The
founders of Air
Power Australia welcome you to this web site which
has been designed as an educational resource for the public, the
defence industry, and academic and military professionals.
To
familiarise yourself with Air Power Australia, its purpose,
and this Website, we suggest the following for first time
visitors as a means of introduction, orientation and
gaining the understanding for easy navigation through the vast
amount of material this web site has on offer.
- Take
the time to read the Home Page.
It will give you some idea
of the Air Power Australia manifesto, the reason the web
site was brought into existence, and our overall Aims,
Objectives and Goals.
- We
then
recommend you take the Frequently
Asked Questions button link to a series of questions and
answers
designed
to enable even those with no background in things aerospace
or military to very quickly come to terms with what is
being planned for the superiority in air power capabilities
Australians have prospered under for over 50 years.
- Following
the FAQs, take the Media, Hot Topics
and NOTAM shortcut buttons to
browse through
some of the latest material
and Media Releases from Air Power
Australia, as well as other players in the game of air power in
our region.
- Once
oriented to the purpose and the layout of this web site, you should
find navigation quite easy, using the Main
Toolbar, and the Auxiliary
Toolbar, to access APA Abstracts
or the quite powerful Search Engine
Page to locate articles, papers, analyses and other material on
specific words or topics. Don't be confused by the acronyms used in the
button titles. Simply place your cursor over the button and its full
title will appear.
- Once
familiar with the Website and its layout, you can stay current with new
content posted to the site by checking for updates under the Notices and Updates button.
- All
APA content pages may be accessed via the Topic Index Pages through the Main
Toolbar, and many high interest pages can be accessed directly
via the shortcut
buttons on the Home Page. The
shortcut buttons to content pages were added in July 2008 to allow
visitors not familiar with the Topic
Index Pages
to locate popular content quickly.
The founders
of and contributors to the Air Power Australia Website hope you enjoy
this site and find the content beneficial, educational
and rewarding.
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Some Notes on Finding Materials
on the APA Website
As of July, 2008, the APA website hosted no less than 227 PDF
documents, 437 KMZ map reference files, and 364 HTML files. Excluding
various test files and other unpublished material, this still leaves
well over 550 text content documents to find something in.
This can be challenging at the best of times. The APA website was
architected around 20 index pages covering the most relevant topic
categories. Given the focus of the site, these cover five aircraft type
specific index pages, and fifteen index pages covering topical areas.
The most common question raised by visitors is that of "why is item X
in category Y?". Unfortunately, the problem of where to best categorise
and locate a given subject is not always easily solved. In an ideal
world, the subject pages would be placed into the very same categories
as a visitor on the website expects them to be in. This would be easy
if all website visitors had an identical mental map of topics and
categories, and that map was identical to that of the webmaster!
The problem of how readers categorise and contextualise material is one
which humanities scholars have written many papers about, and will no
doubt write many more about in the future.
The index page and main navigation toolbar categories adopted are
currently:
- F-22A - all
materials pertaining to the F-22A Raptor fighter.
- FLANKER - all
materials pertaining to the Sukhoi T-10 family of fighters.
- F-111 - all
materials pertaining to the F-111A/B/C/D/E/F, FB-111A/F-111G and EF-111A
- F/A-18 - all
materials pertaining to the 'classic' F/A-18A/B/C/D, F/A-18E/F and
EF-18G.
- F-35 JSF - all
materials pertaining to the Joint Strike Fighter family of aircraft.
- WEAPONS -all
materials pertaining to Air to Surface
Weapons including bombs and missiles, Cruise Missiles, Air to Air
Weapons, Air
Defence Weapons, Weapon Targeting
Technology.
- AAR/AIRLIFT - all
materials pertaining to aerial refuelling and airlift.
- ISR/NCW -
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance materials, and Network
Centric Warfare materials.
- REGION - all
materials pertaining to Asia/Pacific/Indian region military
capabilities and strategies, Russian and Chinese weapons and systems.
- POLICY - Defence
policy and reform materials.
- SAMS/IADS - Surface
to Air Missile Systems, Integrated Air Defence Systems.
- MEDIA/NEWS - news
archive, hot topics and related material for media visitors.
- CONTRAILS - reader
feedback and correspondence pages.
- DEW/EMP - laser,
microwave and other energy beam weapons, electromagnetic bombs of the
nuclear and non-nuclear variety.
- TECHNOLOGY - all
basic and applied technology topics, including radar, electro-optical
sensors, weapon guidance, computing and Pilot Reports
/ Flight Training topics.
- INFOWAR/EW- all
Information Warfare, Electronic Warfare, Electronic and Signals
Intelligence related materials.
- STRATEGY - all
materials pertaining to military strategy and operations.
- HISTORICAL -
historical topics especially covering World War II, the Cold War and
other earlier conflicts, also some museum and heritage related
materials.
- LINKS - links to
other websites with related material or interests.
- APA ANALYSES
journal index.
This is substantially finer resolution in topics than the first
revisions of the site in late 2004. The toolbar at that time appeared
thus:
Since that time numerous facilities have been added to the site to make
finding content easier. These include:
- NOTICES AND UPDATES
- shortcut button for recently added content and update history.
- APA NOTAMS -
shortcut button to NOTAMs and APA Media Releases
- APA RESEARCH -
shortcut button to APA research and policy statement
- SEARCH APA - Google
search engine window.
- BRIEFS/SUBMISSIONS
- shortcut button to briefings, slides and submissions.
- CONTACTS - APA
contact details and contributor CVs.
- Home Page shortcut
buttons to high interest topics.
- APA Abstracts
page summarising many of the articles on the site.
- Russian language Cyrillic title translations on pages
dealing with Russian equipment.
In addition to this, most HTML pages have properly populated meta-tag
entries for keywords and content, introduced since late 2006 to improve
search engine targeting.
Some tricks for locating content which is not where you might expect it
to be, include:
- Using the browser search window to scan the topic index
pages, APA FAQ or APA Abstracts.
- Using the Google search engine and varying search terms.
- Look at the topic on Wikipedia as many subject pages
include links to related APA website content.
If these methods are not successful, it is likely that the material you
are looking for is not hosted on the APA site, or the keywords or terms
which have been used are not the same as the terms used on APA.
The two largest index pages in terms of total link counts are REGION, TECHNOLOGY and trailing them is the
WEAPONS index. The most
common visitor entry points are the Home
Page, MEDIA/NEWS page and the NOTICES AND UPDATES page.
Dr Carlo Kopp
APA Editor and Webmaster
July, 2008.
Updated June, 2009.
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