kalvasflam

Good points, but not all of them apply that well to Singapore. Singapore isn't in the business of shipping off battlions into foreign lands. The local geography is not well suited for tanks at all. The best points about the tank is its mobility and its firepower. While the latter is still useful in any situation, the mobility becomes quite restricted given Singapore's geography. That usefulness is dimished by the urban setting, tanks are best used in open country, places like Iraq are perfect for the most part. Or if the mission is a gun run where your objective is to wipe out everything along the city streets, that works too. (I'm thinking of the thunder runs in Baghdad) I think better solutions might be found in AFVs like a M2, or something else that can be used more easily in the mostly urban environment. Giving the ability to transport infantry quickly and maintain support over time. The main cannon of the tank is somewhat replaced by the chain gun and ATGM on an equivalent like the M2. Once you have strong points like that, odds are you need infantry to dig them out, tanks can be useful in a supporting role, but AFVs are probably even better in terms of providing good infantry protection and mobility. Singapore's best defense though I think is keeping everyone out of the country in the first place, which means good maritime survelliance and air strike capabilities. Tanks are somewhat secondary to that mission. Overall, the land based missions for Singapore armies should be more along the lines of quelling local insurgents, and tanks aren't the best tool for that.

No... think in terms of geography and terrain. Every military is primarily bound by their mission and the piece of land they occupy. Example: US army is horrible at garrison duty. On the other hand, tell them to blitz someone, and well... see Iraq I and II. In the case of Singapore, I would have thought the better investment being in highly mobile infantry units and a lot of maritime capabilities.

Hmmm, call me dumb, but why does Singapore need tanks?

The Australian thing is interesting, they need the strike capability, at the same time, they're after monitoring capability, namely maritime surveillance. I've read that they've been looking at UAVs and possibly in conjunction with the P-3 replacement (based on a Boeing 737 frame). I guess they do have a lot of grounds to cover. It's going to really stretch their defense budgets. Do they have more coastline to cover than the US? I can imagine that one thing UAVs will enable is complete ariel coverage at some point on the borders. I believe Homeland supposedly has a predator on the Meixcan border somewhere doing surveillance.

Ah I see... "ethical foreign policy" hmmmm, ok. Well, as long as they know that they'll still get the Typhoon order at the end of the day, the rest is not that relevant.

Yikes, they must really want the Typhoons. I'm getting a bit confused though, it seems like there is a political faction within UK that wants to see this deal fall through. But heck, BAe is a british company. I wonder if those politicians have some axe to grind somewhere. Most people would think that BAe maintianing the contract would be a good thing for the Brits. Oh well.

When billions are at stake, it's easier to think less about one side or the other. The Saudis are probably looking at this purely from the political standpoint. I doubt if they care too much about the differences between the Rafale and the Eurofighter.

From what I've seen in magazines such as aviation week, it's not very obvious what the issue of conversion really is. Although, it very well could be that the minor changes they need to make will need a lot of human resources which if taken could mean a even longer delay to the pax version of the A380. Or that new airframes for airline would push back the scheduled delivery date out much further than even current projections. Those are reasonable answers then to why they could not convert. But I doubt the true reason is refusal to shuffle customers a little is the primary cause.

Probably the more realistic reason is the design needs to be altered somewhat to accomodate the freight version. But would it be scary if your last statement was true.

You might have a point about the changes on the line. It may very well be that A-380 has issues converting and that's the reason it hasn't been done. But to assume that customers are in a production pipe line that cannot be skipped is unreasonable. It's always a depends type situation. May be the downside to Airbus is that they didn't bother to consider the freight line immediately and it was an afterthought. That's a good reason, a rational reason to let freighters die. Because they can't afford to do a conversion anyway. But I doubt it's because their sole desire is to keep SIA at the front of the line. It's a business decision there. If heaven forbid, the A380 has another delay, then having SIA in the front of the line still wouldn't make any difference. The only real issue is trust, if they simply stiff SIA, then Airbus is in for it, but then, if it's something negotiable, then it's a business decision. The problem with the airline industry is the literal visibility of schedules. Most industries aren't like that, but then again of course, most industry don't provide multi-million dollar products

I just wonder when we'll get the picture of Venezuela's first Flanker wreckage...

Well, the sad part of it is that Airbus is going about business in an assbackwards manner. They decided that prestige was more important, and in some ways it is. When the time comes, the A380 will hold the high end of the passenger market, overshadowing the 747. But in the process, they totally decided to ignore the freight business, and even worse, they ignored the mid-size long haul market. Two markets that Boeing is just running amok right now with sales. Any airframes sitting at Toulouse is literally money down the tubes. Now I understand that with freighters they'll need modifications, but if Airbus had been able to negotiate their way past the wiring problem (which in my limited understanding is still just the entertainment system), they should've just went ahead and fill the ILFC, UPS, Fedex orders. In fact, I wonder how much significant modification will be needed on the existing airframes. Hell, they're delayed with delivery of the first Singapore plane anyway, what difference would it make to SIA if the first plane they get is not the first customer delivery. Since Airbus is paying penalties anyway, they should've just pushed the air freighters ahead. I understand the need for money to change hands if we start skipping customers, but those bean counters should've figured out the cost of lost opportunity. Heck, even if they had to give away the first two deliveries for free, it's better than having airframes sitting around.

Was in Shanghai a few weeks ago, apparently the A380 was flying in there for a day or so after a few other stops in Asia. I missed the plane by one day, left the day after the A380 made its stop. Pity... guess I'll have to wait a while. One interesting thing though, I never realized until recently how large the freight business really is. I must've saw over a dozen different cargo carriers between Beijing and Shanghai. And with IFLC converting the A380F orders, I would say that Airbus has really screwed up. There is a lot of potential to replace 747s out there, and Airbus is just not taking advantage of it. They really should segregate the frieght business away from the passenger business.

This goes right along with a female starbuck doing Baltar. Heh, may be Bond will sit down with the villian and have a nice chat about his emotional needs and why he feel he must dominate the world, and then talk him out of it with a lovely little man-chat. If that's what Craig thinks about Bond, I say give him the George Lazenby treatment.

Finally, it's almost time to start up again. It's been a long 7 month. Although it'll be difficult to top last season. I wish they would have true villians on back to back seasons, not the Nina-esque I just drop in for six episodes and then you don't see me again type. But I look forward to this season immensely.

I also just watched it. It was a very good Bond picture, the story flowed nicely, and it broke more or less the Bond formula of ending up with the girl. I suppose it sets up for a sequel for sure. How good that is, I guess we'll find out in two years or so. This Bond though ain't nearly as smooth as the former Bonds. If it is a reboot of the series, then it's a good thing.

Naw, think of the B-2 (even without nukes) like the ballistic missile subs the US and USSR had. They'd never be used, just for show.

Hmmm, speaking of Japan, do you think Northrop could possibly provide a couple of good ol' B-2s? It'll be a nice deterrence weapon. Nukes not required. Just leave things to the imagination. It would flip over all of Asia. Heh heh, sorry, been away for a while, and am just kidding about this.

Someone really needs to put the F-22 on the foreign market. And the F-117. Older design after all, but it'll be money in the bank.

yeah, but was the TV working?

C3-P0 is really HK-47 in disguise. hah hah... have to seethe lost footage. Sounds interesting, and the problem with Lucas is he is too much of a conformist, and now too smart a business person. The secret footage should bring in another few hundred million. I'm waiting for the remastered version of the prequels.

Stargazer was a good small series, but tough to get into, no recaps was just so weird. The story was a bit rushed to me, and honestly, I couldn't care less about Sven, or Selene or anyone else in the series. Oh well, if they'd just go back to little stories in UC, like MS Igloo that'll be enough for me.

I wonder what the penalty is for the overweight problems, hmmm, and we shouldn't call 787 overweight, might give it self esteem issues.... It's just big boned. I think Fedex still has their option for 10 open don't they? Or does that automatically go away when the first 10 was cancelled?

Igloo is pretty good. The CGI stuff is well... it's not bad, but I'd have been ok with just plain old animation. The story line was pretty good, too bad Sunrise couldn't put this story as a small series in place of the crap we got with GSD.

Anyone watch dogfights on histroy channel? Pretty entertaining show. The Vietnam stuff was especially fun.