How about the Czech air force? Didn’t they receive some Mi-35s as payment for unpaid debts from Russia? The Czechs would keep them in good condition as well, I’d say.

Not to mention arquebus Lockheed’s massive and ingrained corruption and bribery campaign, which went hand-in-hand with the marketing and sales of the F-104 (and the C-130)!

Regards
Pioneer

To be fair, there was less coercion for the West German Luftwaffe to buy the F-104 than for the East German NVA AF to buy the MiG-21. Did the East Germans (or the Poles, Bulgarians, etc) ever have the opportunity to consider the SAAB Draken or Mirage in the 1960s?

One also has to be mindful that the Starfighter’s operational exposure to combat in Vietnam was very restricted! One also has to remember that the USAF itself did not want the Starfighter in it’s inventory, and did everything it could to ouster it and its reputation – as it was deemed within the USAF as a cost-effective threat to bigger, more advanced and much more costly fighters and fighter programs!!

The Starfighter didn’t fit USAF operational/tactical doctrine – the F-4 and F-106 were certainly a better match for their needs. The USAF were never interested in the F-5 for the same reasons – but other countries certainly were/are interested in the F-5.

J Boyle can bear me out on this:

The blades must generate enough lift to be equal to or greater than the weight (hover out of ground effect). The amount of lift a blade can generate depends on the factors encompassed by the lift formula (Coeff of lift(shape) * Density * V^2 *Size / 2) but in order to keep the blades at the required velocity the engine must be powerful enough. The number of blades also counts.

During forward flight less power is required.

Further to the above:

While drag (and lift) vary linearly with density, drag (and lift) square with velocity.

Yeah but, a five-blade rotor doesn’t make the distinctive wup-wup-wup sound that a twin-blade Huey makes – and that’s what you want at 12,000 feet, isn’t it…?

Found this website on aircraft crash survivability:

ftp://ftp.rta.nato.int/PubFullText/RTO/EN/RTO-EN-HFM-113/EN-HFM-113-07.pdf

Would a five-blade rotor make a difference at that altitude?

Aérospatiale Lama has only got 3 blades. Look at its high-altitude performance. I’d imagine its more an issue of power-to-weight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9rospatiale_SA_315B_Lama

http://russianplanes.net/ID70162

Su-25, Sudan.

Look at the background condition of that airfield -what a mess!:eek:

B.t.w. How much does Russia/VVS Flanker cost to operate?
I mean their Gas prices are quite cheaper vs our gas price in Norway, and do they use lots of conscripts at their Airbases etc etc?

Doesn’t Norway, Finland and Sweden also use conscripts in their air arms?

what is meaning of big customer in 2012? Russia strategy is to make Russian armed forces the biggest customers of its own Military industries. so it wont matter if it sale $1b here or there to any one country. It is not bad business either when you look at little bit deeper.

You could say the same thing about the Chinese military and aerospace industry – Which country’s military has actually taken delivery of more new aircraft in the last 5 – 10 years, China or Russia? And why would the Chinese aerospace industry need to sell more JF-17s – they already sell plenty of MA60s.