As far as I know China bought instead of the Czech system (Vera-E) a comparable but less capable Ukrainian (Kolchuga) system.

All reports I read about the Cavour mentionend a maximum of 8 Harrier II’s, and later on JSF. With it’s transportcapabilities I wouldn’t say it is a carrier. It remembers me more on a LHD.

I think second hand F-16 from the US would be ideal for Mexico. Luke AFB isn’t that far away from the Mexican border, block 15 or 20 Vipers are cheap and available in large numbers. It isn’t necessary to go for something new.

Though I think it’s safe to assume that this prototype aircraft will have smaller RCS than Su-27 or Mig-29 and even the Eurocanards, I mean it will carry all it’s weapons internally, where it’s internal bays must be huge to be able to accomodate 12 AAMs.

But where should these large bays be located ? Somewhere on the upper side of the fuselage ?

Right, Kosovo, and if you like opereations northern and southern watch were flown with F-16. But these missions can be flown with (much cheaper) Gripens as well. The Polish got no SEAD stuff ordered for there Vipers, so no difference. The Gripen will get JDAM or something similar. It is already capable of using LGB’s. Hungary and Czech Republik are using Gripens. All Western European nations will replace their Vipers with JSF. Only shortly after the Polish will have declared their Viper squadrons operational. There is no military need for those extra capabilities the Viper provides.

Gripen will be the first fighter integrated with the Meteor. No need for AMRAAM C5.

As Glitter already pointed out, mostly European based companies invest in Poland. The Polish thought they could get with the Viper deal additional investments from US based companies. The offset contract suggested this. By the way, they already produce parts for the Gripen.
The Polish politicians thought they are clever. Additional investments from the US (for example the P&W engine assembly line ) as well as the workshare in the Gripen. A bit to greedy, in my opinion.
The Americans have now the problem to find companies that invest in Poland. Very difficult considering the volume of US investments of the past decade.
LM does a good job in my opinion, but it is not very realistic to say they will be able to fulfill their contract.

All this a2g stuff is great. But neither was it a requirement nor will it be used in real combat. It is comparable to those TV commercial shows. “And if you call now, you get an surplus saucepan” Shure the package was huge. But in the end the Polish got capabilities they never requested.

The deal was sealed mainly because of the offsets. I’m shure I would have done the same, if I had been a Polish politician. Everything looked great, but in the end, it was simply to much LM (or the US goverment) offered, considering those offsets.

It is not very likely the Romanians or the Polish will take part in large offensive operations in the next decade. All they will do is some airpolicing and some a2g training. That means running costs and availability is more important than real attack capabilities.

The largest plusses of the Viper are it’s huge amount of integrated weapons and the availability of maintainance facilities nearly everywhere in the NATO. This is excellent for NATO-exercises somewhere.

So, yes I still think the Romanians are better off with Gripens. The Viper is number 2 and the M2K is last because of it’s poor compatibility with NATO standard weapons. (mostly US made)

If it comes to used ones, the Viper is shurely the best one can get. (Or used Gripens if available)

Poland- a happy F-16 customer

From Warsaw Business Journal

by Kamil Tchorek Sean Lavelle ,

After months of bitter criticism from both the media and the government for its failure to meet its offset obligations, Lockheed Martin (LM) strikes back, claiming it has fallen victim to a mixture of prejudice and misunderstanding.

“Criticism of the program is often based on misunderstanding rather than fact,” Philip Georgariou, LM’s director for offset, told the Business Journal in an exclusive interview. “If the facts were known, we wouldn’t be getting the criticism.”

The $6 billion (zł.22 billion) Offset Program was designed to stimulate a decade of American investment into this country in return for Poland’s choice of purchasing 48 LM F-16 fighters. And ever since the deal was announced, it has come in for criticism in a spate of media attacks.

Some projects have failed to materialize at an early stage, such as the Grupa Lotos refinery technology license project, while others have successfully resulted in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), such as General Motors, (GM) relocation of production facilities from Germany to Gliwice in southern Poland. Still though, LM has managed to meet only 22.6 percent of its obligations for 2003.

Understandably, the American side is keen to shift the focus of the public debate on the program away from the dollar value of the projects underway.

“The value of the Offset Program is not measured in dollars, it is measured in business relationships,” says a recent LM statement to the press. And in a recent interview for the Business Journal’s Country Focus USA supplement (June 2, the U.S. Embassy’s commercial counselor, Edgar Fulton, claimed to have computed that 1,000 sets of business relationships have been developed as a result of the offset deal.

But the media allegations are hard to ignore, with one of the strongest being that “there is no American offset, and the circumstances of wasting multi-billion dollar opportunities for the economy by Polish decision makers is the biggest scam in the short history [of post-communist Poland].” Such sentiment is often accompanied by claims that many projects would have been implemented anyway, regardless of the Offset Program, with U.S. engineering firm Pratt & Whitney’s investment in the country’s air industry being one frequently cited example.

And in a slightly less aggressive tone, Michał Kleiber, minister for science and IT, who is in charge of the Polish side of the Offset Program, said the government was disappointed with “the slow pace of launching many projects.”

This is particularly true of IT projects that many say should be replaced with other investments, now on the so-called substitute list. Three such projects in particular created a lot of excitement at the time the list of investment projects was released a year ago and even served to bridge the gap between the two largest domestic IT firms, Prokom and ComputerLand.

These two IT competitors have a long history of rivalry that has on occasion turned somewhat acrimonious. But last year, they agreed to bury the hatchet and jointly establish Tetra, a special purpose company designated to serve one of the offset projects with regards to developing a telecommunications system for the police and the armed forces. Yet, despite recent media reports that Tetra was finally getting off the ground, the issue was not, as expected, on the agenda of last week’s government meeting, which effectively means it is not being launched at all.

And, in addition to the delays in the implementation of Tetra and the related medical registration system (RUM) and emergency services communications system (C2), allegations have been made that taxpayers will eventually have to foot the bill for the offset and for these three technology projects in particular. But Georgariou puts this allegation down to a misunderstanding.

“It is absolutely incorrect to say that the Polish government is being asked to pay for the development of Tetra/C2/RUM,” he says. “They are being asked to commit to purchasing the services of those systems once they are developed. It has been said that Tetra has no Polish partners, but the reverse is true – it has only Polish partners.”

The American contingent is also keen to stress that responsibility for many of the delays should actually be laid at the Polish door. Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Christopher Hill cites the example of the deal to sell the M-28 Skytruck aircraft, made by the Polish Air Company (PZL) in Mielec, in the southeast of the country, in the USA.

Hill claims that LM spent significant amounts of money on creating the conditions for the aircraft to acquire the relevant American certificates in this country. But when LM’s team of engineers arrived in Mielec to conduct the appropriate tests, they found that the Polish side was not ready for the procedure to start. And Georgariou’s reaction to the government’s criticism echoes Hill’s remarks.

“There was a group of projects that I would like to have gotten done in 2003 but did not for a variety of reasons, all of which were out of LM’s control,” he says. “Projects can fail because of many factors. The business climate changes, companies go bankrupt, the law changes and taxes go up.” These last words being a dig at the government’s foot-dragging on legislation that would lift VAT on offset projects, which according to the American side is a major cause for delays. And he cites more examples of failure on the Polish side.

LM was intending to pay for technology licences at the Lotos refinery, but Lotos “has not reached an agreement about which technologies they were going to use,” Georgariou says, the massive changes in world oil markets over the last two years being given as the key reason why the refinery was taking time to define its strategy.

In total, LM has dropped 12 projects, which if they had been carried through to completion would have had a combined value of $148 million (zł.534 million). However, Georgariou maintains that LM has offered nine replacement projects worth $2 billion (zł.7.2 million) if completed.

When projects do fail, there is a mechanism in place to reverse the setback. LM can choose a replacement project and request the removal of a failed project from their project listing, but they must apply for the approval of all new projects before they are implemented.

Conspicuously, one of LM’s most high-profile successes was the movement of GM-owned Opel production from Poland to Germany. It seems a remarkable coincidence that GM chose to invest in this country’s Offset Program (and was prepared to undergo a row with German unions in doing so) just when LM experienced its most savage public beating anywhere in the world. However, LM sees such questions on this subject as something for GM, its worldwide industrial partner, to answer.

Another criticism heard in the press in recent months has been that LM dictates what projects it is going to undertake. LM officials argue that in the Offset Act there is no clause that is meant to guarantee investment by LM, nor can LM guarantee investment by anyone at all.

The fact is that the arrangement is more complicated: LM puts forward a list of recommendations, from which the Polish government has the final say. LM asserts that when it submitted its proposal for an Offset Program, there was a list of more than one hundred projects on it.

“Those recommendations were based on a wish list that was given us in the terms of reference for the multi-role combat aircraft tender,” says Georgariou, adding, “The government of Poland picked 44 of those that they wanted to do. Any time we wish to replace one on the list, they get to say which one we replace them with.”

LM claims that the complexity of the Offset Program is inherently easy to misinterpret, since in the public eye a ‘failure’ looks like a ‘failure,’ and not a rigorous selection process. And, indeed, unfair criticism of the offset is often used by many as a means of attacking the government by proxy. But while LM’s arguments sound plausible enough and may one day even be accepted by the country’s media, the fact is that this is hardly likely to happen as long as the implementation of the firm’s offset obligations remains below a quarter of the agreed value.

Gripen or Mirages are the better deal.