October 11, 2003 at 3:47 am
Please no flaming, this is just a opinion thread
What do you guys think that Serbia should acquire next of military equipment, as our Army is very well trained and pretty well armed but our airforce is in very bad shape.
I think Serbia should first retire all our Mig-29s, Mig-21s, Oraos, Super Galebs or whatever and order more trainers with secondary light attack role. With this we should save alot of money in coming years. This would also leave us without some real combat aircraft for 10 years but it we probably won’t need it. When we are very friendly with US and EU and when we enter NATO and US we should order some very good multirole fighters(30-40), some Transports, Combat Helicopters(to replace all our current ones). We should also order a few cheap AWACS and this will give us a kick ass airforce.
I’d love to see some JSFs in our service, I think JSF would be the PERFECT choice, it is cheap, has awesome performance, it is a strike aircraft with secondary A2A capabilities which we’re just looking for. I think US will let us buy some of them in about 10-15 years, why wouldn’t they? They do want a military cooperation with us and we are cooperating with them politcally and militarily.
As for Transports, personally it would be very good to order some AN-70s because they are very good transports so we at least remain in netrual politcal situation between Russia and US. Another reason I would choose AN-70 is because it is alot cheaper to maintain and buy than American Transports, Look at C-17 and A-224 in comparison(Americans wanted Ukranians and Russians to haul their stuff with An-224s so they saved some money on not operating C-17s).
Combat Helicopters, I’d love to get some Tiger’s, this would also put us even further in a neutral politcal situation.
I think we should order some decent sized tankers. What do you guys think it should be?
As for AWACS, they play a very large role in AirCombat and other stuff, so I think we should acquire some AWACS, I am not sure which we should acquire but we should go for a multirole type that can do Sea Surveillance, SAR, border surveillance and control, airspace management and signals/communications intelligence. How about EMB-145? S 100B Argus
?
My opinion Serbia should remain in a neutral politcal situation between EU, Russia and US.
I would opt for the best stuff for your money. And Remember I think we should get all this stuff in 10-15 years when we enter NATO/EU.
so in summary
JSF(cheap, 5th generation, easy to maintain)
AN-70