For what its worth. Why no picture of Austin in his bed with a thumbs up sign? Or no photo of him arriving home, I'm sure it is staked out with camera holding curious people?
More importantly this is one of the guys with the nuke codes to launch WWIII and would be needed to do his bit to get US missiles in the air.... and for about 2 or 3 days Blinken and Biden didn't know he was off the job... supposedly in Hospital.
Imagine the shit storm if that happened to North Korea or China or Russia... can't launch your nukes because one of the guys that has to punch his code into the nuclear football can't be found at the moment and no one knows where his is for 3 days.
Well regardless on the upgrade on TELAR. Buk Battery should be operating together with an early warning/battle management radar. The job of IFF is delegated to 9S18 Radar. The Buk TELAR itself since its inception back in 70's already have a wireless datalink antenna which it can receive designation data. The feature is already there since the beginning.
If something went wrong then it's either incorrect designation data was provided or the Buk just run loose.
When a US AWACS aircraft sent two F-15s to investigate and eventually shoot down two American Blackhawk helicopters in Iraq because they thought they were Hinds, it was because the Blackhawks moved from one area to another area without changing their IFF codes which meant they were squawking the wrong signal to appear as friendlies.
There is a level of complexity that amateurs like us probably don't understand.
I remember the Israelis used the trick of IFF systems to find and track Arab aircraft... when you spot a target you send a signal and to be identified as friend or foe you respond with corresponding code... get the code right and you are friendly... get it wrong and you are not. The Israelis just squawked signals and used the responses from the enemy aircraft to locate them.
Then you would have triggered the start of a war that would lead to nuclear war and you are more insane and deranged then any NATO person is.
Aw come on.... you are claiming the bridges to Crimea are fair game but the HQ of Evil in Kiev cannot be touched because there are Americans in it?
I would say that should be the first target... they can say they used old maps in the planning.... America would understand that one.
Also, this is war any russian military assist is fair game and trying to say otherwise is pretty dam stupid.
So Russian assets are fair game but US structures that created this conflict are off limits or WWIII will start?
Why not? The US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. It would be fair game if Russia bombed the US embassy in Ukraine.
More importantly the elimination of that hive of vipers would have more effect on the conflict than murdering some Chinese diplomats ever could.
That embassy was destroyed because the US feared they might be collecting useful data on the use of US stealth aircraft... in comparison the thousands of people at the US embassy in Kiev seem to be running the country...
Unlike the US, Russia does not have the balls to bomb the US embassy.
The US are arseholes but I don't think they would bomb a US embassy... more than once.
Do not be hyperbolic. Russia had three cruisers like the Moskva. They have like a dozen of these things.
Right now they don't produce new AWACS aircraft. But they can probably produce like one or two a year.
This was perhaps a good message for the Navy that old obsolete ships are not what they used to be so you don't save any money not upgrading them and keeping them modern if they can't be used because they are too vulnerable...
This is an excellent lesson.
600 planes will be built until 2030
That is civil production... military production will be in addition to that.
detach their large payload then return.
FPV suicide drones are very useful but being able to reuse them over and over makes them vastly more efficient and useful... the difference between using a bomber and a cruise missile.
Good to see they are using heavy bombs to ensure kills rather than injuries... drones flying over cover looking for targets and monitoring attacks with FPV drones that can chase the enemy everywhere they run...
Il-114 is already ready for production and they proposed versions for awacs, maritime patrol, Elint, EW jammer, and maritime strike patrol.
It has enormous potential as an affordable deployable AWACS aircraft, but I also suspect the use of M-55s for recon will expand too...
No size of AWACS could be considered expendable, but platforms operating at 50km altitude is going to be safe from many things.
On it's own it would be vulnerable, but the way VKS would use it would make it much stronger as part of a group
And that is a good point... anything on its own is vulnerable, but a team without AWACS support is less capable and with a greater likelyhood of being surprised than a team with AWACS support.