Now that would seriously reduce my daily commute.
Where can I get one!? :-)
Last edited by: zippy on Sat 22 Jun 13 at 14:58
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Looks impressive to me. No idea if it's militarily of any use.
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>> No idea if it's militarily of any use.
Do you mean 'able to hack it with Western/Chinese kit' Manatee?
I wouldn't know, but aircraft of that type are incredibly powerful weapons, especially in ground-attack mode. They can pop over the horizon and vanish over the opposite one in seconds, leaving you in the middle under a couple of tons of burning napalm or blown to smithereens by some other means. No joke at all, impossible to hit with projectile weapons and very difficult to hit even with smart SAMs.
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Perhaps the Ruskies could loan a few to Bashar the basher Sire.
:}
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Well they already have of course. They may be last year's model but that's quite effective too...
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Those sort of Mach 2 capable fighter-bombers are of course also very expensive indeed, and it costs a lot to train their pilots who become valuable in proportion.
As a result, only very rich countries, and not all of those, are actually willing to risk losing them. Once a couple have been hit by SAMs the others tend to keep their distance. There is a level at which they become wimpish status symbols.
Heard anything about El Qaeda in Mali recently? Half a dozen French strike fighters have made the so-and-sos keep their heads down (as I said they would when everyone was wringing their hands about escalation and Mali being none of Europe's business and other silly stuff).
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That Sukhoi - I've seen something very similar on TV (or perhaps in the flesh at Farnborough where I once went) some years ago now - is very distinctive looking, but I can't tell most of them apart - MiGs, Jaguars, Phantoms - without seeing them side by side, and it's in the nature of things that you don't see them side by side except at air shows.
They are very beautiful and evil-looking things whose speed in low-level flight and whose sound when you have the good fortune to be passed by a couple going quickly at low altitude are both astonishing. In Africa where I have seen them a few times they are very tastefully turned out too: matt buff or olive drab on top and baby-blue on the underside, couple of stencilled black numbers, small tail flash if that of national colours, no wing or fuselage roundels that I can remember... a real spectacle when you can make them out for a few seconds against the buff or green landscape and/or cloudless baby-blue sky.
The pilots are something else too, flying and even taking off and landing in tight, close, perfect formation. When captured (it doesn't often happen) they are worth plenty in ransom or military exchange. People they've zapped sometimes want to lynch them of course, but the local military protect them for their exchange value. All right for some eh?
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sat 22 Jun 13 at 16:33
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Are we off to RAF Waddington next week?
I am not sure if camping yet not had much luck with the weather last few years so if wet may just drive down for the day.
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Sukhoi Su-35 at the Paris air show - zippy
