F-14A
That statement sounds a bit like “spin” to me….and if they could reverse engineer F-14 parts, why not the bits for their Boeing jetliners?

Because the F-14 is critical to national defence, while a Boeing airliner is not. The F-14 program would probably be allocated major government funding and other resources such as R&D facilities and personnel.

MY America kept the Soviets out of western Europe.

But readily gave the whole of the Eastern Europe to the Soviets.

kept the communists out of South Korea my whole life.

You forget that the South Koreans were run by nasty little dictators and that their economy was extremely state centred with the government stamping out human rights in favour of economic growth. Demcoracy came to South Korea in the 1980’s in spite of the US. The South Korean people had had a belly full of oppression and fought for democracy.

…spent our gold and blood in the jungles of South East Asia trying to keep those people free, freed the people of Grenada, and now there are elections in El Salvador and Nicaragua because of our help.

This better be sarcasm. The CIA organised the brutal overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile in favor of Pinochet. You had US sponsored death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala slaughtering tens of thousands of people. In Guatemala the CIA had again organised the overthrow of a reformist government in favour of a US friendly military dictatorship. And then there’s the US sponsored, Mafia affiliated Senor Batista from Cuba. It really peaved the Americans off when their horrid little dictator was overthrown by Castro. I could keep on going with the nasty effects of the Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine that declares the US as the sole power allowed to interfere in Latin America. And then there’s the US sponsored, Mafia affiliated Senor Batista from Cuba. It really peaved the Americans off when this horrid little dictator was overthrown by Castro.

…Iraq and Afganistan have just been liberated from some of the worst tyrants on the planet, and are now having elections for the first time. Sorry, I didn’t limit myself to ONE thing.

Yes Iraq has been virtually destroyed by the US. Democracy doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t have a job, are starving, suffering from the effects of the decay of basic utilities such as sewage and medical care and face being killed by either some halfwitted religious nuts or some brain dead Alabama yokels. Afghanistan is still being run by various warlords, who only care about their own hides.

And then there’s other horror stories supported by the US. There is the US support for Soeharto, who in the 1960’s slaughtered up to a million “Communist sympathisers” and who from 1975 onwards slaughtered hundreds of thousands of East Timorese the US did help the Indonesians acquire C-130’s and Israeli A-4E’s that were used in East Timor amongst other equipment).

Or US support for the extremely corrupt and oppressive Saudi Royal family and for the current Pakistani dictator who overthrew a democratically elected government.

Or what about that US puppet Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines?

The moral of the story is that the United States is not a defender of democracy, liberty, capitalism and all that other politically friendly garbage.

The US, like any state in the world, supports its own interests. That usually means having to compromise with nasty little ********s who are politically convenient and occassionally slaughtering a couple of hundred thousand people in order to protect the national interest. All countries do this, except the US has the military, political and economic power to do it on a global scale. If Fiji had the resources that the US had, I’m sure today we’d be moaning about Fijian military interventions in Iceland.

the point is the tech transfer, once Brazil has the experience building jets can design their own in numbers

Not many countries have this sort of capability these days. Designing top of the line combat aircraft is expensive and time consuming. Also Brazil would never be able to achieve any economies of scale with such an aircraft as their requirements would be too low. As for export orders, it would be very difficult to get any orders as the Brazilians would be competing against established manufacturers.

Just how useful are single-engined UH-1H’s in Iraqi desert conditions. Most helos serving in that part of the world have sand filters on their engines. And wouldn’t a double engine helo be a better choice because of safety and greater engine power issues?

According to Globalsecurity.org, this is the currenty inventory of Lybian Air Force.

Let´s see what can we do with this aircrafts.

Bombers….

How accurate is this list though? We have no real idea of how many of these aircraft are still operational.

Once they operated the latest in military aviation technology such as the MiG-29 and Su-24 and medium range heavy bombers such as the Tu-16, and now they’re operating Vietnam era Hueys. What irony!

Well, in fact we can expect that the French team will strike the Rafale prices as low as possible, even without major gain, at least to keep the production lines working at full career. But anyway, replacing a MiG-21bis with Rafale F2 is a massive overkill, a technologcal jump to another hyperspace. Does not seem realistic to me..

Perhaps the Rafale will replace larger numbers of MiG’s than 126? Besides it’s not overkill – it’s a capability upgrade.

India is an up and coming power faced with two potentially hostile powers (China and Pakistan). They (arguably) need first class military equipment to protect their interests.

From the article I don’t think they’ve already been sold. They will probably be put up for sale. I’m sure some parts may be recycled back to the existing Belgian fleet.

And the way Belgium is going it will soon no longer have an air force (or component or whatever they call it these days).