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Since the beginning of the Cold War the number of countries able to independently produce fighter aircraft has declined sharply, with advances in technologies and growing complexity and cost meaning that today only China and the United States can produce their top fighters without any foreign technologies or components. As fighters have become more sophisticated and costly with each generation, the numbers produced have contracted significantly. The most produced first generation fighter for example, the MiG-15 of Korean War fame, saw over 17,000 built the large majority in the Soviet Union. Such numbers were reached despite its technologies being superseded by the newer MiG-17 just three years after it entered service. By contrast the most produced fourth generation fighter, the F-16, has seen under 4,500 airframes built, despite having been in production for well over 45 years. In the Cold War years fighter production was dominated by the Soviet Union followed by the United States, with the USSR vastly outproducing the rest of the world in each generation, until the fourth generation where the production run of its most widely manufactured fighter, the MiG-29, was cut short by the state’s disintegration.
MiG-29M (front) and F-16 Fighters
From the world’s second largest economy and largest defence spender, Russia’s much diminished economic status in the 21st century and smaller defence budget has meant that its fighter production is today dwarfed by the world’s two leaders China and the United States, which are respectively the world’s largest and second largest economies and spenders on defence acquisitions today. This status is reflected in the rankings of Chinese and American fighter programs in terms of the quantities being produced. Although China lacks the large network of overseas clients that the United States has, or that the Soviet Union once had, the needs of its own fighter fleet alone have been sufficient to propel it to leadership in the quantities being manufactured, with this paired with a comfortable qualitative edge over producers other than the United States leaving the two to compete effectively in a league of their own. A ranking and examination of the four fighters currently being produced on the largest scales provides strong indications of this, and is given below.
Girls are hitting puberty younger than ever, thrusting them prematurely into a new world of wild mood swings, physical discomfort, and self-doubt.
The phenomenon is called precocious puberty, which is being detected more and more in the Us. Decades of research point to a trending decline in the age of puberty onset.
In dozens of countries, the age of puberty in girls has dropped by about three months per decade since the 1970s. Now, it is not out of the realm of possibility to see signs of development in girls as young as six.
Webmaster addition:It's time to take a look at all the hormones added to farm animals to make them grow more and mature faster as a likely cause of America's obesity crisis as well as early puberty in both girls and boys.
Former Arkansas state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson received a 46-month prison sentence for his role in a bribery and tax fraud scheme, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
Hutchinson, 48, of Little Rock, pleaded guilty in 2019 to filing a false tax return in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Arkansas. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery in the U.S. District Court in Western Arkansas, according to a DOJ news release.
Sentencing is still pending in the U.S. District Court of Missouri on a plea deal reached in a separate case, according to the DOJ.
Hutchinson is the son of former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson and the nephew of former Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The Arkansas case involved the misuse of $10,000 in campaign funds by Hutchinson. He failed to report $20,000 a month payments he received from a law firm, according to court documents. The former lawmaker also championed legislation that benefited an orthodontist in exchange for legal work, according to the DOJ.
Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to 'take care of it.'
An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.
Webmaster addition: So, the smart move would have been to punch a few holes in the balloon envelope with some 20mm rounds from the aircraft cannon. This would have brought the balloon down slowly and with the payload intact for examination. Instead, the F-22 unleashed a Sidewinder missile, which costs about $300,000, blasting the payload into tiny bits.
Pagination
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