Oh. In all fairness, I think Tyler was criticizing which variant of AAM was being carried, not that they were being carried overall. That being said, I really like what Tyler does, but from time-to-time, his analysis is ‘interesting’ to say the least. Sometimes he simply doesn’t understand ‘why’ something is…

No prob, glad that helped!

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Id be very supportive of the USN acquiring or designing some advanced diesel/AIP subs.

How’d you like that book? Recommend it?

Absolutely. Not difficult to stay outside of the MANPAD envelope.

Who criticized them? You can’t put anything else on those stations. Might as well. No detriment.

Pretty unlikely. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the JSOC/SOCOM community (as far as shooters go) that has done anything more than shoot a video game version. Not something they train for really. Thing may have changed since i left the military but nobody I served with had ever seen one, much less handled them.

the destroyer fleet’s ASW muscles have atrophied enough to be useless against anything post 1970s-Soviet.

Because the F-15E and the SU-34 are cut from the same cloth.

specially when it comes to performance for the price.

You know who else predicted a lot of conflicts relatively accurately? Tom Clancy. I know people like to shit on him around here (I don’t know why) but one of the last books he wrote before the influx of ghostwriters and then his passing, had to do with a conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

Yeah, the internet spoils people. Especially people who don’t understand physics.

Lol

Yeah pretty much. Any dedicated fighter is going to eat the SU-24s lunch. The only warning they’d probably get (assuming no 3rd party is providing intel) is when their RWR sounds. Their radar isn’t capable of cueing weapons like that even if they were to carry them.

Cheers, good catch. I work with a lot of Brits and for whatever reason, they use both spellings interchangeably.

Nope, no Alamos (or any form of radar guided AAM). It can only carry and utilize the R-60 and R-73.

Not sure what you mean by fully functional but yes, it can detect aircraft and cue semi-active and autonomous AAMs.

It’s a NATO designation. All their fighters and attack aircraft are named with an “F”. Bombers get a B.

Exactly. The R-73 is legit. The R-77 is an utter joke and even their beloved Alamo series is pretty poor. The Alamo has less than 10% hit ratio, many people even say less than 5% (depends on exactly how many were fired in Africa).

Because it’s a pretty poor missile. It was touted as the “AMRAAMski”, then evidence (mainly Indian) came out that showed it’s very inferior to the AIM-120B (nevermind the C and D).