Don't think that would be such a good idea. These things can potentially swallow a lot of money now and in the future from the maintenance & operating costs. Finally, in the end become white elephant like Thai Aircraft Carrier.

I don't think Malaysian Navy right now can afford to deploy warships larger than Frigates-sized ships.

You seriously think Malaysia can afford to buy and maintain a Mistral LHD?

Coz my prediction is we simply can't, the cost of purchasing and maintaining the ship and its airborne/amphibious units is simply too much for our economy and military budget. So probably it will spend most, if not all its service time tied up in dock. Even the two bare Russian Mistrals tied up doing nothing in St Nazaire is costing the French government €5 Million per month to maintain the ships so they remain serviceable in case anyone wants to buy them later.

Same as Thai aircraft carrier, which has also spent most of its time tied up at dock because the Thai Navy can't afford to have it operational at sea. I call this a white elephant.

So how is the purchase of a Mistral LHD not a potential white elephant to Malaysia?

I already get LHD=/= aircraft carrier.

Thai Aircraft carrier: No Harrier, ends up tied at dock, become useless=white elephant

Potential Malaysian Mistral: potentially too much cost for malaysia, potentially ends up tied at dock, potentially become useless=potential white elephant

No difference there.

Who's taking these pictures?

I imagine the captain of the CCG ship's repeated: "foreign military aircraft, please go away".

Sadly MMEA no assets big enough to sit alongside the patrol vessel to make sure it doesn't do anything kinky. Currently MMEA's small boats it would likely just ignore.

Houthi rebels launch Scud ballistic missile towards Saudi Arabia, intercepted by Patriot SAM system



The Saudi military said on Saturday it shot down a Scud missile fired into the kingdom from Yemen. Saudi troops also repelled an attack on the border, killing dozens of gunmen. Four Saudi soldiers lost their lives in the battle, state-run media reported.

The Scud attack marked an escalation in the two-month conflict and undermined Saudi Arabia’s announcement in April that it had destroyed the rebels’ missile arsenal. The coalition retaliated by bombing the headquarters of the pro-Houthi Yemeni army in the capital Sana’a, killing more than 40 people, according to the Saba news agency.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has said its military campaign in Yemen seeks to restore the rule of President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. The kingdom and its allies have portrayed the Houthis as tools of Shiite-ruled Iran, a claim viewed with skepticism by European and U.S. diplomats.

“The war was supposed to crush the Houthi movement and get them out of not only Aden but Sana’a and bring the former president back, and that’s clearly not happening,” Toby Matthiesen, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge said by phone.

Sources claim Houthis have repositioned most of the 300 Scud ballistic missiles it has towards Saudi Arabia


Saudi Patriot SAM batteries protect a Saudi airfield as a pair of RSAF F-15 fighter/bombers take off

Satellite imagery has shown that the Houthis have repositioned some of the Yemeni army’s 300 Scud missiles that it had captured near the northern border and directed them at Saudi Arabia, the official said. The air strikes have destroyed 21 of the missiles, the official added.

The Houthi rebels claim thay had lauched three Scud missiles towards the Southwestern Saudi town of Khamis Mushait and the nearby King Khalid AFB on Saturday, but Saudi official sources say they only detected a single Scud missile launch which the Saudis later intercepted and shot down.

It is still a decent long-range weapon if you don't have an Air Force to hit your enemy with, but yes, generally it does suck. The avionics and guidance systems are for the majority of the world's Scud arsenal is for the most part, still date from the 1950s and 1960s, so the missile not very accurate.

Although the missile can reach more than mach 5 during terminal reentry making it hard to shoot down with non state-of the-art SAM missiles, the Scud's CEP is very terrible and the warhead can hit anywhere between 2 meters to 2,000 meters from its intended target. While originally the Scud was designed to deliver small tactical nukes, so a near miss will still be lethal to the enemy, but nowadays the Scud is normally only fitted with a 2,000 pound conventional warhead, which makes it nearly useless with that kind of CEP.

But hey, it is still better than nothing. At least the Houthis have a way to hit back at the Saudis.

R-17 VTO (NATO: SS-1e Scud-D) Tactical ballistic missile


Vietnamese army missile technicians service a Scud-D missile

The R-17 VTO (SS-1e Scud-D) project was an attempt to enhance the accuracy of the original R-11 Scud and R-17 Scud-B missiles. The Central Scientific Research Institute for Automation and Hydraulics (TsNIAAG) in Moscow began work on the project in 1968, but the first test launch was conducted only in September 1979. Development continued through the 1980s until the system was accepted into initial service as the 9K720 Aerofon in 1989.

However, by this time, more advanced weapons were already in use, such as the OTR-21 Tochka (SS-21 Scarab) and the R-400 Oka (SS-23 Spider), and the Scud-D was not acquired by the Soviet armed forces. Instead it was proposed for export as an upgrade for Scud-B users, in the 1990s.

Unlike previous Scud versions, the 9K720 had a warhead that separated from the missile's body, which increased its ballistic properties and terminal velocity. This made it theoretically much more difficult to intercept even with anti-ballistic missiles as the detached spent rocket body (which would disintegrate on reentry) can also act as a basic decoy for the smaller warhead.

Much more importantly,the missile was fitted with its own terminal guidance computer system, which made it much more accurate than its predecessor's inertial guidance systems. Combined with a TV camera fitted in the nose, the system uses a terrain-mapping computer that could compare the target area with data from an onboard digital library. In this way, it was claimed the missile is able to attain a Circular Error Probability (CEP) of less than 50 m.

Other improvements from its predecessors was an improved thrust-vectoring rocket engine and fuel system which used a semi-liquid gelled kerosene and nitric acid fuel/oxidizer mixture which increased the missile's range by almost 500 km. The use of nitric acid as an oxidizer also meant the missile fueling procedure is simplified, as the nitric acid is stable enough to be storable inside the missile itself unlike the more volatile liquid oxygen, which need to be fueled only prior to launch together with the rocket fuel. This dramatically cut the countdown protocol and the missile readiness to launch is reduced to only 30 minutes, compared to more than 90 minutes for the original Scud missile.

The Scud-D can be equipped either with a 5 to 80kt nuclear warhead, a thickened VX chemical agent warhead, a 2,000lbs convential HE warhead, a HE-FRAG warhead or a cluster munition dispenser. Only a few countries have upgraded their Scud arsenals to the Scud-D standard, among them Algeria, Armenia and Vietnam.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Jun 11 2015, 01:00 PM

Nice fact: Vietnam People's Armed Forces currently has 24 Scud launchers with about 100 missiles, almost all of it is aimed at the PRC . And they're are capable of producing the Scud-B missiles by themselves.

That's a 100 more missiles Malaysia doesn't have haha

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Jun 11 2015, 03:42 PM

No wonder so tacticool....
Malaysian army ones so plain.

Shooting down aircraft is simple compared with shooting down ballistic missiles. Aircrafts are relatively fragile and filled with sensitive materials, a good hit even with a small shrapnel of a HE-Frag warhead at the right place could already bring the whole plane down. But you can't use normal SAM missiles to shoot down even a small ballistic missile like the Scud.

Shooting down ballistic missiles is like shooting down a flying telephone pole, peppering it with HE-Frag shrapnel from SAM missiles designed to shoot down aircraft wont do a damn thing to change its trajectory. Worse is once the warhead is already in terminal descent, the speed and gravitational momentum ensures almost nothing can stop it. That's why specialized anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) have a solid tungsten kinetic-energy projectile instead of a HE-Frag warhead common to SAM missiles.

But that in itself is a potential weakness, because if the ABM missile projectile so much as misses a ballistic missile warhead by a single inch, it's already a total miss (and believe me, a 5-foot tall nuclear warhead is not that big of a target). With a potential nuclear warhead screaming towards the earth at mach 5+, you don't get a lot of time for a second launch.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Jun 12 2015, 08:31 AM

Lebanese army conduct live-fire tests on newly arrived US-supplied TOW-II ATGMs


Lebanese military personnel and DSS agents escort US ambassador to Lebanon David Hale as he arrives to the TOW-II ATGM test firing range


A TOW-II ATGM is test-fired from a Lebanese Army M113 Armored Personnel Carrier

The Lebanese Army demonstrated their newly received TOW-II missile launchers Wednesday at a military base in the Bekaa Valley in a show of force as it prepares to engage militants on Lebanon’s border. U.S. Ambassador David Hale attended the event and Gen. Maroun Hitti represented the Army’s commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi.

“Today we are celebrating just the latest shipment of U.S. equipment, the arrival of over 200 missiles and dozens of launchers for the Lebanese Army,” Hale told reporters as he stood in front of an armored vehicle. “We are absolutely committed to making sure that the Army has the capacity to be the sole defender of Lebanese territory and its borders.”

The anti-tank guided missiles are part of weapons and ammunition shipments that have arrived in Beirut in batches this year.

“This shipment complements the American aid program specifically for the Lebanese Army, with the goal of strengthening its capacity in facing the dangers targeting Lebanon and in facing the terrorist threat,” military officer Jano al-Hadad said in a speech at the beginning of the demonstration.

The shipment – valued at $10 million – arrived in Lebanon via the Rafik Hariri International Airport last week and was partly funded by Saudi Arabia.

US Congress approves sale of A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Lebanese Armed Forces


A Brazilian Air Force A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft

The U.S. Congress approved a $462 million sale of A-29 Super Tucano light attack airplanes and associated equipment, parts and logistical support to Lebanon. The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a statement on Tuesday that the proposed sale would help the country protect itself from internal and border security threats.

According to the agency, the Lebanese government had asked for a possible sale of ten A-29 Super Tucano Aircraft, eight ALE-47 Countermeasure Dispensing Systems, 2,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems, two Missile Launch Detection Systems and a non-SAASM Embedded Global Positioning System/Initial Navigation System. Along with this, Lebanon had also requested spare and repair parts, flight testing, maintenance support, support equipment, publications and technical documentation, ferry support, personnel training and training equipment, U.S. Government and contractor engineering and logistics support services.

“The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on Jun 5, 2015,” the statement said, adding: "Implementation of this proposed sale will not require any additional U.S. Government or U.S. contractor personnel in Lebanon. However, periodic travel will be required on a temporary basis for program reviews and technical support."

Technically Australian-produced AUG is differently designed after the basic A1 version, the Aussies only took the basic design of the AUG and later developed their own versions and improvements independent of the Austrian AUGs. So the later versions of Australian Steyr AUG (there known as F-88 Austeyr) are very different from the Austrian versions of the AUG. If you check out the Steyr AUG page on Wiki, there's even separate articles on both country's versions and their versions are nothing alike.

So you can say there is no such thing as an Australian AUG A3.

US Navy EA-18G 'Growler' shows off the silhouette of an F-22 on its 'kill score'



Even the Raptor is not invincible.

Although this F-22 'kill' is on a simulated combat, the fact that the Raptor can be acquired and killed by a 'lesser' aircraft speaks volumes.

Man, I wished RMAF got more of the F/A-18 back then.

Well that's a strange stipulation to attach to a weapon sale.

As for Iran, I'd imagine overthrowing the most favored US-sponsored ruler in the middle east at the time (The Shah), launching an Islamic revolution and holding US embassy staff and civilians for years is a much more potent excuse for US to stop military aid to Iran rather than Iran breaking some BS military product's T&C.

Chinese weapons factory workers readying some factory mint 76mm light guns for delivery for customer



Is it just me, or these things have sport rims installed?

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Jun 15 2015, 02:37 PM

Oh man, WTH are they fitting on the scope? The already high QBZ-95 scope now looks like a goddamn video camera viewfinder. That's scope looks like it fully 7 inches taller from the barrel.

Edit: Looks like a laser rangefinder



Still too funky.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Jun 15 2015, 03:03 PM