Talk:Atlas Carver

Unreferenced speculation

I've done what I can to fix up the article's most basic error (the project name), but ultimately the entire article is based on unverifiable assertions and a good deal of rumour and speculation. The only verifiable information that exists is that the project existed, but that's about it. All other information remains classified. So in the longer term, I think we're going to have to clean out all but the most basic information from the article and await the appearance of more reliable sources on the project (they are on the way). — Impi (talk) 09:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Artists impressions or models of the Carver Project

I mentioned aviation enthusiasts' imaginations of the aircraft, because it helps readers to understand the public's expectations or impressions of what the aircraft would have looked like. The artwork is the fruit of speculation, educated guesses, and publicly available information such as the fact that the SAAF was stuck with the license-built Atar 9K-50 powerplant for some time. The Carver would presumably have been lighter than the Mirage 2000 if single-engined (around 5,800 to 6,300 kg empty) or Mirage 4000/Rafale if twin-engined to compensate for a less powerful powerplant than the Atar M53 or M88. Later, it would have received the Atar Plus perhaps.

Price purely speculative

Nothing is known about Cava. It appears to have been little more than a paper project. The suggestion that 10 billion had been spent on it is fanciful and unreferenced. For that sum the project would have been completed and aircraft operational - at the time the rand was worth as much as the US dollar.Royalcourtier (talk) 08:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a good thing to remove then. This may have been the total planned program cost, but if the Rand was that high it's certainly not at all credible as the cost of the project up to its cancellation. Nick-D (talk) 09:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Strike aircraft and removal of citation needed tags

Howzit,

The article currently describes the Atlas Carver as an air superiority aircraft - while the sources indicate that defence against sophisticated Soviet aircraft like the MiG-23 and Sukhoi SU-22 being introduced to Angola provided the initial impetuous for Project Carver, when Jan van Loggerenberg became chief of the SAAF and the design changed to incorporate twin engines, the Carver was essentially envisioned as a strike aircraft. The Mirage III and Blackburn Buccaneer which the SAAF planned to replace the Carver with were both used almost solely in the strike role during the South African Border War (with the exception of the Mirage IIIRZ, which carried out photo reconnaissance). The Mirage F1 was the primary air superiority fighter of the SAAF.

It seems my [citation needed] tags were also removed under the pretext that they were added out of "laziness". As an outspoken opponent of drive-by tagging on South African military history and Border War-related articles I take great exception to the notion that I would tag any article out of laziness. Cite every piece of information, even if the citation is used again in the next sentence. From my perspective, any contributor who refuses to do so is the lazy one. --Katangais (talk) 23:55, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, let's go over this one. As far as I can see, none of the sources cited in this article refer to the aircraft, at any stage, as a strike aircraft. I'd like to point out, from the corresponding article itself: "Fighter aircraft often carry out the attack role, although they would not be considered attack aircraft per se". The exact phrase 'strike aircraft' does not turn up in page searches that I've performed on all of the cited material. If the sources aren't calling it a 'strike aircraft', I wouldn't be happy to declare it to be one in this article on our own say-so. A multirole aircraft, capable of performing (amongst other tasks) strike missions, does not a strike aircraft make - if we can't find a source calling it a strike aircraft, I really would not recommend calling it one - as we'd be making stuff up then.

I'd recommend reading Wikipedia:Citation_overkill, particularly sentences such as: "In addition, as per WP:PAIC, citations should be placed at the end of the passage that they support. If one source alone supports consecutive sentences in the same paragraph, one citation of it at the end of the final sentence is sufficient. It is not necessary to include a citation for each individual consecutive sentence, as this is overkill." The contact that has been tagged is ALL cited - the citation simply has not been spammed at the end of every single sentence. Simply following the text along left-to-right to find the next citation present provides the source for the information. As per WP:Overcite, citing at the end of every single sentence is heavily discouraged; even at WP:GA level, this principal is solidly practiced. Kyteto (talk) 00:10, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I also don't understand the use of the tags having been re-added at all in this circumstance. It has already been expressed in the edit note that the information is already present within the citations for that paragraph. As that's the case, why not... simply add additional instances of the present citation rather than slamming out tags, if that's what you feel is needed? That's why it appeared lazy to me; the source is there, if it can be bothered to be noticed, often at the end of both the preceding and succeeding sentences(!). It seems overkill, and policy would agree with me on that, to expect/insist that the same citation is spammed at the end of each and every sentence instead of spacing it out to every other (technically, the policy advocates at little as one cite per paragraph if said cite covers all of its content satisfactorily). I just do not get the reasoning here. Kyteto (talk) 00:16, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I did read "citation overkill"; I've also read the general policy on citation density here. And while inline citations after a single paragraph are appropriate in some contexts, I do not perceive this to be appropriate here. This is my reasoning: technical articles concerning something like a piece of machinery (or say, a highly complex aircraft) tend to have a much higher citation density due to the specifics constantly being cited. Articles about controversial people have a much higher citation density as well, albeit for a separate different reason. Just as there are contexts where less inline citations are appropriate, there are contexts where more are likewise appropriate.

In this case, we have a "black project" - an article about a restricted military project which has been subject to a great deal of speculation and rumour. I think a higher citation density is appropriate in this case, both due to the nature of the Carver programme and the need to cite very specific (especially technical) details. For example, a statement about a particular individual - in this case Dassault engineer David Fabish being head of the project - needs a citation at the end of that sentence, not at the end of a paragraph which otherwise consists of unrelated technical development data. Then we have other instances like this in the text:

The Carver programme was beset by numerous delays, often resulting from changed to the aircraft's tactical requirements, as well as the necessity to design the aircraft around a preexisting engine type, namely the Snecma Atar 09K50;[footnote here] along with other design requirements, such as the need to equal the Buccaneer in terms of both range and load-carrying capability.

So a footnote has been provided, but it does not cover the entire sentence, only part of it. The next footnote doesn't appear until the end of the paragraph, leaving readers confused as to which citation that bolded information came from.

Describing the Carver as a multirole fighter is probably the best course of action. I simply found describing it as an air superiority fighter on the one hand, then proceeding to denote it as the replacement for the Mirage III/Blackburn Buccaneer on the other to be paradoxial - since neither the Mirage III or the Buccaneer were considered air superiority fighters in SAAF service, nor were they used in that role during the Border War. --Katangais (talk) 00:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

"So a footnote has been provided, but it does not cover the entire sentence, only part of it. The next footnote doesn't appear until the end of the paragraph, leaving readers confused as to which citation that bolded information came from." This is standard practice, if a cite covers only part of the information in a sentence, rather than all of it, place it to the direct right of the information it is applicable to, and the remaining part of the sentence that is to the right of that cite is sourced by the next citation which is again placed to the right of the corresponding section. This continuously cascades, if lost, the very next citation positioned to the right of the info you're looking for the cite of, is usually (and in this case, is) the valid source of that information.

I'd like to point out that "The next footnote doesn't appear until the end of the paragraph, leaving readers confused as to which citation that bolded information came from" is a misleading/incorrect statement. The following is the paragraph in question (from old id):

Headed by ex-Dassault Aviation designer David Fabish, work commenced on the initial design phase, during which various concepts were explored for the aircraft. By 1986, Atlas had selected a design for a lightweight single-engined aircraft, being 16 metres in length and possessing a wingspan of roughly 9 metres, a single vertical stabiliser and a mid-mounted delta wing furnished with leading-edge root extensions (LERX) set above side-mounted curved air intakes for the engine.[1] The concept called for composite materials to be used throughout the airframe, for reducing both the weight and the radar cross-section of the aircraft. Additionally, it was planned to able to utilise all of the weapons then in SAAF’s arsenal or in development at that time; these munitions included the H-2 guided bomb, V3C and U-Darter short-range guided missiles and the then-planned R-Darter beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile; the total payload capacity was intended to have been comparable to that of the Mirage 2000.[1]

The next citation from the statement in question is not at the end of the paragraph. A duplicate relinking of the citation is also placed in the middle of it, roughly 1/2 the way through. It was not all the way at the end of the paragraph, at any stage from the first edit adding it. During its writing, I figured that adopting a roughly 'every other sentence' layout would be a sensible compromise being the encouraged minimalistic policy and citation overkill.

This also doesn't explain why, if I had already explained where the source for the material was, instead of adding additional links to the source to satisfy your needs for additional citing... you instead re-added citation needed tags?

"I simply found describing it as an air superiority fighter on the one hand, then proceeding to denote it as the replacement for the Mirage III/Blackburn Buccaneer on the other to be paradoxial " This confuses me too, I am not following what you mean here. As far as I can tell from the revision history, I cannot see any instance of the aircraft being described as an 'air superiority fighter' (searches find only two uses of the phrase 'air superiority' before you made any recent edits, both of them talking vaguely about the situation in Angola, not the fighter at all - see old id) at all! You seem to be saying it was being called an air superiority fighter, when the phrase never appeared... I cannot make sense of what you are describing? It's certainly paradoxical!

I did describe it as a 'successor aircraft', which you repeatedly changed to 'strike aircraft' - I deliberately chose a very neutral non-role impinging term in the word 'successor': whether people argue it was a multirole, strike, bomber, attack, ect ect type of aircraft, it was most certainly a 'successor' to the aircraft next stated in that sentence. There's no implication made that a 'successor' is necessarily an aerial superiority aircraft, a strike aircraft, or any type of specific aircraft. Kyteto (talk) 00:58, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hey, not everything happens in an instant. I can and will add the proper footnotes when I have more time (most likely tomorrow). But until I have an opportunity to review your sources, the [citation needed] tags will help me - and any other interested contributors - locate where exactly the need for footnotes is most pressing.

My original perspective when I changed the wording to "strike aircraft" was that was the natural implication of describing anything as a successor to the Buccaneer and Mirage III series, both of which were used exclusively in the strike role (in South African service).

You wrote in one of your edit summaries that the Carver was "heavily focused towards air supremacy and air-to-air combat", suggesting to me that perhaps you were going to add that detail to the article in your next revision. Perhaps I was mistaken in that regard. Nevertheless, that was why I expressed my opposition towards describing the Carver as an "air superiority fighter". --Katangais (talk) 01:21, 1 September 2017 (UTC)