On the third sweep radar operator Dragan Martic said loudly, “Give it, give it, I have him.” Then we launched two rockets.’ At 8.30pm I entered the guidance unit truck and we switched on the radar, three attempts of ten seconds each. ‘When I was writing this I didn’t know if I was going to survive the war,’ he says, flicking through the pages of the diary. Anicic kept a diary throughout the bombing campaign. With the might of Nato’s combined air forces deployed against them, the unit could only switch on its radar systems for ten seconds at a time, for fear of attracting incoming heat-seeking anti-radar missiles onto its position.įor Anicic and his men, sitting in a field with a Sixties missile system, knowing that in the sky above them were the massed formations of the most powerful military alliance on the planet, was a dark, lonely and frightening experience. His unit was to hunt Nato aircraft in the skies above using a Yugoslav version of the Soviet Isayev S-125 Neva ground-to-air missile system. On the night of March 27, Lieutenant Colonel Georgei Anicic, a unit commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 250th Air Defence Brigade of the Serbian military, was sent into the fields of western Serbia. Having tracked down and spoken to those involved in what happened that night, and in the light of the shambolic way the plane was recovered from the muddy field where it crashed, it’s become increasingly clear to military experts and security analysts that this explanation is nowhere near as unlikely as it might sound.
One of the more extraordinary claims was that it had gained invaluable information from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber that had been shot down over Serbia during the Kosovo War – the only F-117 ever shot down. Theories rapidly developed about espionage and how China had somehow managed to steal and copy other countries’ secret technologies. The world knew that the Chinese had a stealth-fighter programme, but it was Gates who had confidently stated they wouldn’t have the technology until 2020. and Russia to develop and test-fly a full-sized stealth fighter aircraft. The new arrival made the Chinese only the third nation after the U.S. The launching of this new aircraft was a serious show of strength. This was at a time when the Chinese had already announced they were working on their first aircraft carrier and a new ballistic missile system. His mission was to try to improve strained relations between American and Chinese armed forces. Defence Secretary Robert Gates to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao. The timing of the flight was significant: it coincided with a visit to Beijing by U.S.
The sight of the rising power’s hidden dragon, its new stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20, on its first 15-minute test flight came as a surprise to the West. The film was unexpectedly released by the secretive Chinese authorities in January and caused an immediate stir around the world. Painted a menacing grey and with a red star on the tailfin, it taxis into position before blasting off into the sky to the delight of a cheering, patriotic crowd. Shaky video footage shot from a perimeter fence shows a sleek, intimidating aircraft on the runway at a military airbase in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province. One of the more extraordinary claims was that China had gained invaluable information from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber that had been shot down over Serbia during the Kosovo War
0 kommentar(er)
