Talk:List of air forces

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Note regarding spelling of "defense" or "defence" in Japan's Self Defense Forces: The official Web site [1] has links to all three services. The Maritime SDF uses "defence"; the Air uses "defense" and the Ground uses only the acronym. So, I changed the spelling for Air SDF and left the other two as they were. 222.3.94.166 10:43, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That is simply an artifact/artefact of where the translator learned their English. As time goes on, the use of American English seems to be growing more the norm, but here in Wikipedia it's best just to be consistent one way or the other. Askari Mark | Talk 22:52, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Air Tigers

I've changed the entry for the Air Tigers under Sri Lanka to read Air Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) as opposed to (Tamil Terrorist Air Force). Regardless of what one thinks of them, that is their officially stated name. This is of course assuming the Air Tigers exist! I'm not one to assume bad faith - indeed I wouldn't be surprised if the Tigers had an Air Force, given the existence of the Sea Tigers... but I've never heard of them and it WOULD be unusual for a rebel group to have an established air force. So, I've marked it as uncited until someone can verify their existence. Jumbo Snails 23:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it's not as unusual as people think. For a while, the UNITA rebels in Angola were flying MiGs against the national government! I don't know if the LTTE has a formal air force as such, but they are known to operate a few lightplanes like Cessnas or something. Askari Mark | Talk 00:34, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The Air Tigers have been removed from this list, why?--208.102.210.163 (talk) 00:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] broken internal link

The site linked to Fiji under former airforces makes no mention of them. (If anyone wishes to fix it, my memory is the french gave them Aerospatiale Puma).130.216.191.183 02:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Palestinian Air Force

does anybody have info about the palestinian air force called "Force 14" ?

"Force 14" was al-Fatah's aviation unit, which was chiefly responsible for shuttling Arafat wherever he needed to go. Under the PNA, it has been succeeded by the Aerial Police (Shurta al-Jawiya). Last I checked, it had 5 Russian helicopters (2 Mi-8 and 3 Mi-17) which are used mainly as VIP transports, rather than police work. I suspect few, if any, remain operational. Palestine as yet has no formally established military air force. Askari Mark | Talk 18:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issues related to the changeover to the new table format

When I originally converted the "F" section to the new table format, I'd placed the 1945 roundel in a separate line. Necessary Evil has recently moved it to the "Notes" section. While there is nothing basically wrong with it, we should probably discuss the best way to handle these cases since it will come up repeatedly, (in the "G's" for instance).

Another related issue is how to handle predecessor organizations and their associated material. In the list format this was easily handled with indentation, which would be awkward (though not impossible) to handle in the table format. For the moment I've just put them in the "Notes" section, but I don't find this satisfactory. Any thoughts? Askari Mark (Talk) 03:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I also had problems with the "O" table, where the OECS entry has "broken" the standard spacing. It's the only one where I had to directly link the country flag and name (as there is no .svg example in Commons), but I'm not sure whether it was this or simply the length of the name which caused the problem. Askari Mark (Talk)
My instinct is also not to push the historical services and their roundels into the Notes column; in fact, here, where I've been experimenting with these issues, I reckon the Notes column is unnecessary, at least until there are many more notes to fill it. Whatever solution is found, I suspect the code for each row will become more involved, so I reckon a {{LOAF entry}} template might help retain some sanity (and remove much redundancy). Meanwhile, though, I'm not sure whether some along the lines of the page linked above or maybe even consigning the historical services to footnotes or a separate section might work better... Yours, David Kernow (talk) 08:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RCAF

I've moved the RCAF roundel to the current column, as the Canadian military continues to use it (although mainly in low-visibility grey). While the RCAF existed until the 1968 "unification" with the army and navy, it adopted the current roundel (based on Canada's then new flag) in 1965. Prior to that, it used a roundel with a leaf based on the silver maple.Dave Langner 04:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to list contents needed to remedy slow loading?

As we get more and more wikilink coding to support table formatting, flags, roundels, and article links, this page is getting increasingly longer to load. I think we're approaching a decision point on how to handle the matter and there are several options — some of which we might need to elevate to WP:Air:

  1. Break up the list into multiple pages covering smaller alphabetical ranges of the country tables, such as has been done with List of aircraft.
  2. Discontinue inclusion of roundel images, and move them to the most appropriate article for each country's military.
  3. Discontinue inclusion of roundels and of historical force names & establishment dates, transferring them as a table to the relevant country military branch article.
  4. Remove flag icons altogether as unnecessary.
  5. Move roundels to a separate "List of air force roundels" and increase the size of the roundel images so they can be better seen.

These options aren't all mutually exclusive. For instance, there's a lot of discussion right now about the proper usage of flags. Frankly, I think that here they provide some welcome relief from eye fatigue, which is all too common with long, drab, colorless lists; nonetheless, they provide no other useful purpose that I can see.

Personally, for a "List of air forces", I don't see much reason for including the roundels here; they would seem to be better suited for the relevant articles on each country's air arms. In particular, capturing their changes over time complicates the coding for the info tables. The list of historical force names and establishment dates seems suitable and informative for this particular list, although I think this info should also appear (with roundels) in the "native" articles.

If this list were to be formatted to include country name (possibly including country flag), names of air arms and establishment dates (with additional lines for previous names and the dates of their usage), I think this list would appear a lot cleaner and the page faster loading — whether a multi-page list is used or not. Moreover, the same general format could be used for a separate "List of air force roundels", if one is so desired. The only template coding change needed would be to replace the formation date field with a roundel image field. (However, I would recommend increasing the size of the roundels so they can be better seen. Thoughts, suggestions or scathing denunciations? Askari Mark (Talk) 01:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest going with (1). IMHO the roundels are essential - historical ones could be 'dumped' from the main page, but retention of the current roundels* should be done at anynearly any cost.
(* - Even those roundels that are not round. ;-) )
- Aerobird Target locked - Fox One! 02:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

A list like:

would be very boring - and pointless. I vote for Askari's (1) --Necessary Evil 10:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this list is to complex for what really is just a look up list to find the article of interest. I would suggest restricting the list to current air forces only (perhaps split of former air forces to a separate list). So you would just have table with three columns (country / roundel / service name), so no flags, no dates, just a simple table with the roundels to add a bit of colour/color.MilborneOne 12:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added a fifth option which was discussed in my commentary, but not made explicit. Askari Mark (Talk) 14:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I think I'd go for...
  1. Move the historical info elsewhere (and link to it);
  2. Remove the flags;
  3. Move the roundels to their own list;

...in that order. After step 3, however, the list would've become text-only. Perhaps MilborneOne's suggestion is the way forward...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 17:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing countries

I noticed that Burma/Myanmar was not on the list...? - Aerobird Target locked - Fox One! 05:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to add it. I don't think anyone has yet gone through it to make sure it's comprehensive. It's a "TBD someday" task for me. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Imperial Russia

Could somebody double check the insignia for Imperial Russia? The colours are the correct ones, but I'm not sure about the order of them. Valentinian T / C 19:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Serbian Air Force roundels

I removed both predecessor roundels because they're incorrect, according to Flags of the World. I'm also unsure about the 2006 roundel being displayed. As I understand it, the roundel introduced in 2006 was the so-called "Pepsi roundel".[2] Could someone with better knowledge please verify and provide correct versions? Thanks, Askari Mark (Talk) 22:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)