MigBuster

I have seen no information from those tests to determine configuration, version or the speed range that was tested. The US did publish in the 1978 HAVE PAD test program under 10,000ft msl from M0.95 to 730 KIAS the MiG-23MS acceleration was superior to all US jets flown against it - don't have a list of the US jets evaluated though. This likely wouldn't hold true for different speeds or altitudes - especially where the wing was unswept - because of the relatively poor T/W ratio the acceleration would likely come from the aero properties with full wing sweep. In the tested regime its going supersonic where parasitic drag really kicks in and affects acceleration far more than in the subsonic regime. Its still patchy what year (or if) Israel fitted internal ECM (such as Rapport III ) into F-16As. This GCI guidance dependence thing seems to apply mainly to the PVO as far as the USSR went - the VVS seem to have been a lot more flexible.

Is this celebrating a few thousand years of French Girls?

How would you define failure? The Russians seem to have been quick to mothball them after the CW - but its combat record is defined by export countries with indifferent equipment, tactics and strategy. It was probably adequate for a "3rd Gen". but in regards to how it flew - a pilot who flew the "Crocodile" and the later MiG-29 would suggest the 29 was on a different planet. US pilots that flew the MiG-23MS claim it was not forgiving to fly (although possibly didnt fly with stab augs on). The MLD was a lot better than the M/MP but still only F-4E type performance - expect they had no problem ditching them all for 29s. In its intended Cold War role - there were lots of them and they were very fast - and could have been effective depending on tactics etc. Does this include the ground attack MiG-23B/BN/BK as well?

Who knows http://combatace.com/topic/59521-trackir-4/ http://combatace.com/topic/70460-facetrack-noir-with-sf2-series/

Allegedly of course.................

http://www.f-16.net/f-16-news-article4854.html

Afraid the BBC went for something a bit more contraversial!! Dien Bien Phu: Did the US offer France an A-bomb? Sixty years ago this week, French troops were defeated by Vietnamese forces at Dien Bien Phu. As historian Julian Jackson explains, it was a turning point in the history of both nations, and in the Cold War - and a battle where some in the US appear to have contemplated the use of nuclear weapons. "Would you like two atomic bombs?" These are the words that a senior French diplomat remembered US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asking the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault, in April 1954. The context of this extraordinary offer was the critical plight of the French army fighting the nationalist forces of Ho Chi Minh at Dien Bien Phu in the highlands of north-west Vietnam. The battle of Dien Bien Phu is today overshadowed by the later involvement of the Americans in Vietnam in the 1960s. But for eight years between 1946 and 1954 the French had fought their own bloody war to hold on to their Empire in the Far East. After the seizure of power by the Communists in China in 1949, this colonial conflict had become a key battleground of the Cold War. The Chinese provided the Vietnamese with arms and supplies while most of the costs of the French war effort were borne by America. But it was French soldiers who were fighting and dying. By 1954, French forces in Indochina totalled over 55,000. At the end of 1953, French commander in chief Gen Navarre had decided to set up a fortified garrison in the valley of Dien Bien Phu, in the highlands about 280 miles from the northern capital of Hanoi. The valley was surrounded by rings of forested hills and mountains. The position was defensible providing the French could hold on to the inner hills and keep their position supplied through the airstrip. What they underestimated was the capacity of the Vietnamese to amass artillery behind the hills. This equipment was transported by tens of thousands of labourers - many of them women and children - carrying material hundreds of miles through the jungle day and night. On 13 March the Vietnamese unleashed a massive barrage of artillery and within two days two of the surrounding hills had been taken, and the airstrip was no longer usable. The French defenders were now cut off and the noose tightened around them. It was this critical situation which led the French to appeal in desperation for US help. The most hawkish on the American aide were Vice-President Richard Nixon, who had no political power, and Admiral Radford, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Also quite hawkish was the US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was obsessed by the crusade against Communism. More reserved was President Eisenhower who nonetheless gave a press conference in early April where he proclaimed the infamous "domino theory" about the possible spread of Communism from one country to another. "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly," he said. "So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences." Saturday 3 April 1954 has gone down in American history as "the day we didn't go to war". On that day Dulles met Congressional leaders who were adamant they would not support any military intervention unless Britain was also involved. Eisenhower sent a letter to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warning of the consequences for the West if Dien Bien Phu fell. It was around this time, at a meeting in Paris, that Dulles supposedly made his astonishing offer to the French of tactical nuclear weapons. In fact, Dulles was never authorised to make such an offer and there is no hard evidence that he did so. It seems possible that in the febrile atmosphere of those days the panic-stricken French may simply have misunderstood him. Or his words may have got lost in translation. "He didn't really offer. He made a suggestion and asked a question. He uttered the two fatal words 'nuclear bomb'," Maurice Schumann, a former foreign minister, said before his death in 1998. "Bidault immediately reacted as if he didn't take this offer seriously." According to Professor Fred Logevall of Cornell University, Dulles "at least talked in very general terms about the possibility, what did the French think about potentially using two or three tactical nuclear weapons against these enemy positions". Bidault declined, he says, "because he knew… that if this killed a lot of Viet Minh troops then it would also basically destroy the garrison itself". In the end, there was no American intervention of any kind, as the British refused to go along with it. When France lost control of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos nearly 60 years ago, hundreds of people who had served the French colonial system - and were at risk of persecution - were rehoused in a disused army camp in south-west France. It was meant to be a temporary home, but some are still there. The last weeks of the battle of Dien Bien Phu were atrociously gruelling. The ground turned to mud once the monsoon began, and men clung to craters and ditches in conditions reminiscent of the battle of Verdun in 1916. On 7 May 1954, after a 56-day siege, the French army surrendered. Overall on the French side there were 1,142 dead, 1,606 disappeared, 4,500 more or less badly wounded. Vietnamese casualties ran to 22,000. In this year marked by two other major anniversaries - the centenary of the outbreak of World War One and the 70th anniversary of D-Day - we should not forget this other battle that took place 60 years ago. In the history of decolonisation it was the only time a professional European army was decisively defeated in a pitched battle. It marked the end of the French Empire in the Far East, and provided an inspiration to other anti-colonial fighters. It was no coincidence also that a few weeks later a violent rebellion broke out in French Algeria - the beginning of another bloody and traumatic war that was to last eight years. The French army held so desperately on to Algeria partly to redeem the honour it felt had been lost at Dien Bien Phu. So obsessed did the army become by this idea that in 1958 it backed a putsch against the government, which it believed was preparing what the generals condemned as a "diplomatic Dien Bien Phu". This putsch brought back to power Gen de Gaulle who set up the new presidential regime that exists in France today. So the ripples of Dien Bien Phu are still being felt. A memorial in Dien Bien Phu commemorates the French soldiers who died there It was also in 1954 that France began working on its own independent nuclear deterrent. For the Vietnamese, however, Dien Bien Phu, was only the first round. The Americans, who had refused to become directly involved in 1954, were gradually sucked into war - the second Vietnam War - during the 1960s. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27243803

Well it provides some good recent photos and an air show at least.

3rd parties would be best putting out FC3 aircraft first and then develop them into hardcore as a later release - would agree with that. FC3 would have been hardcore about 10 years back.- then came A-10A & BMS (with 8 years spent on the FM alone in BMS case). FC 3 probably sits about 75% on the hardcore scale now.

Defo DCS

SF2_Exp2_setup.exe

hmmm The virtual-reality Oculus Rift headset has been put to a novel use by the Norwegian army - helping soldiers to drive tanks. By mounting cameras on the outside of the tank, soldiers were able to create a 360-degree feed to the Oculus headset, worn by the driver. The device - still just a prototype - is much cheaper than conventional military camera systems. But the picture quality is not yet good enough for operational use. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27292447

No the AI fly in straight line behind the bombers - thus rightly get blown out of the sky 1 by 1 - and the same will happen to you if you line yourself up behind a bomber - TK would need to write better tactics for them. I really cant remember the last time i was hit by tracer fire - you should be attacking from angles and moving - same applies to any sim - also fly straight over an AAA site the same thing happens (although the AI is far better at anti AAA tactics). Yes a head tracker really helps give you a 3D perspective on things.

Hope it turns out okay for you Falcon......shame about Godzilla.......but that will be there waiting for you.

Many congratulations Jug - a well earned rest is due. If you start to get bored you can always rewrite SF2 I guess

Yeah move the mod folders somewhere safe then uninstall all the games Once installed back to 2012 patch then start the games once and put the mod folders back - APART FROM options.ini and version.ini - you must use the ones the game has created for the install - if you forget this then you will post back asking why the game keeps overwriting inis etc.

On patrol over eastern Europe and armed to the teeth

Nice - have an i5 4670k on the way - mainly because I want a USB 3 mainboard and more SATA 3 connectors - will hopefully be good enough for SF2 in stock form

Only £9,500 for 25 minutes - might be worth it

Yes getting the correct sound it makes could be the barrier to getting these through

Star Wars: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill reunite for latest film http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27210448

Case of shimmering? Will be a case of experimenting with settings - are you using an NVIDIA profile? AA & AF can reduce shimmering at expense of performance - but again it depends. You can change the value for AF in the options.ini if you are letting SF2 run things. Also are you using an older modded terrain? btw SF2 is not supported in Win 8 SF2 last build was 2013 - the latest NVIDIA patch may not help things

That is hilarious - I suppose the games are worth a bit more now - although I wouldntgive them more than a dollar for the entire bag. Wonder what other crap games have been dumped - if only they could dig up something useful!

But for some reason at 1:24 things get very interesting.