The chief of Russia’s air force announced this week that the PAK FA, Russia’s fifth-generation stealth fighter, will enter service in 2015. This would be close to the time when two U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter variants for the U.S. Air Force (F-35A) and the Navy (F-35C) are expected to attain initial operational capability in 2016. This display means the U.S. must keep its own Joint Strike Fighter program on schedule for production.
The public flight of a PAK FA’s T-50 prototype before the world, at the MAKS–2011 International Aviation and Space Salon, is a demonstration of Russia’s firm commitment to develop this aircraft for its own use and to sell it around the world.
Russian authorities have declared that they intend to acquire 60 PAK FA aircraft by 2020. Russia’s stated objective is to acquire 250 fifth-generation aircraft, but more are possible. India would acquire at least 250 and up to 300 of its PAK FA version, the Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft.
With the closure of the U.S. F-22 stealth fighter production line at 187 aircraft, America’s main answer—and that of U.S. allies—to the PAK FA is the F-35, a multirole fighter. While it is too soon to know, the F-35 may ultimately have inferior specifications to the Russian fighter in terms of speed, maneuverability, range, weapons load, and possibly even stealth. In this regard, the Russians have described the future operational PAK FA as a fighter whose “use of composite materials and advanced technologies…minimizes its radio-frequency, optical and infrared visibility.”
[…]Congress should consider the implications of Russia exporting this stealth fighter to other nations. In addition to India, Russia could sell the PAK FA to Iran if the U.N. arms embargo is lifted, or to Arab countries if the U.S. refuses to sell them the F–35, as well as to Venezuela, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and perhaps even China, since the PAK FA appears to have more internal bomb capacity than the J–20.
The J-20 is China’s 5th generation stealth fighter.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has shuttered production of the only thing that can stop these Russian and Chinese fighters – the F-22 Raptor. And the Democrats would love to cut anything else they can get their hands on in order to buy more votes before the 2012 election. It’s like putting drug addicts in charge of a bank vault. They love power, and they’ll do anything to get their fix in the short-term.
Iran should be allowed to have a nuclear bomb, Republican candidate Ron Paul suggested during Thursday’s presidential debate.
The maverick Texas Congressman also said it was time to stop the half-century old embargo on Cuba and all troops should be brought home.
His comments brought scorn from rival candidates. Michele Bachmann said she would do everything in her power to prevent Iran becoming nuclear.
Rick Santorum said “Iran is not Iceland, Ron. “It’s been at war with us since 1979.
“Anyone who suggests Iran is not a threat to this country is not seeing the world very clearly.”
Paul said it is natural for Iran to want a bomb as it is surrounded by countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel which all have one and with China, the United States and Russia all involved in the region. He said the U.S. should not get involved in the country’s internal affairs.
Consider this recent article on Iran’s weapons development, from Investors Business Daily.
Excerpt:
Tehran’s navy deploys ships to the Atlantic capable of launching long-range missiles. This is not a joke. This is a dress rehearsal for the day an EMP attack ends our way of life.
‘Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?” Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked at “The World Without Zionism” Tehran conference in 2005. “But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved.” He added that Iran had a “war preparation plan” for, as he put it, “the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization.”
Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is not a subject familiar to most Americans. But it’s quite familiar to the Iranian military.
It’s been practicing for the day when an Iranian missile tipped with a nuclear warhead lifts off from a vessel parked in international waters off our shores, the warhead detonating high above the American heartland, sending electromagnetic waves rippling across the American landscape, frying every electronic circuit within range.
In a July 18 statement, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari said the Iranian navy plans on deploying warships in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a program to ply international waters.
Two days later, another Iranian rear admiral, Seyed Mahmoud Mousavi, revealed for the first time that his navy has equipped a number of its logistic vessels and units with long-range missiles.
The squadron will be equipped with the Nur missile, which is based on China’s long-range Silkworm C-802 anti-ship cruise missile and has a 125-mile range and 365-pound warhead.
It is not these ships and their missiles that threaten us, but what comes later as they use these forays to gain experience operating far from Iranian shores.
A simple Scud missile, with a nuclear warhead, could be fired from an inconspicuous freighter in international waters off our coast and detonated high over the U.S.
It would wreak devastation on America’s technological, electrical and transportation infrastructure. Masked as a terrorist attack, Iran would have plausible deniability of any responsibility.
Iran has practiced launching and detonating Scuds in midflight, launched from ships in the Caspian Sea. It’s also tested high-altitude explosions of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile, a test consistent with an EMP attack.
The warhead need not be of a staggeringly high yield — nor must the missile have an intercontinental range.
“One nightmare scenario posed,” according to Peter Vincent Pry, an expert on EMP who sits on a congressional panel looking into the threat of such a weapon, “was a ship-launched EMP attack against the U.S. by Iran, as this would eliminate the need for Iran to develop an ICBM to deliver a nuclear warhead against the U.S. and could be executed clandestinely, taking the U.S. by surprise.”
Iran has previously called for Israel, our ally, to be “wiped off the map“.
Excerpt:
Leaders around the world on Thursday condemned a call by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel be “wiped off the map,” and a top Iranian official said that mass demonstrations in his country on Friday would rebuff the rising criticism from abroad.
“I have never come across a situation of the president of a country saying they want to . . . wipe out another country,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a summit outside London of the 25 leaders of the European Union’s member states.
Blair said Ahmadinejad’s comment was “completely and totally unacceptable.”
In a joint statement, the E.U. leaders “condemned in the strongest terms” the Iranian president’s call, saying it “will cause concern about Iran’s role in the region and its future intentions.” President Jacques Chirac of France told reporters that Ahmadinejad risked Iran “being left on the outside of other nations.”
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Israel, called the Iranian president’s statement “unacceptable.”
The statement was widely reported in the Arab world; leaders there reacted for the most part with silence. Most Arab countries have no diplomatic relations with Israel. But the Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said, according to the Associated Press: “We have recognized the state of Israel and we are pursuing a peace process with Israel, and . . . we do not accept the statements of the president of Iran. This is unacceptable.”
U.S. and European leaders have grown increasingly worried about the bellicose attitude of Iran at a time when it is pursuing a nuclear program that they have said may be intended to produce a nuclear weapon.
Is Ron Paul right to want to let Iran have nuclear weapons and long-range missiles? Does he understand modern weapon systems? Is he aware of the threats that Achmadinejad has made to Israel and the United States? Is he aware of Iran’s military interference in Iraq? Does he understand how Iran influences Syria, which is now imitating Iran in shooting innocent people in the streets? Is he letting facts influence his ideology?
Your choices today are part of an ongoing relationship with God
Melissa writes a post about it on her Hard-Core Christianity blog. I heartily endorse this post, and it represents my experience learning from C.S. Lewis’ writings as well.
Intro:
Over the past year I’ve thought a great deal about the brevity of life when it is considered in the context of eternity. I’ve pondered this so often, in fact, I’ve begun thinking of my current mental preoccupation as a sort of mid-life crisis. I’ve felt God impressing this idea–of our temporal life being a precious drop in the bucket of time–upon me more and more, and I haven’t known quite what to do with the emotions and the thoughts that have surfaced. I wouldn’t call them negative or depressing; I’d describe them as mysterious, pulsing, non-yet-solidified. I suppose I should have realized before now that God was indeed taking me somewhere in the heavy yet gentle way only He operates.
Excerpt:
HERE’S WHAT I AM COMING TO UNDERSTAND…
This is not just a life to be tolerated until we reach our eternal resting place. This is our single, fleeting opportunity to prepare ourselves for the day when we step out of these Shadowlands and into direct fellowship with God; everything we allow Him to build and nurture within us here will come to ultimate fruition and purposefulness in Heaven. A sobering thought, is it not?
My favorite analogy is that of a soldier being honed by battle after battle with the Enemy. Lewis says,
Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage…He wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim.
Through temporal life, the soldier is consciously and intentionally growing wiser and more competent; when he finally presents himself to his beloved King, he will be sublimely outfitted for a purposeful place in the eternal Kingdom. Lewis continues:
…it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or courageous acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for being the sort of people that we can become only as the result of doing such acts here.
We live at a very special point in man’s history. We can stand on the shoulders of great Christian men and women who have much to teach us if we will but read and study their legacy. God has raised up great theologians, apologists, philosophers, writers, and artists to steer and inspire us, if we will only take notice. It boils down to how we choose to dedicate our time and energy.
I implore you, as my brothers and sisters in Christ: Learn about our faith. Understand the history of Christianity, the essential doctrines, and the historical and scientific support for the reliability of our Scripture. Open your mind and heart to what the Spirit wants to teach you. Use these lessons to recruit and help train fellow soldiers. We are preparing for the Kingdom to come!
And when you’re done with that, read this excerpt from Mere Christianity, entitled “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers”.
Excerpt:
The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God… And the present state of things is this. The two kinds of life are now not only different (they would always have been that) but actually opposed.
The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.
Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life? Well suppose you could really have brought them to life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it.
What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know. But what God did about us was this. The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man-a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.
The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son. Thus in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrived: had passed into the life of Christ. And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, “killed,” He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn-poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed-killed every day in a sense-the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier-real tin, just like the rest-had come fully and splendidly alive.
I think there are two ways to work at not being a tin soldier. 1) Reading apologetics books in order to be able to be a friend to God by telling people the truth about him, with evidence. Those shared experiences of you speaking up for your friend because you know what you are talking about get you out of your own desires and build a self-sacrificial friendship with him. And 2) Studying public square issues like abortion, divorce, marriage and so forth in order to articulate intelligent reasons why the Bible is correct in what it asserts about moral questions. The experience of talking to other people about economics, politics and foreign policy builds the relationship with God. And the more you know, the less freedom you have to make bad decisions – learning the truth about things is how you make doing evil unthinkable.
These are the good insights in C.S. Lewis books that help people who would like to become Christians to know how they are supposed to go about doing that. I have had non-Christian friends read them in order to understand at a practical level what Christianity is all about. These books are excellent to read when you are in high school and college. My favorites are “Mere Christianity”, “The Problem of Pain”, “God In the Dock”, “The Abolition of Man”, “The Great Divorce”, “The Four Loves”, “Miracles”, “Christian Reflections”, etc . I have never read the Narnia books, though. I also recommend that non-Christians all read the gospel of John as a snapshot of what Christianity is all about. You can read it in a few hours.
I would really recommend this lecture (MP3) by Walter Bradley as well, which is the best thing I have ever encountered about the Christian life. If you are not training hard, learning new things, and having people ask you questions about your faith every day, then you are doing it wrong – you need to get a intellectual/professional mentor and get moving forward. The normal Christian life is full of dangers and adventures! If you don’t look in the mirror every morning and see a heroic knight going out to try to slay dragons, then you are doing Christianity wrong.
By the way, if you are a Christian woman and you want to impress a Christian man, you need to talk about your Christian life to the man like Melissa does – with reference to books. Melissa is a particularly good example of how to behave because she is heavily into science apologetics. She is also fiscally conservative.
WINTERY KNIGHT 