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JediMaster

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Posts posted by JediMaster


  1. Yes, looking at that video now it just feels wrong. It looks more like a low-budget Hollywood prop of a UAV.

     

    So perhaps they'd built a mockup based on what they could learn off the internet, perhaps as a way to try and get a good RCS from it, and then we lose one to a glitch in their territory. Someone comes up with the idea of making a grand charade and claiming they have it intact instead and film this thing as "proof".

     

    One DID crash (I've seen conflicting reports as to whether it was confirmed as a 170 or not), and it was admitted the Iranians got to it before a decision could be made on whether to try and retrieve or destroy it, but that doesn't mean it's intact.


  2. There's no question on their training if they are attacked on their own soil. However, as the US started learning during the 91 Gulf War, there's no substitute for actually doing it where things you never thought would be an issue turn into real problems.

    It's not the "what do you do when you get outflanked" type of combat experience I'm referring to, it's more the "how do you resupply if bad weather sidelines an expected transport drop" type of experience.

     

    Excercises are generally tailored to working on a particular area leadership feels needs work or emphasis, the "full up" ones that have everyone working together as if it was real are rare due to costs and the drain on active resources (ie you don't want to be vulnerable to an attack because your forces are all training on the other side of the country). Then you have all the extra wrinkles working with allies in a deployed location possibly thousands of miles from your supply depots.

     

    If Sweden is serious about being part of that club, they'll have to invest in rectifying all the shortfalls they identified over Libya as well as do it more regularly. After all, one thing all militaries know is that just as you fix the problems to help you win the last war, you've got a whole new set of issues for the next.


  3. I was just reading a "lessons learned" piece in AW&ST about Gripens in Libya last night. Apparently NATO interopability with things like ATOs and radios and such was the big issue for them, along with Qatar and the UAE, the other 2 non-NATO participants.

    As far as the plane itself, I got the impression that there were no real issues, that it neither was hampered nor distinguished itself in the sorties it did (something like 650).

     

    So, bottom line was plane works fine, but Sweden needs to work on being part of a coalition and actually doing combat jointly.


  4. I have 2 versions of that "Great Book of Modern Warplanes." The later one with revised stuff I've read far less than the original.

     

    I still laugh when I look at the "unknown" MiGs in there. I love the one that looks like it's halfway between a Fulcrum and a Foxhound, but I forget whether they called it a 29 or a 31.

     

    I've been bringing a book to school, and then work, since 6th grade. In the intervening decades I've read hundreds of books, if not more. Well, as I reread ones I like, perhaps not more UNIQUE books, but if you count the number of times I've reread Lord of the Rings, that Warplanes book, Red Storm Rising and Hunt for Red October, my Gulf Air War Debrief, 2001, Foundation Trilogy, etc, it probably totals well up there.

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