*Sigh*:confused:

If what happened in Ukraine in February 2014 happened in Mexico, the US would have parked 50,000 tanks in Mexico the next day, then we have the historical precedent of ‘The Bay of Pigs,’ ‘Operation Northwoods’ and ‘School of the Americas’. It always helps to look at this thing from both sides. Historically it could easily be argued that the Ukraine had no right to retain Crimea after the collapse of the Soviet Union and one could view what happened last February as a coup launched off the back of a popular protest against a democratically elected government. I’m actually surprised Russia didn’t go much further, they did in fact receive an invite to help from the former democratically elected government, which would have given it much greater validity than recent NATO interventions and it could actually have saved lives, as it did in Crimea. The Ukraine itself was a misfit collection of provinces and ethnicities glued together by the SU and after that finished it was only a matter of time before it fell apart, much like Yugoslavia. Now it’s in the main governed by ultra-nationalists intent on cleansing the country of the Russian ethnicity and culture. Don’t get me wrong, Russia has done a lot of wrong in the past under the SU flag, but this isn’t an example of that.

The Americans don’t have 50000 tanks so no they wouldn’t send 50000 tanks into Mexico even the Russians don’t have 50000 tanks they have about 2500 active MBTs with a reserve of about 12000 MBTs in varying states of usability. What’s happened in Mexico is way worse than what happened in the Ukraine in 2014 which was just people being fed up with a unfit government. Mexico has been in a state of full blown civil war for years and that civil war is starting to spill over into the US and yet the Americans still have not invaded Mexico and annexed Mexico’s northern territories. The Russians on the other hand invaded the Ukraine simply because the Ukrainians rejected the blessings of Putinism and annexed Ukrainian territory in the process. Putin’s intention is to recreate the old Soviet empire as far as he can and until now his strategy seems to be to do so with brinksmanship but without actually provoking a full blown war. If the Kremlin really makes good on previous threats that they could overrun the Ukraine in two weeks and park those 40-50000 troops they parked on the Ukrainian border on the Polish/Romanina border with the Ukraine there won’t be a new Cold War there will be an Ice Age – best case, war – worst case. If the Kremlin tries to play the same game they did in the Ukraine in the Baltic Republics there will be war. The only question is does Putin have the balls to start WWIII. Nobody in the region is under any illusions about Russia’s intentions. Finland is re-registering 900.000 reservists and I’ll be surprised if they don’t recall some of them for extra training. The Scandinavian countries are setting up cooperation for a rapid reaction force, Germany and the Netherlands are taking another look at their rapid reaction force, the Germans and the French are reconsidering military cooperation that they have neglected for years and the Poles will over the next few years modernise their army, reform it and weed out any Russian equipment they can easily replace. This helicopter acquisition is just the first step along with spending USD 9 billion on Patriot missiles.

Poland wants to replace their Mi-24s. Seems that the Ukraine conflict has some influence in this.

Reports say the contenders:
Airbus (EC665 Tiger HAD), AW/TAI (T129 ATAK), Bell Helicopter (AH-1Z) and Boeing (AH-64E). South Africa’s Denel offers the Rooivalk

1. Who do you think should win
2. Who do you think will win

The Americans… who else?

Just a reminder, the F-5 and Mirage III were never competitors for the F-104. The F-104 entered service for european countries in 1960, the Mirage III first rolled off the production line in 1960 and the F-5 didnt enter service till 1962.

The only real competitors for the F-104 was the Tiger, F-8 and the CF-105 (the Arrow being the obvious correct choice). These jets were superior to the F-4 so it would have been embarrassing for the US to sell a better fighter than their current top-of-the-line fighter. As we all know the F-4 proved to be quite a dud at dogfighting in Vietnam.

Some other potential candidates would have been the F-102, F-105 and F-106. I also want to mention that I dont buy into the idea that the F-104 was an untouchable low level attack fighter. That myth was dispelled when mig-15s made easy meat out of F-105s in Vietnam.

The Luftwaffe wanted a ‘maid of all work’, a light weight, low cost, off the shelf, multi role aircraft. Basically they wanted the F-16 about 15 years before the F-16 even flew. The aircraft the Germans (and other European air forces) wanted did not exist so the question really is which one of the ones you mentioned fit the bill most closely. The F-102, F-105 and F-106 were all basically huge lumbering and expensive missile trucks which rules them out. Did the Luftwaffe make the right choice with the 104? I have had Luftwaffe pilots tell me that the problems with the 104 had a lot to do with logistics, poor pilot training and the fact that ‘the aircraft was never meant to do what we forced it into’ as one of them put it and that’s why the Luftwaffe had all those casualties, not because the F-104 was a crappy aircraft. Once they got a handle on the 104 and the engine and avionics issues were solved Luftwaffe losses were pretty much average for the type. Despite all the initial losses Luftwaffe 104 drivers loved that aircraft and a lot of them agree that when they transitioned to the F-4 they felt like they were trading in a Porsche 911 for a furniture van. The F-104 was meant to be an interceptor and it was turned into an all weather fighter/recon aircraft performance suffered and that much much worse when it was pressed into service as a low level striker loaded down with bombs and tanks. Another factor was that the 104 is an aircraft that would have benefitted from extensive computerisation. On takeoff you only had a few seconds to do a bunch stuff you could to at your leisure in older aircraft. An American F-104 driver also commented that you were constantly bumping into some aerodynamic, material or temperature limits. It seems to me that some form of fly-by-wire would have lightened the workload of the pilot. As a low level striker it was a handful for a pilot that had no automatic TFR system. I always thought the Italians had the right idea with their F-104S variants. They used the F-104 as an interceptor, the role for which it was designed and in which it excelled. Upgrading the 104 with a more powerful engine better radar and BVR missiles was probably the most sensible upgrade the aircraft ever got. All in all I don’t think the F-104 was an obviously worse than the other available candidates. The Super Tiger is an unknown quantity since it never entered service while the Mirage probably would have been a better striker but a worse interceptor and the F-8 would not have had the upgrade potential of the others.

Why is the helicopter carrying that aircraft? For what purpose could U.S. forces want with such a dilapidated aircraft? Why waste the gas in the chopper?

It’s been a long time since I collected that photo but IIRC they wanted it for a museum.

That is a Soviet-built MiG-21F-13. All Iraqi F-7s had a brake chute housing and a separate windscreen.

Yu´re right MSphere and qwerty. Thanks for the correction.

Mind you there were a few F-7s built in China with a cockpit hood and windscreen in a single piece and no brake chute but they were very early examples and production shifted to models with a separate windscreen and a brake chute housing at the base of the tail. A handful of these early machines with Soviet style one piece hoods and no brake chute housing were sold to the Albanian air force.

http://www.militaryimages.net/photopost/data/521/Albanian_F-7A_aka_Chinese_export_version_of_MiG-21F-13.jpg

The Iraqis got F-7Bs outfitted as MSphere described with the pitot tube below the nose and outfitted with Chinese made copies of the original Soviet equipment. Later Iraq received the improved F-7Ms with a western made HUDs, western (Marconi) electronics including a radar, pitot tubes on top of the nose and the F-7M was also wired up for both western and eastern bloc missiles.

Here are a few Iraqi F-7s. From right to left F-7M, F-7B, F-7M, I always thought the one on the left was a slighly awesome shot.

Do they have the skills to operate the sophisticated weaponry that’s being advocated here? I doubt it, doubt it very much. But a few tanks and other armoured vehicles plus a few moderately heavy artillery pieces might do some good.

Regards

Like others pointed out the Kurds need stuff they can get operational in weeks. Training the Peshmerga to operate armor properly and making them proficient in real armored warfare would take too long. By the sound of it the Kurds biggest problem are fast moving ISIS columns that constantly probe their borders and then pop up out of nowhere to strike at vulnerable communities. So what the Kurds need the most at the moment are recon assets (drones?) that can pick up these fast moving ISIS columns. The quickest way to counter ISIS strike forces once they have been found is to intercept them with helicopter gun ships and rapid reaction units using stuff like BTR-80 class armored cars, Humvees, Landcruiser based technicals some of them preferably equipped with guided anti armor missiles and whatever tanks the Kurds have (I’m willing to bet they are using tanks in penny packets for infantry support). Massive air support is also essential so something like an A-10 or Su-25 squadron would also be immensely helpful but that would also take to long unless you use mercenary pilots so the USAF/USN will have to take care of fixed wing air support. Now that Al Maliki has stepped down, we will hopefully also see widespread American air strikes which will hopefully stop the advance of ISIS and destroy much of their captured combat vehicles.

You could probably go from the drawing board to full production of a brand new attack helicopter design in the time it would take Russia to bring 12,500 tanks out of reserve and into theatre :p

Firstly I wasn’t talking about the modern Russian army, I was talking about the Soviet Cold War army who had a whole lot more tanks in service than the Russian army currently has. Secondly there was a lot of mindless paranoia in the West about Soviet force levels during the Cold War which I also mentioned and which would be evident if you hadn’t quoted me out of context to get in a cheap shot 😉 Nobody ever said the projections about ten thousand Soviet tanks and thousands of nuclear bombers cooked up by American think tanks were true but they were widely believed in the west and they influenced defence policy.

I almost posted this in the historic aviation forum, but I don’t think the Cold War was that far back.

Anyway why didn’t the French and Germans especially build attack helicopters like the Americans and Soviets? The Germans relied on the far less capable armed Bo-105, they could’ve at least bought some Cobras. The French could’ve built a derivative of the Puma like the South Africans eventually tried to do. There’s no reason they couldn’t built something like a Hind with Puma or even Super Frelon parts. It did seem both countries were very lukewarm towards the concept until they got their acts together jointly developing the Tiger.

I expect it was cold war paranoia about 10.000 plus T-54/55/62/64/72 tanks rolling into Germany in an initial Warsaw pact thrust. Keep in mind that the Russian Army today still has a tank reserve of 12.500 MBTs and 16.500 APCs and that you can buy something like 6-8 Bo-105/Gazelle class choppers for the price of one AH-64 class gunship. Of course 500 AH-64 class gunships could do the job better but if you can’t afford them in the vast numbers you need to blunt a mammoth tank force like that what are you going to do? You go for the T-34 effect, strap standoff anti-tank missiles onto Bo-105s and Gazelles and field them by the hundreds. They’ll probably take high casualties but a force of 500 Bo-105s firing standoff missiles from ambush positons are going to do more to thin out a Soviet tank hoard of than the 50-100 AH-64 class gunships you’d be able to get for the same money. Especially when those Bo-105s are joined by a few hundred French Gazelles and whatever other allies can contribute. It was widely assumed, especially by the Luftwaffe who had some very bad memories from WWII, that most airfields would be knocked out in the opening stages of a Warsaw Pact attack. The Americans didn’t seem to be phased by this and kept on making large numbers of aircraft that required luxurious facilities and long concrete runways. Some other NATO allies, particularly the Germans, were always torn between this US idea about big bad jets and having a reserve of aircaft that could operate out of torn up airbases and stretches of Autobahn and be maintained out of the back of a truck. This is why aircaft like the Fiat G-91 were acquired by the Luftwaffe and why the UK, possibly taking heed of German experiences in 1944-45, decided to develop and procure the Harrier. If the **** had hit the fan there is every reason to beleive that the G-91 and Harrier would have been among the few aircraft avaliable in really large numbers simply because they could be dispersed to improvised bases quickly.