Shiv, at a personal level, I have pushed back on halo effects of US (and Europe) all my life. So I agree with your post, that a ton of posters seem ok to consider the F35, as a better alternative to the choice of IAF (Rafale) and run with it.
As an admin, I would classify my "posters of interest" in these threads as
1) those Indians/not who actually make an effort to bring in some interesting stuff,
2) folks who overtly bat for their own firms/countries
3) those who latch on to a stream to troll.
The last ones are too many in this thread and sometimes #1s and #2s too lose their discipline to become #3s and, sadly includes respected posters like Philip and NRao. I had to slap a week's ban on Philip two days back, for taking this sniping at F35 onto the Russian thread. Now Philip is a great poster in various matters. Very eloquent and provides interesting stories from various sources. So he kind of belongs to the first category and I did not like the fact that I have to do the trigger pull. I closed the F35 thread and tried to corral the F35 discussions to the international thread, precisely because of this reason of poster types #1 and #2 starting a discussion, with rapid degeneration happening, once a #3 poster introduces the IAF's (unjustified) apathy with LCA program.
But then I saw this post from you on feedback thread, a few days back:
shiv wrote:Crass post:
Folks i Have some thoughts about "future evolution" based on why and how BRF was started.
As all the old timers know BRF was started (like BR itself) to provide a source of information about the Indian armed forces. That was time when info about Indian armed forces was difficult to obtain and BR and BRF revolutionized the net in that regard.
But we have now moved on and there are a lot of places one can pick and choose to talk about the Indian armed forces. We need to acknowledge that people who come to BRF are not always coming simply for info about the Indian armed forces but to share and discuss stuff about other militaries as well - as enthusiasts and fanboys. One may be JF 17 fanboi or am F-35 fanboi. Neither is "India" but people have an interest and use BRF as a platform
What have we done for them? Nothing.
One needs to realize that US made hardware is used in some military application of the other in 100% of countries of the world (eg Boeings adopted for mil transport). So also some Russian hardware (eg Kalashnikov) is there in every country.
When we have threads like "Indian military this" and "Indian military that" and say that non Indian stuff should go into "International mil" thread - it is a bit unfair. US arms are "international". Congolese army is also international. But who cares about the latter?
What I am suggesting is that we need a dedicated thread in the Mil forum for US military, arms and tactics and perhaps a similar one for Russian arms as well.
Since we Indians are poor cousins of the anglophone world 90% of the info we get is about US arms and the info tends to fill up every thread. One click of a mouse will get 200 gazillion words about any US mil hardware. We don't read Russian or Chinese so we don't post much Russian or Chinese info. We need a separate place where this can be discussed by those who want to do that and this must not fill up other threads which have paltry discussions of poor Indian cousins like LCA, Saras, IJT, INSAS, Excalibur, Arjun, Huffy, Tuffy, Duryodhan etc.
The "International military discussion" threads are a relic of 28 k modems. The thread can remain but we need dedicated threads for Russian and US arms and stuff that the whole world uses. Hopefully that will provide a place to channel the interests of most of the world because "Indian armed forces/Indian military hardware" are a niche subject that seem to have reached their fill of information provision. Whatever little there is to talk about India needs to have "reservation" for those who want to talk about India rather than USA or Russia. In fact the latter could have entire forums dedicated but a separate thread would be a start.
The bolded parts are in no way going to address your points in the above posts in these threads, because the USAF's halo effect is going to get more pronounced with more deluge of the awesomeness of weaponry that is
tailor made for US' wars. No IAF Air Marshal will be safe from ill-informed web-lynching, unless he takes out a stainless pendant of LCA and starts rubbing it, whispering "my precious" in a provocative fashion on TV. It is not like hugging LCA is their only job in IAF, but this engineer heavy forum is not going to think through their other 99% job description in IAF. And that is an admin problem that is not going to go away, regardless of what used to be in BRF. I remember it from the time I first started following discussions
We need a world-class weapon system, even if a tad inferior to US ones, that is visibly an IAF baby. Case in point: the Indian Space thread has a high percentage of very confident posts by Indians, with only a meagre few whinging endlessly about "fitting cameras" to LVs et al, because quote "SpaceX has one attached to Elon's musk glands" or some such.
Anyways, do report posts you find as below par.
We aren't getting source codes even when asked & had been promised for years by 'Ass'ault marketers, we'll see if we get them in future till some sort of official confirmation. Frist let's see if the Rafale deal actually goes through. As I said always one can always rely on 'Ass'ault' to mess up a sure thing.
