I assert it is cost as the main factor. Putin set aside a cetain amount of cash for Syria its a point many don`t factor in. One intesresting fact is their air ops tempo has only ever been classified as “moderate” when they always had the forces available for a high tempo air campaign. Oh, and they have JTACs like we…

Its not magic, its philosophy. The Russians went for supermanouverability, we didn’t. We had looked at TVC for F-16, 18 etc and it wasnt seen as vital for example, its not a good idea to bolt on a TVC kit to an aircraft not designed with that much extra weight and CG shift in mind.

I bet a lot of their aircraft share the very same LRU`s....I see that as an advantage.

Tell the Indian Air force about Russian “service”. When an SU30 MKI engine fails, its sent back to Russia and repaired, the Indians don’t get to learn anything about the failure it or touch it apart from routine servicing. The Russians also tie you in to support contracts don`t believe otherwise, wait until the Turks…

The Russian public don`t have any interest in what happens in Syria according to recent polls, wages are their main concern at home not their foreign policy.

The more modern Russian laser guided weapons were probably held in stockpile and were not extensively used in Syria to be exhausted. They also built the French Damocles FLIR pod under license many years ago, their own pods are pretty decent but supply / demand has been their major issue, not the technology hence the…

“Most Modern nuclear arsenal”, I dont think so.

We own them we do not lease the missiles.

The D5 has used GPS data on some test flights as far as I can tell but does not rely on it operationally because the assumption would be GPS would not be available. It uses a stellar camera to get a navigational fix to position the Bus before payload release.

Not sure about the HE used on the warheads though, they really should all be IHE by now, ie, its not a good idea to “drop” a Trident SLBM but you can drop a Minuteman III when pulling it out or back into its silo and the HE will not go bang.

We do not lease them, we bought them so own them.

Yes, because it was a joint USN / RN test, on a US range.

The US will know exactly what happened since it occured on a USN range....

US land based ICBMs will go over the pole West to East and the US has onviously never test fired them in that direction, only east to west on the Atlantic (SLBM) and pacific test ranges both ICBM and SLBMs as far as i know.

We used to call Lucas, “The Prince of darkness.”.

It looks and sounds like a missile issue, so, its an American issue per se.

A small correction, the UK wholly “owns” its Trident missiles. We bought them , the fact they are drawn from a common servicing pool does not negate the fact we bought 64 of them.

Just so you know, this was a joint UK / US ex.

No, the whole article and headline are spurious and misleading. The Ballistic missile Submarine was on a certification EX after an “UPKEEP” maintenance cycle. The missile was an instrumented round carrying a “Test launch mod` kit” supplied by Lockheed Martin with NO warheads aboard.

Its coming.