JediMaster

The comments are hilarious.

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.

If they really did gain control of it remotely, or at a minimum cause it lose contact with base, they really need to boost the comsec on that thing.

What do you want, blood??!?!?

No, but get an economical working jet pack on the market and I'm THERE.

Ok, so 50 years. Either way, there's no one still in service there that remembers!

Didn't Hippocrates say "first do no harm"????

I thought I read this was their first combat action in many many decades. Maybe since WWII, maybe earlier, I forget.

Is that it? I've noticed some oddness with IRMs over the years where I could've sworn I had a hit but the plane flew on as if nothing had happened. This isn't an issue with SARH or active radar missiles, either. I don't know how that could be, though, that would be an odd glitch in the damage modeling.

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.

I hope for the Yak-38 and the obvious Soviet carrier implication, but...

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.

Until you die in what you feel was a perfectly normal turn, then you hate it.

That sounds...somehow fitting. I'm just not sure how.

See, "running a red light" when it's changing as you're passing thru the intersection is a far cry from that idiocy of going thru quite a bit later!

I am NOT a loony! Why should I be tarred with the epithet "loony" merely because I have a pet halibut?

Ironically, until some more countries get the Gripen and use it in combat it won't get a reputation to compete!

I can just see it now...the carrier crashing into the iceberg while Jack and Rose hang off an arresting wire...

GODDAMNEVILCOMMBUILDINGSDOTTIR? I hope TK models a volcano that can erupt for an entire campaign and ground all airplanes! That would be SO realistic!

LOL, of course what terrain would NOT need "realistic colored tiles" and "better trees"? Iceland!

Perhaps that's because he has NA expansions planned? We know of the F1-based expansion, like for SF2E or SF2I, but it wouldn't make sense not to have them for this new one.

Well, the F-16 has a reputation that the Gripen does not as well.

I don't like the Gannet. They wet their nests. Bucs and Phantoms rock, though!