Politics and shennanigans aside, to rebuild the air force one needs money. First to retrain the personnel, then to get the equipment and keep the training levels up, keep up the maintenance etc.

2012 military budget was some 5 billion USD. Now, i don’t know how much of that went to the air force, but to turn the AF into a semi-effective fighting machine, at least 25% of that should go to AF. Usually countries that don’t produce and develop their own equipment spend around 25% of budget for procurement. Assuming the economy won’t really grow but will stagnate just enough to cover inflation, we’re left with some 310 million USD per year for AF procurement.

Of course, one could perhaps say “lets increase the percentage of GDP going into the military, but as long as the economic situation is what it is, i’ll disregard that option.

While 310 million USD isn’t a lot, it is actually a sum that can be useful, *IF* there is little corruption.

Modernized Pampas will do nicely as advanced trainers. Tucanos and primary trainers are also fairly new and don’t need to be replaced within the next decade or so, they only need proper maintenance.

What does need modernization is combat aircraft, transport aircraft and various special mission aircraft.

Due to politics and price, western eqipment is not something i’d go for. Russia is a decent choice, but even they are getting more expensive and there have been instances where even Russia caved into western pressure. That leaves China as best buy partner, more so because Chinese firms are investing more and more into Argentina’s economy.

jf17 is a decent enough plane but ws13 engine may still be a few years away from being combat ready. Without it, i’m not sure jf17 could be exported so easely.
PAF officials did say it costs them 25 million, but they’re buying them differently than a foreign buyer would. With ancillary equipement i’d expect price tag per plane would approach 40 million. Which is still very cheap for what it gives you, a decent plane better than what Argentina now has. But perhaps lets be rash and go one step above and get j10. Its engine seems to be right around corner, being in development longer than ws13, and several planes have been seen with ws10. By the time first ones are delivered, engines may well be good enough to sell/use. It’s harder to gauge j10’s price, though, but one PAF comment did mention 40 million, so something like 50-60 million with all the ancillary stuff seems reasonable.

Production capacity at CAC isn’t the issue here, but Argentina’s money might be. So something like 6 planes per year seems like an optimal plan. Am not sure how much are interests in such deal but let’s go with 5-10%. Say the deal is signed at the end of this year, CAC’s ongoing production could easely deliver the first 6 by end of 2014 or early 2015. That is 36 j10 by 2020, being paid for by 2022. Or probably even farther into the future, as other equipment needs to be bought as well. 7-8 Y8 transports would come cheap, as we saw Venezuela paying measly 45 million for each one. That’s another 300 million for 7 y8, though probably with intrests that’d be closer to 500 million by the time they’re paid for.

Since J10 has decent legs, I’d wait a bit with tanker planes. For the near future J10 should have enough range to do what is expected of it.

Very important piece of equipment would be MPA planes. That falls under the jurisdiction of the Navy, but realistically it might be better to reorganize the whole system and pool the money, helping both air force and navy get aircraft, maintain them and train personnel for them. A decent y8 variant mpa should not go 20-30 million more than the transport variant. I am not talking about mpa and asw aircraft, like y8q, but a barebone mpa plane.

Anyway, it’s hard to reach these numbers before 2020, and even then one would have to pause with further procurments for several years until the loans are paid off. But that’s completely normal, most countries do it like that and it’d still be a HUGE improvement over what argentina’s AF realistically has nowadays.

Sea harrier frs.1 radar wasn’t really much of a radar, even for its time. Found this piece of text about it: “The mission did, however, require that an air-intercept radar be added, and the Ferranti “Blue Fox” radar was selected. The Blue Fox was a derivative of the “Sea Spray” radar developed for navalized Westland Lynx helicopters, and had four operational modes, including “Search”, “Air-To-Air Attack”, “Air-To-Surface Attack”, and “Boresight”. It was relatively simple compared to other contemporary fighter-aircraft radars, in particular lacking a look-down capability. However, it was compact, light, affordable, and met mission requirements.”

what does ECO stand for in that list?

Not sure about burning the engines though. I did read about prolongued AB not being such an issue for engines in 80s and onwards. Supposedly only earlier engines suffered that limit. That doesn’t mean engine itself would last as long if it was on full AB all the time, sortie after sortie. But that within a single sortie the pilot could afford to use as much AB he deems necessary without fear of engine dying out on him right there during that sortie. Perhaps that is not true, feel free to correct me.

Numbers that andraxxus offered suggest f16 would run out of internal fuel at mil power at M0,9 and Sea Level in little under 25 minutes. Even with external tanks it would run out of fuel after some 50-51 minutes. I guess that would mean a low penetration mission radius of some 300-400 km.

Same f16 at full AB at M0,6 and 60k feet (how the heck does f16 get to cruise at 60k feet ladden with fuel ??? USAF standard aircraft characteristics sheets suggest much lower operational altitudes for f16) would be able to cruise for an hour and 45 minutes on internal fuel alone. Or something like 3 and a half hours with external fuel as well. Drag notwithstanding, of course. In reality it would be a bit less with external stores if speed is to be maintained.

Same f16 would at max AB at M1,3 and Sea Level, even with full internal and external fuel, fly for just 9 minutes. And have total ferry range of tiny 250 km.

But how come that same f16, using less thrust at same altitude, 60k feet, maintains same speed? Shouldn’t it go faster, if everything else is the same except for thrust?

Taking those claimed figures for granted it would mean m2000 could run in theory some 8 minutes 40 seconds on full AB, using internal fuel alone. With external fuel, providing fuel tanks and pylons can take it (which they probably can’t) it would be able to run at full AB for almost 10 more minutes. In total over 18 and a half minutes.

f18 would use up its interntal fuel in little under 10 minutes and use up its external fuel in 6 and a half minutes (for US hornets) and 8 and a half minutes for some of the export hornets). Total time some 16.5 mins to 18.5 mins.

In real world it probably doesn’t work out that way…

Scramble has finally updated their Russian Orbat page. http://www.scramblemagazine.nl/orbats/russia

Sadly, it looks as it is work in progess as some stuff is missing, so there’s no way of knowing if the data that is presented is final. Hopefully in the coming months things will be more clear.

I do have one question: If aviation bases in new restructuring are composed of several airfields – how are aviation groups structured? Scramble doesn’t mention anything smaller than the aviation group, yet it seems even the aviation group is a fairly large unit, sometimes composed of several completely different types of planes.

For example, under 6983 AvB there is 4 Aviatsionnaya Groupa listed as having both mig31 and su27. There are a few more of similar cases. Does that mean that aviation group is basically a regiment sized unit which is further subdivided to squadrons? If so, how many squadrons are usually present and how many planes are usually are there for a certain kind of plane? 12 planes per squadron? 2-3 squadrons per aviation group? Something else?

there may easely be other differences but a quick glance told me the top of the tail has two differences. One is the rudder, which on il76 seems a tiny bit shorter, and on il476 goes all the way to the top. The other is on the leading edge of the vertical stabilizator. the curve of it, for some reason, curves forward in the last 10-20 cm before the top end. That is present on both models. But on il476 the length of that portion of the leading edge seems a bit longer.

The list include under which Air Command each AvB is under.

So one of those 1st grade Super bases can have both several AvGr from same Airfield or other airfields under its command.
One AvGr can range from a old Regiment size(several Sq) and down to less than a Squadron size.
The list state which type of units, but not how many.

The old Soviet-style-four-level Command hierarchy: Air Army/Air Division/Air Regiments/Squadron, has been abolished in favor of a more streamlined: three-level structure Operational Command, Air Base(AvB), Squadron(AvGr).

Is it then possible to deduce (using other sources than just that article) how many squadrons of what type of AC each Avb has? How frequent are situations where one AvB has two or more squadrons of the same type of plane?