Vigilant

I have a really strange problem with my WOV Air & Ground War Expansion Pack Gold installation. When squadron should upgrade to a new type the upgrade doesn't happen, only the squadrons current type is reset to default skin. Also you don't get any "yx squadron will be reequiping with.." note in mission debrief. This happens with all squadrons in campaign (Steel Tiger or Rolling Thunder). My installation stock with few aircraft added (Razbam Skyraiders + some customized weapons and loadouts).

I've just read that it suffered and engine failure during the flight...

In the Czech Republic the absolutely average guy would be "Honza Novák". Simply because Honza (Jan(John) in formal usage) is the most common name and Novák is the most common surname. To describe the average pub regular - older, low income worker, drinking beer, maybe playng cards with similar characters and definetly swearing about politics, prices etc. - in the same context as the French "Bidochon", you could use name like "Pepa Vomáčka". A guy from Bavaria told me(long time ago), that in Germany "Hanz" is the term for blonde "poster" german and "Helmut" is the average german in general. Can our German members confirm this?

Not completely. Today, most of these problems are only annoying. If there is nothing done about them, then in time they will become very real. There are many different tensions here. Between the old western members and new eastern. Between the small and large members. The mediterranean members want different things than Skandinavian ones. The British are always at the bring of "lets blow that tunnel and be done with it". The problems I wrote about simply don't help make these tensions go away. And politics aimed at average center voter make the parties somewhat bland. Whenever support for extreme parties rises (like in the last European parliament elections) it is correct to assume that the "normal" parties are doing something wrong. I know that I am probably too pessimistic about it, but problem with pessimism is, that sooner or later you are right and s*** really hits the fan. Anyway, was there any new development on that P-3 incident?

if you use a really big saw and a lot of rope...

Just Could Not Resist By the way the launch was wery smooth

Why not call it operation Skyshield? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield

Yes, this has someting to do with sarcasm and number 13...

And you don't know, that Czechoslovakia made good socialist ruble by selling AA guns to North Vietnam and good imperialist dolar by selling agent orange to USA. Call it socialist friendship.

There is a saying about neigbor's grass being always greener. From the other shore of the pond it seems reversed . First you have to understand that in political sense there is no EU. The European parliament spends most of it's time arguing about what is the "standard European banana", "English sausage" (if you know Yes, Prime minister ) and so on. And the standars they produce usually create only obscure loopholes for European industry(that then must spend money to meet these standards, increasing the already high cost of labour), rather than standartising anything. For example there is still no common standard for something that simple as a electric socket. Or a single European patent registry. And this process is under strong lobbing of NGOs that are best described as Red-Green guerrilas. The actual great internal or external matters (like "let we Greece hang because they can't get they fiscal policy under control?") is always a contest between Prime ministers of France, Germany and the country that currently holds the chairmanship, Barroso as the chairman of European commision and with strong nod of respect towards the opinions of Spain, Italy and Britain. So there is no real decision making process and more inportanty on responsibility. Everything hides behind vague "it has been decided" or "it is essencial that" phrases. In the US you can pin such decisions to people - President xy decided that zx. And there are videly known speeches about it. That is all missing here. If you say "European federalism" you don't remember that is is Mr. ab's idea and his speech where he so well explained his goals. The multi-party system also has serious flaws. It ineviteably creates coalition goverments that can't get anything done because coalition partners don't like it. It also creates the "small party fenomena" - party with about 10% popular vote that allows one of the major parties to create a goverment. This tipping of scales gives the small party influence that is completely out of proportion to it's actual support(and if you take into account the low number of peple that actualy vote it's even worse). And the parties by themselves are nothing spectacular either. From left to right you have different communists, Greens (that focus more on protecting nature from capitalism, rather than on protecting nature), Social democrats, that combine naive believe in "all men are good" (that takes phrase "wishful thinking" to a new level) and ruthless vote buing by social spending (with "after us the flood" as a motto), the right (usually Christian democrats, but not always), that in actual policy look like social democrats light with the difference only in scale, reather in intention and finaly the nacionalists, that live on shouting "France to the French!", "Germany to Germans", etc.. They don't get much support, mostly because strong believe that "nacionalism"->"fascism"->"Hitler"->"Evil". But with immigration, intergation of immigrants and apparent total failure of multiculturalism becoming the strong undercurrent of politics across Europe (that is ignored by the mainstream parties), there is IMHO a large risk of the new unified Europe falling into the hands of another Austrian painter by popular vote.

If you get into subsonic trainer derivates, then you must include the l-159. Although the actual integration did not take place (money, money, money,..) the plane is designed with BVR missile capability. As it already has A2A radar probably the only thing not done was firing a few missiles to "certify" it. In simulated combats with Netherlands (don't remember for sure) F-16s, with the type in service for about two weeks, it was quicky found that it is a bad idea to allow the ALCA to close... Also back during the Cold war the Czechoslovak airforce had excelent results with using l-39s against low and slow intruders. With price of modern fighters steadily creeping beyond 100 000 000 USD such designs may come as good solution for smaller/poorer nations as a way to maintain adequate force levels. Oh, and I am not making this up, it was all written in official manufacturer documents (that meanwile dissapered form their web).

Many fine points were raised in this topic. The biggest problem in my oppinion is that the "War on Terror" is more of political nature, rater than military. Simply, there are two objectives 1) destroy existing terrorists 2) prevent creation of new ones. The first objective is mainly military matter and the other is a political one. While the military is more or less succeding the politicians are not. It is questionable if they can. Eraser's simpler method of "get in, kill everything that moves, find the locals a new dictator and get out" would work unless you have to do it every five years (and it simply ignores that at least part of public back home doestn't like the "he is a dictator, but ours" part). At this moment withdrawal may result in worse conseuqences than staying. It would be interpreted as a great victory by the Jihadists and what that would do with stability of the region (where fanatical theocracy is in most countries one assasination away). Compare with consequences of Vietnam war on SEATO or SEA in general. Back then Soviets won, but in the end it gained them nothing. What will the Jihadists gain is unknown. I am not sure how much of classical works on warfare (von Clausewitz, Sun Zu, etc.) can be applied on current circumstances. If you look at them more closely you'll find that they all originated in remarcably similar circumstances. They were written in times when war was common, but mostly on relatively small scale (Napoleonic wars are a exception to this, but Napoleon's introduction of decisive warfare was an exception to the rule). They were fought between highly organized states and governed by generaly accepted rules (law of war if you'd like). This is both background of these books and also of modern western understanding of war (with the exception of small scale) - "War is continuation of politics by other means, conducted in a manner dictated by generaly accepted law and custom". The other side doesn't do it this way. You don't have a state to fight and neither there are accepted rules of war. This will in time result in the brutality Gepard talked about. Another example from history - firebombing during the second world war - in the end anything that reduces the enemy capability to fight was acceptable. Was in brutal? Yes. Was it necessary? There was war. So there is no simple, clean solution. Interesting times are probably ahead...

USA threatened by EU? Sorry, I almost fell from my chair laugting. All that you wrote about US - broke, etc. - applies to EU in far greater degree, though economy is not the greatest problem, politics is. If EU would be unified under a centralized, transparent and representative government then you would not be too far from truth(and of course if it can be achieved, a big if). But as it is today (and in foreseeable future) you are completely wrong. The politicians sitting in Brusels are mostly people that in older, more civilised times (if you know Serenity) would be made governors of the Farthermost Far Easter Pacific Ocean Territories(no pun to anyone who lives there, it's just on the other side of the world) - or any other "out of sight, out of mind" exile. And even if some of them are not that bad, they exist in completely virtual reality of "compromises". Like the recent election of "president" and "foreing secretary" - their selection was primarily ruled by a)small x large member state represantaion, b)left x right, c)don't interfere with Merkel&Sarkosy. And in the end it was criticised from all sides (left, right, federalists, skeptics, etc.) because an oportunity to give the EU a clear vision by electing a well known representative(and thus a strong policy) was missed. In situation when EU is governed by treaties hundreds of pages long, incomprehensible for anyone except the most hardcore lawyer-masochists and containing a lot of "may" and little of "must" or "must not", when it is not clear whether it is European Union, French Empire or Grossdeutchland (whether it is represented by Brussels, Paris or Berlin), when most citizens have no idea why it exists, then it simply can not formulate any policy and become in any way powerful.

The mission with the Victorious is earlier in the game. It begins as a fighter sweep, then you get ambushed by those cloaking russian fighters, while they destroy the Reliant. You are then ordered to defend Victorious. It is a nasty attack as four russian bombers jump in very close to the convoy and fire all their torpedoes and a moment later (when you are fighting the fighters behind the convoy) another wave hits the other side. If you'd like i send you a pilot profile with this mission completed.

Thanks for clarification. I thought that it will be something like that. I played this mission about two weeks ago and there weren't that many torps or bombers (three IIRC). It is a bit chaotic, but if you launch, stay on afterburner and concetrate only torpedoes (targeting them with T key) it is doable (at first try, two missed torps). IMHO there are several more challenging anti-torpedo missions - the defence of that passenger liner early in the game with cloaking bombers or that defence of the Victorious later.