Equip Your Air Force!

I’m sure there’s been similar threads here and elsewhere, but I got started with it about a year and a half ago. The idea is the following (started by someone else)…

You are the newly appointed Minister of Defence in the democratic nation of Entelbass (or pick a name of your choosing). Entelbass is a small nation that recently declared its independence from a much larger union of countries. The country is a recent and frail, but popularly supported and functioning democracy.

Entelbass is viewed with suspicion by its neighbours, not only for breaking away from the union, but also for doing so and taking a large part of the wealth of the former union with it. Entelbass borders several larger, but less wealthy countries that currently are not democracies or in an unstable situationo due to the union breakup.

Entelbass is close to being a first world country, enjoying oil and gas supplies near off its coast, some mineral deposits, wood, hydropower and generally a decently developed industry centered around the natural resources found in the country, without major problems ahead.

Entelbass is a peninsula with rather rugged terrain – a mountain chain of low peaks dominates the central parts of the country and while there is broad, open river valleys and marshy deltas at the mouths of the river, the dominating terrain is forested hills or mountains. Infastructure is good although urbanisation is rather low by first-world standards.

There are a lot spread out towns and villages connected by roads and sometimes railroads with small or medium forestry, mountain or industry companies providing the main work place in the town.

Now it is time to build the armed forces of Entelbass, and you have nearly unlimited power – the rest of the government and the parliament will trust your decisions, diplomatics, training, joining defence pacts, acquiring arms, organisation.

So, what do you get? How do your armed forces look?

Later discussions clarify a country with a sizable budget, but nothing like the major spenders (India, China, US, Russia, etc.). We’re talking about a military, that when everything is said and done and if money is spent wisely, might approach the level of the Netherlands, Chile, or Malaysia in their regions, for example. It must be considered, however, that all of your military will be from scratch, and will not have the lengthy project funding that some theoretically comparable militaries (Greece or Australia, for example) have been pouring resources into for some time now. Obviously, a lot of loans and freebies would go out to any country in this sort of situation, so a lot of that shortage can be made up that way. I chose Krasnovia for my country’s name, primarily for obscure nostalgic reasons.

Anyway, I’ve been recently focused on the air force aspect (as I have had the ground forces pretty well hammered out for some time, now) and I had a few specific questions.

First off, here’s a quick rundown of one of my more recent drafts, although I’ve since either made one or two detail changes to the numbers and seriously considered changing, adding, or removing some more minor types.

Post from another forum containing a numerical breakdown by type…

…and a quick visual reference for the types can be found…

…in this later post.

A recent observation that I made was that I have no good, economical light twin for basic multi-engine turboprop training purposes, primarily because I chose the PC-12 for the slot that a light twin would normally fill. Any very cheap, simple, and reliable types that have some commonality with any of mine and would serve that role well?

Any criticisms, comments, and questions are welcome. Some questions and criticisms can be answered by reading my posts on that other thread, as well.

Thanks in advance,

Logan Hartke