It's all good and all for the PAF, but the FA-50 is simply a light multirole aircraft like the BAe Hawk 200 RMAF has. It's certainly not a world-beater. Certainly no match for the latest generation PLA fighters like J-10 and J-11.

Corncerned, perhaps. But to say "Russia should fear" these are wildly optimistic.

Saudi-led coalition hires 800 South American mercenaries to fight in Yemen



In an attempt to bolster its ground operations in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition has contracted 800 former Colombian soldiers as part of the fight for Aden against militant factions linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State.

It is unclear which state contracted the fighters, but reports suggest they are fighting under UAE command while wearing Saudi uniforms on the ground.

The first 100 soldiers arrived in Yemen in early October, drawn to the desert war by the promise of better salaries — each fighter will be paid $1,000 a week more than at home. The promise of instant citizenship to the UAE if they survive their three-month contract is an obvious draw.

Turkey may have 2nd largest military inside NATO (and probably western europe), but Russia probably have far more numerous and advanced strategic weapons like cruise missiles and strategic bombers. With no shared land border, any conflict would probably involve a long-range shooting match between bombers and warships in the Black Sea.

NATO has Turkey as a valued member only to make sure the Soviet Black Sea fleet can be potentially blockaded via the Bosphorus. Believe me, if Turkey was just another random pseudo-european country with little strategic value NATO won't care two shits about it.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Dec 1 2015, 09:51 AM

Just make sure you save the last bullet for yourselves.

Russia only had basic AA defense systems in place before somebody was stupid enough to shoot down a Russian plane over a 5-second intrusion of airspace. Now anything flying within 600 miles of Hmeimem air base is literally at the mercy of Russian S-400 missiles.

Flares only work against IR-guided missiles, which are usually used by MANPADS or short-range AA missiles like AIM-9 Sidewinder. S-400 is radar guided, flares would do diddly squat against it. What you do is you could try to trick its radar by active countermeasures (ECM pod) or passive countermeasures (Chaff & decoy dispenser).

Also, When suppressing enemy air defenses, attackers usually aim at the radar system. Very rarely do 'Wild Weasel'-type SEAD mission aim at the missiles or AA guns themselves. Air defense radars are more fragile and transmit powerful emissions that can be targeted from long-range by Anti-Radiation missiles like AGM-88 HARM missile. After the radar is down, then only you have the option to used bombs against the now-disabled SAM missiles, although this can be a dangerous option, as sometimes the battery still has MANPADS or optically aimed missiles & AA guns for short range work.


This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Dec 2 2015, 01:05 PM

2nd hand or new? And for how much for all 30?

Can you quote any source? I'm curious which version of Paladin is on offer to Malaysia, since the Paladin was in use since the 1980s. It could be the US military are trying offloading 20-year old surplus guns on the cheap.

Saudi M1 Abrams brewing up furiously after being hit by some sort of anti-tank weapon. Said to be in Yemen.

I wonder what the Iraq and Syrian government think of all these foreign jets suddenly 'trespassing' their sovereign airspace?

About time. Old already.

All GCC militaries all concentrate on Yemen nowadays. Their ground ops there isn't going very well, also in the meantime many Saudi-Yemen border towns and outposts have been attacked by Houthi raiders.

Iraq will not welcome foreign troops into its territory, considers any presence to be 'hostile'



Iraq considers any country sending ground combat forces into its territory a "hostile act" and has not requested such a deployment, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Thursday.

The US has announced that it will deploy around 100 special forces personnel to Iraq to fight the Islamic State jihadist group here and in neighbouring Syria, while two American senators have proposed tripling the number of US troops in the country.

Iraq "will consider any country sending ground combat forces a hostile act and will deal with it on this basis," Abadi said in a statement.

Baghdad "did not request any side... to send ground forces to Iraq," he said.

It is Abadi's strongest statement yet on the issue of ground combat forces, after he previously said that Iraq did not need them.

It was unclear how or if his remarks would impact the planned US deployment, part of efforts to combat IS, which overran large parts of Iraq last year.

The presence of American ground forces is a contentious issue in Iraq, where the United States fought a nearly nine-year war, and it is politically expedient for Abadi to distance himself from the deployment.

Hiring an entire army from another country to fight your war is different from hiring citizens of another country to fight in your own army.

A more accurate example is American revolutionary war when British Army hired whole armies from several German principalities like Hesse and Kassel. They make about 1/3 of all British troops in North America.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Dec 4 2015, 11:06 PM

The worry is some of that NVG equipment gets 'misplaced' and suddenly some top officers gets $100,000 richer.

Of course, but it's extremely dangerous. Imagine trying to kill something that solely designed to kill you. Get something wrong, and it's essentially a suicide mission for any attack airplane.

Very well-planned air defense coverage can nullify even a powerful air force. In 1973 Yom Kippur war Egyptian and Syrian SAM system very effetively limited IDF air force ability to launch attacks. While the IDF still dominated the air-to-air battle due to its superior US-made fighters, but found it very hard to launch ground attacks in the face of Soviet-made SAM and AA gun batteries.

From some sources I read said out of IDF's 103 aircraft lost in battle (not counting accidents and crashes), only about 12 were lost to air-to-air combat while the the rest were lost from SAM and AA fire.

In one dramatic attack the IDF even lost 6 aircraft trying to take out a single Syrian SAM battery.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Dec 7 2015, 10:59 AM