None of this goes to my point that the US played a relatively small role in the initial take-down of Libya.

I like the the VSTOL model B’s ability to operate from LHAs, and think that is going to keep the USN’s Carrier crisis from becoming a real-world problem. There are a LOT of low-intensity conflicts where a full Ford class carrier is just massive overkill. A good example of this is hunting Islamists in Libya.

The larger wing area of the USN version may well prove the salvation of the F-35. It seems the best platform to build on going forward as wing-loading and control surface area seems the F-35’s biggest problem. Take the folding wingtips out and lighten up the landing gear for land-based ops and keep the larger wing for…

Any idea what this wheel-looking thingie is? ;)

Makes you wonder why Putin is pisssing away what he has left in the endless moneypit of the Middle East.

Those Progress engines circa 1980s are pretty pathetic by modern standards. Too heavy, too thirsty, and not enough power.

Some interesting background info. It appears the USAF’s hand was forced by Congress...

LOL, Yeah, the Saudis are sticking it to Putin any way they can for his involvement in supporting Iran, their puppet Assad, and the Shia in Yemen. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Stick to shooting shit dude, because your pretzel logic makes no sense whatsoever. Bush instigated his war, Obama picked up as little of NATO’s Euro-weenie slack as we could get by with in Libya, and all of that reluctantly.

Yup! In any court of law if the perp says one thing and a professional guesser says another, the perp’s testimony is taken as fact and the speculation is taken as speculation and hearsay.

Assad is still in power because Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are backing him. He’d be long gone if he were trying to defend his kingdom on his own. So are you now insisting Obama should be involved in the Syrian civil war? Make up your mind. Should a super-power intervene in order to support the self-determination of a…

Sorry to interject facts into your Obama bashing, but Gaddafi’s departure was initiated by his own people as part of the Arab Spring, whereas Saddam was indisputably in control of Iraq when Bush invaded with an agenda of Regime Change. Not the SAME THING.

Oh, for shit sake, grow the fuck up!

What? There’s a place on Earth where more than a few dozen Muslims are present and they figure out some reason to hate each other enough to start killing each other? Shocking!

Great, now the USAF will have ‘A’ scale and ‘B’ scale pilots - because that is so popular in the civilian world!

This nonsense that “competition is bad” started in the Clinton administration and has had a very subtle, but disastrous unintended consequence. Instead of the branches of the DOD being offered a lot of choices, each of which informs them of capabilities they never thought of nor thought possible, which relieves…

Agree with all, except perhaps on HARM performance in Kosovo where they were decoyed all over the place by cheap microwave ovens. Also heard of a case where a HARM went over the border into Bulgaria and hit a man shaving.

Somebody tell him it’s the invisible force field that’s shaped like a pyramid covering the White House lawn he’s supposed to sit under in case of nuclear attack! ;)

There is a picture on the F-16 Wikipedia page of a pair of Israeli Airforce Vipers with what looks like divertless intakes. Those bumps would sure seem to be the perfect place to embed a Sniper Targeting system. It has unrestricted forward and downward viz, depending where exactly the optics are places, plenty of…

1,600 SAMs were fired during OIF in 2003 for 1 fighter kill and 6 helicopters. Not sure what the mix of types were, but there were almost always secondaries as they were engaged with cluster bombs, so thousands of SAMs, and who knows how many SA3s. A big drop from 39 fighters shot down by SAMs in ODS in 1991.