But the number of aircraft stays at 80 F-18’s as each squardon is operating 40 a/c.

And if the number of aircraft does come down the Canadians still have the US to help them including the F-22’s that are to be stationed in Alaska.

I think you are again overestimating the market. Out of those 178 countries, you have countries such as Fiji, Nauru, Andorra etc that are too small to have anything than a police force.

Many countries’ fast jet fleets are dwindling to almost nothing. Look at sub-Saharan Africa or Central America. Most countries can barely afford transport helos, let alone jet aircraft. And many of the countries that do operate light jets ala the A-37 are looking at replacing them with turboprop aircraft ala the Super Tucano.

As for the poor man’s F-16, you still have aircraft such as the F-5E available (albeit 2nd hand) while the JF-17 and T-50 are coming on line. The there’s the second hand F-16A/B’s available as well as 2nd hand MiG-29’s and Su-25’s.

My point is that I don’t think there is a large export market for the G-4M.

As for the G-4M being built and sold to Libya…fantastic idea. That would be very ideal and is a very plausible situation. Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Algeria, Egypt, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Chile… All of these countries are also extremely valuable and appealing markets. The North African countries would find it beneficial at the least to enter into a developmental program with Serbia or Romania.

I think you overestimate the market.

Many of those countries already have chosen solutions for advanced trainers:

Egypt – K-8 and also has existing Alpha Jets and L-59’s.
Morrocco – K-8
Algeria – Yak-130
Argentina – AT-63
Brazil – EMB-314

Tunisia has newish L-59’s, while Chile has C.101’s.

So i don’t see many orders coming from these countries. The others are viable even though rather poor and probably also unlikely as customers.

How do you know that a J-10 is on par with a Su-30MKI? I still haven’t read anything concrete about the J-10 other than it exists. It is still virtually an unknown quantity.

Sorry to seem so belligerent, but you are making some large claims.

2.4% is less than all countries surrounding Serbia spend, except for Albania and Hungary. Greece and Turkey spend around 5%. 2.4% is around the European average, or maybe even below it.

I think Turkey and Greece are a special case in that they would probably love to slaughter each other with glee but are prevented by NATO, EU and the USA. So instead they just spend copious amounts of money on weapons and indulge in sword waving contests.

The Austrian deal no doubt included things like a training/spares/maintainenance/repair package for several decades into the future. These are all things that Serbia doesn’t have to buy. Historically, when Yugoslavia bought aircraft, it bought just the aircraft and the weapons and nothing else.

But back then Yugoslavia was a large country with a large military. If you acquire 200 odd MiG-21’s then it pays to set up your own in-house training/spares/maintainenance/repair facilities, because you have economies of scale. It also made sense due to the government’s focus on self-sufficiency as was the case in many countries.

But Serbia is a small country now and probably won’t acquire more than 16 aircraft. I don’t think it’s economically viable to establish in-house training/spares/maintainenance/repair facilities for 12-16 aircraft. Aircraft are also a lot more complex now than a MiG-21. And the self-sufficiency economic model doesn’t really fly anymore either. So I think they will probably go for a maintenance/training package.

Pakistan cannot afford F-22 🙂

Different lobbies playing throw ball.

India is willing to spend 7 billion dollars…maybe they might ‘wanna check it out’ before they make the decision, hopefully for them in this decade.

But US taxpayers can! :diablo:

JOKE POST – SO BE WARNED!

Hmmm…post 1 mentions that F-22’s are made by the same company that is selling F-16’s to Pakistan. Through the magical BS power of the internet, from this I can deduce that the launch export customer for the F-22 is none other than Pakistan!!!