Normally India gives equipment to Vietnam on friendship prices. IMHO LCA too will be offered at friendship rates.[/QUOTE]

Some might think that Vietnam never bought anything from India, but in the past the VPAF have actually secured spare parts for its MiG-21s from HAL, so there are a good chance the Indians would offer the LCA to Vietnam at “friendship” price. But off course, that is only one side of the armstrade, the Indians know that an arms race is occuring in SE-Asia and is taking advantage by trying to armaments to Vietnam.

Depends how far in the world do you want to consider “Asia”. There was a post in CDF that proved other wise.. you had Russians born from the Asiatic side of Russia that been into space long before Pham Tuan, and if those don’t count, then you had those “Asian looking” ethnic minority Cosmonauts that already went up before the 80s.

Pham Tuan happen to be Vietnamese, not an ethnic in Russia, he was the first VPAF pilot to shoot down an American B-52 during the VN WAR, if you want, you can check up his name on the search engines.

Love those pics………

I heard there are rumours about the Afghan air force might purchase the Tucano, is this true?

Instead of the VPAF replacing it’s Russian Yak-52s with the South Korean KTX-1, how about the ‘LASTA’, it is a new basic trainer made in Serbia, but I forgot to post the picture of this aircraft at the time of writing this next post.