Russian arguments over Salisbury and Syria, your argument appear to fir the Labour party standard approach, of trying to evade accountability.
....got into power by being more Tory than the Conservative Party offerings, the sad thing here is that this was what was required to get elected to government in the UK.
Saddest of all was the rejection of the concept that a political party as a champion for the rights for people who go to work for a living was either representative or desired.
Given that most people have to work for a living then you would have to pretty stoopid to vote against your own interests and yet here we are, seems bread and circuses never gets old.
Brown & Blair financed the Voyager tankers by their trademark con-trick of PFI,
Cough... Sputter... Cough... Sputter...
This is not called Trademark trick. It is called "Greek Accounting".
it's called socialism
No, its classic capitalism.
Neither. It is an accounting fraud plain and simple. Misrepresenting the debt level to fib the credit rating.
Exactly what the Greeks did.
It will be interesting how many of those are around. This dates from the same period when the UK Government sold all of the Green Goddesses as well as the snowplough and road construction equipment from the country strategic reserve. I enjoyed the quality snowploughing delivered by it during the winter of 2011-2012 while travelling through Europe (some of them were even still with UK number plates). I believe the replacements including the equipment presently used by the Highway Agency have all been bought on PFI.
So it will be quite interesting how much of the REAL UK debt is concealed this way and how far are we really from a Greek Style financial incident. The official number is 222Bn which is 1%. I smell a rat - it is probably more.
Corporatism is what youre thinking of.
Corporatism and capitalism are synonyms, or at least as alike as to make no difference. Every free market reform we get here in the US leads to more corporate control and higher wealth concentration. The nature of the free market game is that once you start to win, you can rig things so you keep winning.
"It is an accounting fraud plain and simple. Misrepresenting the debt level to fib the credit rating. "
Absolutely. It's one of the many 'modern' practices which make the City so special, one of the reasons why the UK can't possibly do without them (unlike every other country in the world, bar a handful).
"Exactly what the Greeks did."
Not just the Greeks, as you've observed already. But no one should blame (just) the Greeks. The advisers to the relevant governments and organisations have a responsibility too. And who might we find there? Well, we find Goldman Sachs etc, obviously.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/entries/fba91847-2c24-394f-a088-99fbb6973b51
"[...] To get inside the walls of the Eurozone, the Greeks needed to convince the European Union that they had met various irksome rules about inflation, government deficit, and government debt.
[so they] called Goldman Sachs and asked them to structure a clever financial deal that put a lot of Greek borrowing off the books. And it wasn't just Goldman Sachs - it's been reported that there were all kinds of ways in which the Greek government of 11 years ago managed to make their macroeconomic statistics look trim and healthy. [...]"
Sound familiar at all? Nothing to do with PFI, obviously.
An allegation obviously rejected by the parties who profited. But then they would say that, wouldn't they.
> > it's called socialism
> No, its classic capitalism.
This is polarisation. So fucking stupid, there is no need for everyhing to come only from one end of a spectrum or another. Idiotic. Following a preferred political party like supporting a football team.
Desperate. No wonder we are in so much shit.
@werdsmith:
I'll 100% agree with the polarization bit.
The singular point of polarization continues down the path. We're headed back to the 40's and 50's era "cold war" mentality and militarization stances, without the economic growth potential.
As for the F35. I find it amazing that it has taken a huge chunk of my life to get the damn thing to this point. In the mean time, we've had two complete generations of commercial aircraft designed, developed, built, certified and put in service.
There is something happening here, and we don't know what it is....
As for the F35. I find it amazing that it has taken a huge chunk of my life to get the damn thing to this point. In the mean time, we've had two complete generations of commercial aircraft designed, developed, built, certified and put in service.
There have been no major innovations in commercial air travel since the Concorde. The mission requirements are all well understood, and not subject to major changes. It's been about building the same airborne buses over and over, with a tweak for more efficiency here or to squeeze in a few more seats there. One of the most popular airliners, the 737, was initially designed in 1967 and is still being made.
The F35, on the other hand, was designed to be "one jet to rule them all" so its mission requirements are complex and ever-shifting. It was trying to do a lot of relatively new things. A lot of its problems have been software-related, which isn't surprising because requirements for it to integrate with other systems are massively complex.
What you're seeing is a combination of baroque government procurement and bidding rules (enacted incrementally over the years to try to prevent Fraud and Abuse™), distributing a project out over as many congressional districts as possible to make it impossible to cancel, and an aircraft that's trying to do an unprecedented number of things at once -- probably too many.
In classic capitalism, companies go bust, and the taxpayer doesn't carry the can - the investors might get their fingers burnt though.
What happened in the USA and the UK?
In the USA, "too big to fail" banks (and even chunks of the auto industry see e.g. GM being rescued alongside the TARP programme) were financially bust so the taxpayer was forced to carry the can. The armaments industry is basically an extension of government anyway in the US.
In the UK, 'industry' was and is allowed to fail for the last few decades. Taxpayer support is mostly only available to finance companies and the arms industry.
Slightly longer version: the difference between capitalism and corporatism:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/11/explaining-difference-between.html
See also
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/sep/06/did-obama-save-us-automobile-industry/
Nothing new about British Governments dipping deep into the public purse to save the pockets of their relatives and friends, been at it for centuries, The East India company was on an almost permanent drip of public cash till they bungled so badly as to trigger the Mutiny and finally the Government had to come clean and nationalise the lot.
bungled so badly as to trigger the Mutiny and finally the Government had to come clean and nationalise
And, entirely coincidentally, the cash that used to find its way into the pockets of the frinds of the East India Company now found its way into the pockets of friends of the Government..
Or in modern-day parlance, they pulled a Halliburton/Iraq.
Question has been answered last night - She did. The parliament has officially been told that they can f*ck off and have no say in a May's world.
If you are not scared you should be. Compare the usual pictures of her sitting depressed with the 4 pot plants and the pictures of her positively glowing last week. We saw her smile for the first time as a prime minister - in anticipation of a possible WW3. Postcoital glowing look in a premonition of WW3 setting... Jesus wept...
F35 did not participate, they fired around 30 cruise missiles and 70 stand-off ones. The latter so UK and France can pretend to participate too. Now Trump can pretend that he has jerked-off successfully on Faux news. Provided he does not try to continue to jerk off we can congratulate the Russians for successfully negotiating and maneuvering out of a WW3 scenario while dealing with lunatics.
All targets were in the "destruction of evidence" category. You have a team from OPCW on the ground, you are in a position to request immediate access to a facility which the Syrians are obliged to grant in under 24h under their 2013 "bail" conditions and what do you do - jerk off...
All of this was combined with the ridiculous blooper when UK got caught at the UN last night using a ruse which whole of Europe teaches their kids when they are in kindergarten to avoid doing what is known as: "The guilty one runs unchased." The polling in some Eastern European countries for believing what UK says on Salisbury was as low as 13% two weeks ago. I would expect it to be under 5% - all of this self-inflicted. Same for Russia - we actually gave Putin yet another 10% or thereabouts of public approval rating. We also fell in public for a trick which even 7 years olds in Eastern Europe smile and avoid. Idiots...
If Corbin has a pair he will be calling a confidence vote. My guess is that he has not grown one yet so she will achieve her aim of replicating (at a May scale) her idol's post-Argie success against Labor.
corbin is a madman in his own right. He fires off randomly in the complete opposite to May. When it turns out he is wrong his excuse is that he needs to promote an opposition view.
They are both bad for the country. Even a team of accountant bursars (only a team of salesman would be worse) could do a better job.
corbin is a madman in his own right
Madman or not if he does not accept the challenge and carry it through successfully we are screwed.
May effectively demonstrated that she can do anything she bloody pleases and the Parliament has about as much say as the Chinese Parliament.
I already wrote to my MP congratulating him with his new role in the world. I suggest you do too.
My MP is SNP, he doesn't need chivying along. I do get replies when I urge him to back this or that early day motion though and I've met him. The SNP will speak sensible and real words of condemnation about this but you will have to look at their media feed because the MSM cannot bother to report what the 3rd largest party at Westminster thinks. Instead they will ask the geriatric leader of the 4th largest party.
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The polling in some Eastern European countries for believing what UK says on Salisbury was as low as 13% two weeks ago. I would expect it to be under 5% - all of this self-inflicted. ..... Voland's right hand
Is this tale true ........ Independent Swiss Lab Says 'BZ Toxin' Used In Skripal Poisoning; US/UK-Produced, Not Russian
It might easily explain why so much evidence around Salisbury has been spirited away by armed home forces.
And when true, what does it tell everyone about the true current state of Western intelligence and politicians?
* Apart from the obvious answer that madness and mayhem are endemic and systemic in politically inept and corrupt systems of remote mass brainwashing administrations.
Is this tale true .......
We do not know. Yet. We will learn this week.
However, when Russians threaten with a document at Lavrov level, they may in fact be in the possession of it.
So if they claim they have the original of the tests, put the f*** cards on the table and Boris and Co will have some explaining to do.
Same as with the "staged" gas attack document.
Instead of shouting Borisenities (that should make it into the Oxford dictionary one day) at them, call their bluff. Cards on the table gentlemen, let's see what you have.
If not, it is them and Boris competing for Pinocchio of the week which is business as usual.
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we can congratulate the Russians for successfully negotiating and maneuvering out of a WW3 scenario while dealing with lunatics
Putin is going to be annoyed with you for calling him a lunatic..
(No glory on any side in this fight. The Russians are arming and enabling a weak puppet[1] in hock to his backers and generals who uses chemical weapons on his own population and the US/UK/France are holding a live-trial of their weapons system in the hope that more people will buy them.)
[1] Much like the US did in their anti-communist cold war days. Nothing really new under the sun.
.....with no aircraft! An aircraft carrier, which even when the aircraft turn up (when?), doesn't have enough support vessels to form a decent "carrier group".
*
All this would be fine if the UK had billions to spare after we've paid for unimportant things -- like the NHS!
*
So (exactly) what sort of austerity is it we're living through? Philip Hammond may know....but he's in a minority of one.
with no aircraft!
With useless aircraft. While no aircraft participated in the airstrikes in Syria on both sides, the footage from there demonstrated something a lot of analysis predicted when the F-117 came out - that Stealth will provide only a temporary advantage.
Most observed (note - I am not saying confirmed as both sides are throwing propaganda at each other) kills were courtesy of Buk-2M operating in "Stealth Killer" mode. Missile goes up to pre-defined coordinates and looks in a "pre-programmed direction". At that point its own radar head turns on and it looks DOWN on the target. When looking from ABOVE all currently existing Stealth aircraft including the F35 have only a marginal radar signature reduction. They are, in fact, no different from a pre-historic Mig-23 or F-104 radar-wise. The missile comes down on it like a sledgehammer and there is one F35 less flying.
The only way to deal with this is to go back to the days of Gulf-War 1 and Kosovo and jam anything and everything. At which point who gives a shit that the aircraft is stealthy or not. In fact, the aerodynamic disadvantages required by stealth make it easy pray to Gen-4 dogfighters like the EuroFighter, Saab, Mig-27+, Mig29 and the Rafale.
While Americans can afford wasting money (or at least they think so) on a development of superweapons that will be obsoleted shortly, countries with lesser GDPs cannot. In fact the biggest losers as of this weekend are in this order - Russia (the Su-57 program) and Nato participants in the F35 program. The ones laughing all the way to the bank are the French with the Rafale.
There is another lesson in this. We are fixated on Russians threatening to sell S300, S400 and S500 to Iran and other "rogue states". Wrong fixation. While we have continued to fixate on this they have sold their real "anti-Stealth" solution to 20 odd countries, half of them "rogue states" and in quantity - 20+ units to some of them including North Korea. To add insult to injury we have now provided them with real-life footage on how that sh*t works under real conditions so they can sell more. And they will (despite Almaz Antei being under sanctions since MH17).
That thing can fire with its radar taken out, it can fire on vis with the main radar inactive, it can fire blind to pre-defined coordinates and judging by the footage it can do it in the exact way it takes to remove an F35 out of the equation.
The Syrians knew precisely which targets the various missiles were directed towards and approximately when, this saved Macron and May from the small risk of being indicted for murder at a later date but also made it far easier for the Syrians to bring a portion of the missiles down, in a genuine war that would not be the position and much shorter radar detection ranges would be a considerable asset.
Dispute Resolution Counselor? What a brilliant turn of phrase. It made me splutter coffee! I'm going to steal this phrase and apply it to myself. Have a pint.a
Back in my days as a Dispute Resolution Counselor, I had an opportunity to take notes for some flag officers at a tech interchange. Basically all the beltway bandits and septic think tanks were trying to get feedback on their hardware wet dreams from men who had actually been on the pointy end. I was just there to fetch coffee, zip flies, and take notes. Effen hillarious:
Septic think tank: "sirs! Do you want lasers? Directed energy?
Flag: no, all I want is a fscking radio that works!
Septic think tank: um... Pause... How about shape memory alloys? VTOL?
Flag: I want a fscking RADIO that WORKS! Beats table.
Septic think tanks: I know! Vertical takeoff sharks with freakin' lasers!
Two whole days of my life, gone.
Mission creep? Yes, we've met. Needs on patrol are rather simple - you need body armor and a weapon that work. You need food and water. You need comm that comms. You need a leader worth following and fellow men you can rely on.
Where it gets all pear shaped is when you need a mission you can believe in and have trouble figuring out what that hell it is. Think I will end this post right there.
Attitude Adjuster (with a nod to the late I.M. Banks)
On a side note, I am amazed that Lockeed, after perpetually running late, overbudget and with a shoddy POS of an aircraft, has the balls to refuse to pay for correcting issues with, what... the coating on screws, basically?
I wonder if DoD is not escalating a trivial dispute to hold their feet to the fire re costs in general. Would be about effin time with that mangy, flea-ridden, gold-plated albatross. Maybe the UK coulda done that with the +2B estimates from BAE for cats on their glorified helicopter carriers? Aww, well, too late.
Technically more honest and aggressive than "serviceperson" (who kind of sounds like someone who works on your car) but not quite as aggressive as "warrior" (which people also tend to associate with ground troops).
Because (honesty is rare in this subject) if it all turns pear shaped fighting a war is exactly what they will be doing.
but not quite as aggressive as "warrior"
There's a subtle difference between "warrior" and "soldier" - warriors fight as individuals with no overall control whereas soldiers fight as a directed and organised group (or are supposed to - the Americans are fond of calling their soldiers warriors - which says all you need to know about the US military).
Well, based on analogies like horse whisperer - someone who whispers to horses - and bulldozer - someone who dozes with bulls - I'd guess that a warfighter is someone who fights wars. ---oh, you mean, someone who fights _in_ wars, not someone who fights _against_ wars ... I suppose that would make a bulldozer someone who dozes in bulls ...
I wouldn't put too much blame on the programming language used. We don't have the details on the exact runtime and configuration used for the software, as there are ways to make C++ far less tolerant of human fsckups and provide some level of runtime recovery. Of course Ada was designed from the ground up to brutally destroy any semblance of a 'bad idea' :)
That said, usually the way the project is managed is the first part of the problem. Add to that poor and shifting requirements, unrealistic deadlines, high turn-over due to burn-out and a general sensation of 'rushing through things' leading to demotivated developers.
Of course Ada is the better idea for avionics and related, and I say that as primarily a C++ developer. Yet there are few technical solutions to incompetent management.
Just be glad they didn't join the Java hype, I guess, or switch to NodeJS half-way through :)
> as there are ways to make C++ far less tolerant of human fsckups and provide some level of runtime recovery.
Absolutely. First you avoid using any "++" constructs and stick to C-as-a-better-assembler-language and you use that to implement ADA or Lisp and then implement your critical software in that.
They successfully negotiated a target practice run against 2 designated facilities
Just reading the reports on both sides and applying my old skills from the days when I lived on the other side of the wall. In those days I bought the local Communist party rag and a copy of either New York Times or IHT. Scratch out anything that differs, the rest is likely to be true. The sole difference is that now we have two "Communist Party" rags - from either side, both lying like there is no tomorrow.
So, based on applying this technique the picture looks pretty bad. 70% shot down using 30 year old equipment. The newest system the Syrians had was Buk (which is quite good by the way - the only losses Russians had in Georgia were from that). The rest was museum exhibits. They still shot down 70%+. The Russians stood down their systems (once again).
If that is the performance the odds against S400, S-300 and Pantsir-S1 for close-in defense and/or their naval versions look in the "suicide mission" territory.
Last but not least.
One target was middle of Damascus (supposedly research facility), the other one - supposedly manufacturing and strorage was UPWIND from Homs - 10-20km looking at the map. The wind last night for Syria was East-North-East changing to East in the morning. That target was right upwind from a city with 200K people at the edge of its suburb zone.
That is not just jerk-off. It is criminal in its stupidity.
By the way - that was the one which the Russians have allowed UK and France to exercise on.
Most likely whoever negotiated the locations for target practice KNEW there is nothing there. Otherwise if we did not openly lie that it has something to do with chemical weapons, Syrians and Russians would be collecting dead bodies in Eastern suburbs of Homs with mining equipment.
Somehow, dunno why, I would take declarations of a 70% kill rate against incoming missiles by Syrian state media with a large grain of salt (10-20% would be a jolly good show by that lot).
File with "strategic retreat to pre-arranged defensive positions", c. 1944, German ministry of information, Eastern Front.
This really isn't to say anything good about the F35 btw. This was a turkey shoot and it still wasn't invited.
Somehow, dunno why, I would take declarations of a 70% kill rate against incoming missiles by Syrian state media with a large grain of salt
Errr... Dunno. For Damascus the 70% number is quite likely. Homs - we do not know, can't find any evidence. On Damascus and evidence - go and get some of the live footage. It made a hell of a depressing sight. If Trump has any Russian backhanders/Interests Almaz-Antei (the makers of Buk) are one of them. Best advert for it I have ever seen. On the positive - it was an OBVIOUSLY upgraded Buk to M2 spec or higher. Not 30 years old hardware. More like 2 years old.
You cannot mistake it for anything else as the picture is different from most other missiles. It is a dedicates stealth aircraft killer by the way.
Fire, up it goes - very very very high, mostly straight line. At that point it supposedly disengages earth control and engages own radar head. You can literally see the missile weaving a bit for a while until it grabs the target from ABOVE, then DOWN it goes in a straight line like a sledgehammer. Bang. 0.7M (if Storm Shadow) or 1.5M (if Tomahawk) taxpayers money jizzed over the Syrian countryside. And again. And Again. And Again. One shot, one kill. Delivered in a way where the F35 and all other "stealth" aircraft are practically non-stealthy - looking from above. So thanks god it was not there and it was just cruise missiles. The losses would have been ugly.
The clearest indicator that the numbers are not off is the amount of pictures for short range AA/close in defenses speaking over Damascus. All the media is repeating same shots from the same "one got through".
The close ins appear to be have upgraded too. The pictures in the media (both Russian and Western) are from that - pretty, but not informative. Classic case of journos going for "whoaaah, shiny" - so you do not see what is really happening.
Again - that appears to be upgraded. The pics look like Pantsir-S1 firing in both modes (autocannon and short range missiles).
So at least for Damascus (where there is enough alternative and amateur footage to see what has happened) the figures are more or less spot on.
The positive part is that it was not really 30 year old hardware - 2M is relatively new and Pantsir-S1 is pretty much off the production line. The negative is that the mode of operation of the mid-range defense pretty much negates stealth and demonstrates it with gusto. It also appears to work.
Somehow, dunno why,
One more thing.
Just re-read the news. If anyone is brazenly lying it is the yanks. "100% of our missiles reached their designated targets" my arse. They f**** fail on 2-5% of launches for unrelated technical reasons to start off with with no air defense to oppose them
The live footage I managed to dig out was a turkey shoot at mid range. So the if anything the anti-F35 weapon (the Buk) the Russians have developed has passed life firing tests on something different from a civilian airplane.
All in all there are two options here:
A) Both sides are lying so we do an average which is ~ 50%. That still does not good for the West.
B) The Russians have learned the trick that when one of your opponents is obviously lying, you, by telling the Truth which the locals can see on the ground score an automatic propaganda victory with the local population. That looks as a scenario looks even worse - they turned the tables both military and propaganda wise.
Sure. 70% kill ratio by Syria, which recently, heroically*, managed to shoot down its first IAF F16 in aaaages. Pull the other one.
* being sarcastic here. Not much of a fan of Isreali stance towards meaningful Palestinian negotiations but they do have a kick ass army, unlike Syria.
@Arstech - get a clue. Not decrying the culture. Just military incompetence. You wouldn't find me making fun of the Taliban's fighting capacity, for example. Nor Hizbollah's. Syria on the other hand has a long history of iffy performance, these are cruise missiles so unusually hard to hit and shooting down 70% of them would imply really good anti missile hardware. Has anything like this ever happened to US/Israeli strikes, from Iraq/Syria armies? No it hasn't.
Has anything like this ever happened to US/Israeli strikes, from Iraq/Syria armies? No it hasn't.
Depends on the amount of "advisors" on the ground. There is a hell lot of them at the moment.
IMHO what we are seeing is exactly that - the effect of "advisors".
Once you take them into account the numbers start looking more rational. The sole exception is the American claim for 100% missiles hitting 100% targets. That is bullshit. You could see missiles being taken out in the live footage to start off with. On top of that, Tomahawk does not have that reliability. At least a couple of them should have failed just because the stars were in the wrong constellation and the phase of the moon or for some other unexplained reason. All the other numbers are in the realm of possible.
"live footage"
errr... the live footage going around at the time was actually from a previous Yemeni attack on Saudi Arabia, and indeed it showed exactly what you're describing here -- right down to the particular scenes/events mentioned above earlier. But I'd watched it previously at the time of the original Yemen->Saudi attack so I just rolled my eyes at the revisionist re-captioning and moved on.
"10-20% would be a jolly good show by that lot".
Why is it that Westerners take such joy in mocking and decrying people of other cultures?
Would you talk about "jungle bunnies" or "gooks" or "towelheads"? Well, maybe you would.
But believe me, if the study of wars throughout history teaches any one lesson, it is this:
War is God's way of teaching human beings not to despise their fellow human beings.
None of the 105 munitions fired on Syria were intercepted by the worthless obsolete Russian based defense system. The attack was precise, effective and forceful. Chemical weapon agents are typically not ready for use until activated so little harm is likely when destroying them or the research center. The F-35s were invisible to Syria. The majority of Syrian ground to air missiles fired were after the attack was completed by coalition forces.
I'll second that we're in the dark right now. Voland regurgitating Russian claims is as gullible as your swallowing of the Pentagon ones hook line and sinker.
He said, she said.
We'll see, maybe, what gradually comes out over time. It took a long time past Gulf War 1 for the truth about Patriots' glorious interception of Scuds to come out. Seems like very little actual success intercepting those jacked-up V2s.
Not a big problem: in the immediate afterglow, everyone who could rushed to buy some Patriots. Mission Accomplished ;-)
Not a big problem: in the immediate afterglow, everyone who could rushed to buy some Patriots. Mission Accomplished ;-)Indeed, which no doubt is why we Swedish taxpayers are soon to have the privilege of paying some 25 thousand million SEK (do your own conversion to other currencies) for Patriot missiles which will protect us from those dastardly Russians, who just, we are told, long to attack us....
Ain't capitalism grand ?...
Henri
This looks like a carefully orchestrated live fire test between the USA and Russia.
It would be irresponsible to declare an armed services sporting tournament with live fire. Apart from anything else, where would you build the stadium?
Here you get to use an area which is already comprehensively trashed and locals who are beyond complaining.
Each side gets to evaluate the performance of their main potential opponent's technology and take the results back to their military industrial complex. Russia gets to demonstrate it can take out USA missiles and as an extra bonus to demonstrate that stealth technology isn't.
USA gets results which say "listen up, fuckwits, we need more money for better technology".
As unexpected side effect might be to demonstrate that defence is far more effective than attack at the moment. If it could be shown that both sides can effectively block nearly all attacks that might discourage open conflict. However we haven't yet seen the USA trying to stop a Russian missile attack on a convenient 3rd party.
Getting back to the F35, if Russia has just demonstrated they can shoot it down at will, who is the intended alternative target? Presumably anyone who can't /won't buy Russian technology (or hasn't developed the equivalent).
All in all it seems like a very successful marketing exercise.
"Each side gets to evaluate the performance of their main potential opponent's technology and take the results back to their military industrial complex."
So, so different from the US proving beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that their radar control computers could be easily spooked during the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s when USS Vincennes shot down a passenger airliner climbing to get above the conflict, under the impression that ti was a fighter jet diving to attack.
The Soviets would've understood that the radar computer control systems for the projected Budgetary Defense Initiative - misleadingly titled Strategic Defense Initiative aka Star Wars - was so much hot air and the US couldn't afford to deploy any such thing because the space industry insurance companies would sue Uncle Sam into the poorhouse or down the creek. I expect the SDI radar control computers would've just as easily shot down any ESA launches under the impression that the Soviet Union extended to South America ... ditto NASA ...
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Be interesting to see how much of the decision and IO stuff is transferable once you separate out the airframe and avionics stuff. My shrapnel's worth is to opensource the lot, we're paying for it after all. With fly by AI shortly to be banned, I don't really see the point of all the fighting, we should really be concentrating on developing grown up robot wars as a packaged product to sell to our alien overlords. #tennerontheantigravmechaninjattowin
They may be inflexible on some points if they have their reasons, but they don't necessarily have to be on all points. It's a contract, and anything contained therein is potentially negotiable. The foreign government includes a SOW (possibly even a Spec) with their P&A Inquiry, and the USA eventually responds with their Letter of offer and acceptance. This process can include meetings to discuss Scope. The standard Ts&Cs are likely very fixed, as it would need too many approvals to modify.
If the UK really didn't like Turkey maintenance, then they might have tried negotiating. Price may have skyrocketed.
If Turkey continues being silly, perhaps it'll be repatriated elsewhere. UK know anything about jet engines?
Knock-Knock.
Who is it?
Opportunity.
Did Syria use chemical weapons ? At least Blair got as far as giving us a dodgy dossier. May hasn't even bothered with that. The jihadists in that area of Syria were accused in 2016 of using chemical weapons on the Kurdish forces and bombing civilians indiscriminately. They certainly had a motive for dragging the west into the war - whilst the Syrian army would have been insane to use chemical weapons given the limitless backing of Russian armaments.
Surely taking action before the UN inspectorate delivered their report, and without parliamentary approval is just plain arrogant and reckless ? And before someone trots out the Russians vetoing an inspection - they put forward their own proposals rather than knock the idea on the head completely, but the press reporting here was spun that the Russians had blocked inspections (not true).
I'm glad May has found it in her heart to protect civilians in Syria, now lets see if that extends to Yemen where she's helping the Saudi's starve them to death.
May is a neoliberal (which means capital first, morals second) which is why she backs jihadists in Syria, but has a war on terror against them elsewhere. There is no long term plan other than make money. Just 64 large corporations and rich individuals fund most of the Tory party, which has little internal democracy when it comes to voting on policy. Both New Labour and the present Tories are neoliberal outfits with broadly similar policies on war, bankers, and PFI. The moral outrage is trotted out when it makes money, and silent when it doesn't.
Not only didn't they wait for the OPCW on-site visit - which is due today, I believe - but they even suggested that it isn't worth doing.
Because... wait for it... because OPCW is not chartered to assign BLAME. No, they are only responsible for determining whether there was any chemical weapons attack or not.
Got that? Because it is the standard Western government line. It doesn't matter WHETHER anyone used chemical weapons or not - all that matters is that RUSSIA DID IT.
... the US State Department has issued public warnings declaring that the terrorists in Syria are known to have chemical weapons, and to have used them.
And the Syrian government's remaining chemical weapons were destroyed four years ago by a team including the USA, Russia and the UN specialists responsible.
And it is very much against the Syrian government's interests to use chemical weapons - which means it is very much in the terrorists' interests to give that impression.
Three good reasons why it could only have been the terrorists ("very likely" with the active help of Western governments).
he US State Department has issued public warnings declaring that the terrorists in Syria are known to have chemical weapons
They do:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b6a79ad7b2c1746085579e3e8b5f4daa15cee975/0_0_4000_2400/master/4000.jpg?w=1010&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=05e07cb973502d4df97f17782d512cd3
What do you think the two things on the left are? Christmas Presents?
This is ISIS, there was another Guardian/Observer photo-shoot where they were waxing lyrical over the New Syrian army bolting a similar contraption together, but they have now Stalinized it after a few people (including me) wrote to them about the appropriateness of cheering people being gassed.
Did Syria use chemical weapons ? At least Blair got as far as giving us a dodgy dossier. May hasn't even bothered with that.
Whilst as sceptical as you over events, I have to say that I'm rather pleased there wasn't a tawdry parliamentary debate and vote, nor the fabrication of a dossier. The outcome is the same for Syria, but at least we won't have a grinning hypocrite pointing to his own made up evidence. By nature I'm a Tory, so I probably hate Mrs May far more than you do. But at least she's not tried to deceive the public in advance on this.
I still do not understand why all engines will have to be serviced in the country that is now Russias best friend. That alone is a risk. But maybe they can deliver the worst job at the lowest price ?
Don't have crityical stuff done south of the alps, it is just as bad as Americans having things done south of the border.
Must have been decided by Mr. Donald himself.
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