Hamilcar :

Ask how many Frenchmen, their defense industry KILLED through faulty design and poor manufacture. From poorly designed Lebel bolt action. rifles, the equalloy poorly thought out Berthier, and Chaut Chaut automatic rifles, and defective grenades, to those flying death traps (Lanc anyone?) that their so-called aviation industry saddled their pilots with from WW I to late last Century, the crap the French soldier, sailor, and airman was saddled with that resulted in unnedded many deaths is too numerous to list. Their tech was/is no where as good as the soldiers it failed/fails repeatedly.  Most recent case? The FAMAS rifle. Ask the Armee de la Terre how their helos actually do today, as another example. Everyone has horror stories like this, but the corruption and incompetence inside the French arms industry and government is a cancer, that has NEVER been addressed. Not even America's arms industry is as corrupt, (or as incompetent, since most of our stuff works as designed) though we have some real thieves of our own (are you reading this LockMart?)   

 

H.

 

 

 

 

 

Your last post was noise. I told you in baby talk and you still don't  get it.

 

When it comes to radars, your best answer to any question put to you is SILENCE.

 

 

Herald , you 're sinking . Your last two posts are pure lies and garbage .

I only hope that the other posters understood that you are not worth a peanut .

 

Btw , since I have been using the FAMAS for seven years and since you never had one in your small hands , you tell me what is wrong with it , then , I will correct you .

...

In fact , don 't . Follow my advice .

 

Cheers .

Oh man, I feel another threadjack coming on...oh well. 

 

What was wrong with the Lebel?   How do you screw up a bolt-action rifle?

 

Personally, I don't think the French soldier of the 20th Century was so much victimized by poor French industry rather than poor French politicians.  The French turned out some superb aircraft in the interwar period, but they were never produced in numbers because the French government was trying to keep everyone employed, no matter what garbage they were producing.  Same with the French tanks in 1940: their heavy tanks were good, but were misused; a Char B1 could easily take a Panzer II or III, but failed because of their dispersal in penny-packets and the lack of a radio.  The latter was hardly only a French error, as just about everyone but the Germans didn't have radios in their tanks.  The French Navy was good as well, but fell prey to poor tactics and getting stuck tied up to the pier when either the Allies or the Germans came calling.

 

I know better than to get into a fight over the Mirage series--we've already hashed the Mirage III to death--but the Mirage F.1 and Mirage 2000 are good aircraft.  Personally, I believe if Dassault had held off on the Rafale until, say, 2002-2003, they wouldn't have had near as much problem as they've had.  But that's me.

 

 

That's why I call him The Googler.

1)  TAMARA is not a radar, it is an ESM system.

2)  TAMARA was only exported to the Former Soviet Union.  Feel free to document this notion that Sebia has some.  Be sure to tell us where they are today, if possible.

3)  Now try to tell us how a TAMARA was used to kill that F-117.

 

Yawn.

 

In 1998, prior to the Kosovo air campaign, the Serbian arms export company Yugoimport-SDPR advertised a new upgrade package for the S-125 Pechora (SA-3) and Kvadrat (SA-6) missiles systems. This was widely ignored in the West. The upgrade included the addition of a thermal-imaging camera and laser rangefinder to the S-125 fire-control system to allow the missile to be launched without first acquiring the target using the usual RSN-125 (Low Blow) radar. Data can be fed to the system from other radars. As a result, traditional means of defense against this system were undermined since they rely on radar warning and traditional guidance sequences. The loss of the F-117 stealth strike aircraft has been attributed to this upgrade, combined with clever detection tactics and stereotyped NATO flight planning (see ?Shrewd Tactics May Have Downed Stealth Fighter,? JED, June 1999).

 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

Easy there, big guy:  USPTO patent examiners have engineering degrees, and I'm 99% sure that so do EPO patent examiners.  :-)

2. How do you screw up a Lebel?

 

The design flaw was this:. its eight rounds were loaded, nose to tail fashion, in a tubular magazine under the barrel of the rifle. This forced the user to slowly, and I mean slowly and carefully operate the bolt, since the operator had to be wary of one round hitting the primer of the cartridge in front of it in the magazine tube, as the spring uncoiled incompetently  in the magazine feed tube, thereby causing a most unwelcome slam stop hit and explosion as bullets were primed off in the magazine. Slam the bolt operation, like you can in a Mauser or Springfield, to cause the tube magazine feed slam stop and  the thing blew up in your face. No hand and no rifle.  

 

3. What is wrong with the FAMAS? Bullets and gas system. Can't use brass cased bullets in most of the early models. Any under-pressure in the gas system and the thing fails to cycle. So you need steel cased bullets and a long twist. And guess what? France doesn't make the bullets anymore. US and Israel do. (So much for French uniqueness of ammunition eh?) That stupidity is hilarious, and add this, the thing's action catches at the lever delay when its worn out. How many old ones have been rebuilt to "zero" standard to correct this wear? Zippo. The only "new" ones of which I know are NATOized, (can fire SS109 or M109 series bullets) but those were re-barreled with a new tighter rifling twist to keep the working gas pressure up during bullet travel. Those were G-2s the French Marine bought in 1996.

 

The FAMAS is such a good rifle, that the French Army is now looking for a NEW rifle to replace it. (SARCASM) They want to downgrade apparently.