Ask any pilot or military planner whether he wants capability overkill or “just good enough”.

Different kind of overkill.

F-35 is full of capabilities that you don’t need for most run-of-the-mill operations such as policing a no-fly zone ala Libya/Iraq or blowing up defenceless insurgents or conscript armies.

It was designed for the NATO air forces, who have a collective duty to go to an offensive war and the NATO air forces have seen action in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and most recently in Libya.

NATO does not have a collective duty to offensive action, only defensive action.

Most NATO partners do not participate in combat operations and when they do, they usually restrict their aircraft to defensive CAP as happened in Libya or for some partners in Kosovo.

Many NATO partners have no combat air assets assigned for collective duty other than air policing.

The F-35 will actually reduce number of partner countries able to sustain combat air assets in collective deployments, simply due to increased costs gutting airframe numbers to negligible amounts. I doubt Denmark or Netherlands will be able to make longer deployments with only 30-47 airframes.

As for those 3 actions you mentioned, only Yugoslavia had an air defence network and that one was obsolete and damaged by near 10 years of sanctions and economic decline.

For cheap airpolicing, No-Fly Zone enforcement or bombing defenseless insurgents/conscripts, F-16/Gripen is good enough.

In fact I think most NATO partner forces need to jump onto the JAS-39 Gripen bandwagon. The JAS-39 is the ideal aircraft for the average NATO partner – a F-84/F-104/F-16 for the 21st century.

Personally I think the F-35 is overkill for the average air force.

It’s fine for the US or RAF who are heavily involved in combat operations but the average air force is seldom involved in combat and even their involvement in combat operations is often limited (e.g. enforcement of no-fly zones but not flying combat sorties or flying combat sorties over no-threat zones).

I think the JAS-39 Gripen, F/A-18E/F or even upgraded F-16C is still completely viable for smaller air forces.

The F-35 might be the ultimate wunderwaffe but for most airforces it’s too expensive and too much overkill. I’d rather have 80 F-16s or JAS-39s than 30-40 F-35s if all I’m doing is air policing and bombing insurgents.

SMOTR video (with English subtitles) on MiG-29SD upgrade performed for Slovakia. The documentary does not go into much detail but chief test pilot of RSK MiG provides some interesting details:

– Cost per hour of flying reduced by 40%.

Whoa, how’d they do that?!?

I think there’s some talking at cross-purposes here.

AFAIK, you’re both right. Saddam didn’t get any support from the west for his attack on Iran in 1980, but later (when the Iranians seemed to be threatening to capture Basra & thus be able to threaten Kuwait & even Saudi Arabia) got quiet assistance in the form of satellite imagery, & perhaps other information. Enough to make sure the Iranians didn’t win, but not to hand victory to Saddam.

I’m surprised that as aviation buffs we forgot sales to Iraq of Mirage F1EQ, SA-342 Gazelle, SA-321 Super Frelon, HOT ATGM, Roland SAM and leasing of Super Etendards.

Not to mention the sale of of Exocet AShM which were used in the Tanker War.

Not only did it keep Iraq in the war, it kept French industry chugging along nicely. Shame the Iraqis never paid their bills though! :p

I wouldn ‘t like to be in their shoes for the coming weeks …

By the sounds of it they’ll simply merge with the populace.

Some great footage there!

Has there been much ground fighting or is it a case of Armee de l Air blowing up the od technical and rebels disappearing into the shadows in the middile of the night as French forces advance?

I can’t believe the power and size of that crane!

I’ve heard horror stories about female bathrooms though 😮

My wife will back you up on that one. Some of the stories she has about female public toilets are pretty nasty.