It now looks as if the “user” who posted these videos removed them from YouTube…if any­one knows how to dig up cached ver­sions please let me know and we’ll post again.

This is one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing lec­tures I’ve seen in a long time.

Remember when the avi­a­tion press (and we) splashed across their pages the fact that the Indian Air Force had scrubbed the floor with US Air Force F-15s and F-16s in their shiny new export Su-30s back in 2005?

Well, this guy flew in a more recent air train­ing bat­tle with the Indians out at Red Flag and talked about the ins and outs of the Su-30 vs the F-15. I won’t pre­tend to try and explain his com­ments for you, take the time to watch his pre­sen­ta­tion and see for your­self the trea­sure trove of infor­ma­tion on one of Russia’s most impres­sive com­bat aircraft.

He also talks about some of the rea­sons why the US did so poorly in ’05 over in India.

(And make sure to watch minute 8:18 on part one for a look at how to kill a Raptor)…

(NOTE: New Link)

And Part II…(REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE)

(Gouge: NC)

– Christian

This is Nicholas Weaver’s sec­ond arti­cle on the mil­i­tary impact of the spread of tech­nol­ogy.
America owes a big chunk of its mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­ity to what it can make the tools, facil­i­ties, and exper­tise needed to put together sophis­ti­cated planes, ships, and weapons. So what hap­pens when much of the high-precision man­u­fac­tur­ing behind Predators and F-22s can belo­cated any­where and owned by any­one?
The day isn’t as far off as it might seem. Twenty years ago, if a designer wanted a new, high-precision part, he con­structed a design and handed it to a skilled (and expen­sive) machin­ist, who would pro­duce a pro­to­type. If more than a hand­ful of hand­made parts were needed, an even more expen­sive set of tool­ing would be cre­ated.
Today, the same designer devel­ops his plan on a com­puter and then emails the design to the machine shop, which uses an assort­ment of CNC (Computer Numeric Controlled) machine tools to pro­duce the pro­to­type. CNC lathes can turn effec­tively arbi­trary radi­ally sym­met­ric parts, cut­ters can cre­ate 2D shapes, and CNC mills can cut a 3-dimensional part to extremely tight tol­er­ances. And as long as the designer only needs a few dozen (or even a few hun­dred) parts, the shop just feeds more mate­r­ial into the CNC machines and out pops more parts.
All it takes is a few ship­ping con­tain­ers, a power hookup, and a source of refined metal ingots to pro­duce high pre­ci­sion parts and designs from a high-technology mobile fac­tory. And if that doesn’t seem like it’s got much to do with the mil­i­tary, think again. A major rea­son why the AK-47 is a “Weapons of Slow Mass Destruction” is it’s easy-to-make design. Any coun­try with a fac­tory base up to the low stan­dards of Russia circa 1947 can stamp them out en masse and wreak havoc. Think of the pos­si­bil­i­ties when small jet tur­bines or pis­ton engines for cheap unmanned planes become so sim­ple that any­one can stamp them out and build their own drone air force.

(more…)