Interesting Timing . . .

I recently (Aug-09) attended an investment seminar hosted by two men who want to rebuild the F-104 Starfighter. One man from Germany the other Italian, because I cant recall their names for the purposes of this discussion I will call them GG for “German Gentleman” and IG for “Italian Gentleman.” Both claimed to have been F-104 pilots and both claimed to be well connected with the governments of their respective nations.

The presentation opened with a video of the F-104 in use by the German and Italian Air Forces.
GG then presented a history of the F-104 that was very honest. He didn’t sugar coat the high initial accident rate and highlighted the lower loss rate once the maintenance issues were addressed and the low loss rate of Danish Starfighters.

IG then spoke of the plan to buy F-104 airframes and make the following modifications to them.

1) replace the engine with the type used in the F-16A. Providing roughly the same power with better fuel economy. Thus extending range.

2) Fitting a French Radar from the Mirage F-1

3) Blisters fore and aft, port and starboard for a RWR

4) Adding both a new IFF package and INS

5) Carrying 8 AAM’s 4 Sparrow class missile under the wings and 4 IR sidewinder class missiles, one each on a side ailing and two on a double rail under the belly.

6) adding a flair/chaff dispenser package

7) Adding an onboard ECM package to the wing tip tanks.

There was more but I cant remember the details and a model showing the final version.

The idea was that with the rising costs of modern aircraft that some nations would not be able to afford them. They spoke of how new modern fighters cost something like $60 million dollars to buy. They think they can sell these for a third of that cost.

They opened the floor to questions.

Most people ask the usual questions about money and return on investment but a few had hard hitting questions.

One ask what would happen if the US banned the sale of the engine. GG’s answer was that if that happened he was sure he could get another engine from Russia or China. That he had two others in mind that would work just as well.
(The MiG- 29’s engine maybe?)

Someone ask about the F-104’s performance in the Pakistan / India wars.
GG said that the failure in that war was more due to poor mission planning and bad luck than performance of the aircraft.
He pointed out that in WW-2 the USN discarded the Buffalo fighter because it had failings.
That Finland bought them and how in the war with Russia some Finnish Ace (sorry I cant even begin to pronounce his name) shot down 80 some odd Russian aircraft mostly in a Buffalo. He fought against Russian aircraft of US, British and Russian design and never had his aircraft holed by a bullet.

I ask what market they had in mine and was not surprised when he mentioned Argentina, but was totally shocked by the mention on Libya!

I passed on this opportunity.