The Glory Might of the XM29.

[Ace Oliveira]

Would the Brazilian Air Force be a match for the Venezuelan Air Force?

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Ace Oliveira

Would the Brazilian Air Force be a match for the Venezuelan Air Force?

Once the F-X2 program selects its choice for the new fighter (and most analysts agree it'll probably be the Dassault Rafael), I'd say yes. Brazil already has defense infrastructure and resources vastly superior to that of Venezuela. But a new fighter is a lot more important for Brazil than it is for us (though the Mirage 2000s currently in service are quite capable in their own right).

Also, my understanding is that Brazilian modernization plans are mostly emphasizing naval expansion right now. There are also issues with outdated equipment and lack of funding in the Army (something like half of the armored vehicles in their inventory are not serviceable).

There's another thing to consider about Venezuela, too - most of Chavez' military (who started their careers when Venezuela was still run by pro-Western governments) hates his ass and might mutiny. The whole reason he's buying so much Russian hardware is that he's trying to build up a separate military to the one that existed before he took power (in the same way that Khomeini had to form the Revolutionary Guard to counter-balance the Shah's military). Coups remain a huge concern for Chavez.

[Gunmaster45]

I was impressed with the F22 after watching Transformers, but it does seem like an overkilling superior design we don't need right now. And the M61A2 Gatling gun it is armed with has a rather small amount of ammo.

I figured I'd include some info on guns again, because this gun based thread is going fighter jet and politics on us.

[Vangelis]

If you're going for stupid rifle designs, the OICW really isn't even in the same league as some of the ridiculous projects that preceded it, particularly SPIW / SALVO, which managed a wonderful combination of impossible initial goals and ridiculous demands of the prototypes, which ended up being some truly bizarre weapons. What can you really say about a flechette-firing rifle with internally discarded sabots, a grenade launcher with a 25-pound trigger pull, a demand that an over-under weapon loaded with 60 5.6mm flechettes and 3 40mm grenades come in under ten pounds, and the realisation, years into the project, that the flechette rounds would actually deflect off raindrops?

As for stupidest tank engine, the turbine might not make sense in today's world, but the US trumped it many years ago with a tank that wouldn't make sense in this world or any other. The T-95 or T-28 had four sets of treads, 12 inches of frontal armour, a 105mm main gun and weighed 95 tons. And what was it powered by? Um...One Sherman engine, with an almighty 5.2 hp / ton.

[Ace Oliveira]

Please talk more about military failures, please Vangelis.

[Nyles]

How about the Ross rifle? The Brits wouldn't sell us Lee-Enfields during the Boer War, so we decided that we should set up domestic production in Canada in case we ever found ourselves at the bottom of the list for new weapons during a war again. Great idea, but instead of just building the proven Lee-Enfield in Canada, we adopted a very advanced (for the turn of the century) sporting and target rifle.

The Ross was and remains just about the most accurate military rifle ever made, but that was about all the good you can say about it. It's long, it's heavy, it jams, it wasn't until the Mk.III that they put a decent magazine on it, and the Mk.III was also the model where you could put the bolt together wrong and still fire it! You had to be profoundly stupid to do it, since it look alot of force to get it into the weapon that way, but never underestimate the supidity of a panicked untrained Private. We ditched it for the SMLE in 1915, but by then half the CEF were carrying Lee-Enfields they scavenged, bartered for or flat out stole from British troops.

[Excalibur]

Speaking of the Brits, I think a few of us would know about how slow they were in adopting firearms to catch up with the time. After WWII when the US and Russia already were on assault rifles with full auto, it took them nearly a decade after to adopt the L1A1 rifle and that was in semi. Took them longer to get the SA-80 and then a while after that for them to fix the problems with it. And I keep reading about the problems with the US when it comes to the infantry rifle, development and deployment, the British had a lot of problems in that area.

I always joke on that's the reason why their SAS is the best in the world of Special Forces, because their regular army seem to suck mostly because of not getting what they want equipment wise.