Yama

Yes, there was at some point fairly realistic chance they'd fall for the Habsburgs.

Another problem for the Ottomans at the end of 16th century, and right at the time of Lepanto, was that their unholy alliance with France took a significant downturn as France was embroiled in long and destructive Huguenot Wars.

Yeah, much more memorable roles to be sure. I actually think Seydoux is a great actress and I was initially very excited when she was announced for Spectre, but she was written very bland and boring and No Time to Die did little to change things. It is self-parodying by now how new Bond movies are always promoted how THIS TIME they have a modern, strong female role unlike all the previous Bond movies whereas in real world, Seydoux's character was passive and flat, compared to say, Isabella Scorupco in GoldenEye which was quarter of a century ago.

Bond seemed really good up until like 2/3 through, but the last third dragged it down. The ending took way too damn LONG, and all the action scenes seriously felt like Bond and Nomi were just at some newbie level to grind exp. Seriously they went through like 300 mooks. It looked really silly. And the main baddie, who initially was very intriguing and intimidating, crapped his character by talking and talking and never arriving to any meaningful point. We never even learned his primary goal. It was all just so anticlimatic. Also, Seydoux and Craig don't have a great chemistry together. So promoting her as some great undying love felt daft. Finally, now Craig does great shocked face, but going for 'emotional Bond' well tapped it dry 2 movies ago. Especially in a film which was so long. As for Dune, yes it was amazeballs. It felt like watching Fellowship of the Ring for the first time: sure it kinda dragged and there were flaws, but immersion of being in the world you long imagined overwhelmed everything else.

Oh, thought Treason Season was a bit late this year.

It is often forgotten that the Ottomans won that war: albeit undoubtely it was a costlier and less satisfactory win than they would have liked. Soon forthcoming technological shift to large, cannon-armed oceangoing sail ships did more to stunt Ottoman naval power than any singular battle. Galley fleets were so operationally useful in Eastern Med that the Turks could not give them up, and they could not afford to build both a powerful galley force and a proper, bluewater ship-of-the-line fleet.

The potential enemy is also not reliant on dropping gravity bombs and having all of 1 functional submarine...seriously, the overmatch would be enormous. It wouldn't be like the Falklands at all. Which I suppose is the whole point of the USUK alliance.

Iran is more afraid about Turks than Jews.

Block 15 (or 20 or thereabouts) was wired for Sparrow, but full integration, complete with illuminator, was not done until the ADF. Any way, the plane could only carry 2 Sparrows. Some subsesquent export versions for Arab countries were equipped with Sparrows. Re: Mirage F1, it was an excellent design but pretty old-fashioned. It was basically just same old late '50s technology as in Mirage III repackaged with more fuel and different wing. Dassault always had a better eye for practicality than the AdA, and F1 was one of the Dassault in-house designs which bailed out the Air Force once they had painted themselves into corner with their crazy schemes.

Oh yeah; great rendition of probably the most metal piece of music written before, well, the actual heavy metal genre. It just jumps at you: "This is it, wimp. The end of the world, this is not your grand daddy's Mozart".

Reportedly, the J-11's which participated to Falcon Strike exercise were upgraded to RVV-AE (export version of R-77).

Went through a theremin listening phase again, and found this Bach cover which is lovely in all kind of ways:

Well no, other than that the battleships were not a secret: as I said, Soviets considered US designs along with Italian ones, and the battleship project is mentioned in contemporary Janes Fighting Ships. Although before the war they were thought to be 35kton ships, which was indeed the original plan. Final design would have triggered the Washington escalator clause had it not become irrelevant already.

For all the awesomeness Gnat offered for its pilots, it was not a very good warplane. Price of the compact size was horribly cramped interior, the systems were unreliable and because everything was packed so tightly and in rather chaotic fashion, it was a nightmare to maintain.

In spiritual sense, but technically it has nothing to do with MiG-21. It is based on Mikoyan's Article 35 (kind of single-engined MiG-29), with some F-16 influence: Unrelated Guizhou JL-9, however, is direct descendant of MiG-21 lineage and produced to the day, actually it got a new export order not long ago: JF-17 has almost same internal fuel as Gripen, it can take 3 drop tanks and in-flight refuel tube is an option. Still, I don't think it is particularly suitable for Argentina's requirements, but as the saying goes, buggers can't be cheesers, or something to that effect anyway. Wonder if they were offered J-10? I suppose they were, but maybe it was too pricey.