Originally Posted by
Mil-26Man
I would suggest that sorties flown on Shader come under the banner of 'operational', which brings me back to my question - for an operational sortie in an active combat zone, would preserving hours of a brand new missile type be a consideration for not carrying it? If it is, how come Meteor is carried on Baltic ops?
It isn't routinely carried on Baltic ops, nor on QRA, though it has been. I would imagine that stocks are being carefully conserved.