I doubt the Croats will do anything. They’re military is woefully neglected – e.g. upgrade for full tank fleet M84D standard has only been declared now, RBS-15 missiles are non-operational due to poor maintenance/servicing, and a large number of Mi-8s need overhauling and are unserviceable.

Serb MiG-29s entered service in 1987 and are some of the oldest in the world.

For air policing in Europe you don’t need the ability to blast people at long range. In fact a BVR kill on an errant Boeing or Airbus or even a Cessna or Bulgarian MiG-29 would have horrific ramifications.

Air policing is essentially a non-combat activity.

Radar picks up an unidentified aircraft, jets are scrambled/diverted to intercept and make a visual ID and then escort the offending aircraft to correct flight path or out of national airspace.

Even in tense areas such as the Aegean Sea, the Turks and Greeks are not shooting down aircraft straying into their airspace, let alone with BVR AMRAAM/MICA.

Consistent breaches of airspace sovereignty are dealt with diplomatically and not shoot downs.

Sure in a time of war, those air police jets become combat coded assets. But given strategic outlook for Serbia, only “threat” they have is NATO.

Its more about Serbia getting its airforce and aeronautics branch back to present, and forward.

I agree acquisition of a new aircraft to recapitalise airforce is completely the right thing to do.

As I’ve said, there are no guarantees money will be available in future either (though I’m sure Scooter would say something along the lines of “when economy is better, they will buy F-35.” :p ).

Of coarse, like I said earlier, having any number of Mig-29Ms in inventory armed with R-77s is a threat to any foreign intruder.

If there’s any offensive action against Serbia, a few MiG-29Ms with R-77 won’t stop the foreigners from rolling Serbian AF over.

Of course the only group capable of performing any offensive action is NATO and they’d have F-22s + F-15Cs + AWACS + EW providing top cover.

For air policing, R-73 is sufficient as you usually need visual confirmation and in any case opening fire in air policing is unheard of in modern times.

Actually I think if Serbia and Croatia aren’t really that interested in maintaining even a basic all weather air policing capability, then outsourcing the function to NATO/Russia would be the smart thing to do.

I’m sure the Russians would love an airbase so close to Western Europe.

Most of the rest of the Balkans doesn’t have any air policing capability and neighbouring countries that do seldom have much more capability anyway.

I think the worst option for Serbia (and Croatia) is to keep flying the antiquainted MiG-21s.

Whilst there is no money now, there will probably be no money in the future either. Keep delaying the purchase of new aircraft and eventually you stop flying aircraft.

I suspect this will happen to Croatia – they’ll “fly” the MiG-21bis to 2023 as basically a glorified 1960s day fighter with limited flight hours per pilot (less than 100 per annum) and then in 2023 they’ll scrap the ability altogether due to lack of funds.

Serbia risks the same thing with their supersonic fleet – once it’s gone it’ll probably stay gone.

as for J-7,
It will never happen anywhere in balkans. trust me. 🙂
People there would take down the government with their bare hands and lynch them if it gets announced that any money is being spent on such an old design, no matter when it came off the production line.

Croatia is looking at purchasing additional 1970s vintage MiG-21bis to maintain a squadron of 12 a/c. F-7 with HOTAS, HUD, MFD, Mil 1553 Std, modern radar, modern AAMs, is a lot better than these old crates. But then with an overhaul/acquisition budget of US$28 million, beggars can’t be chosers.

It also shows why Croatia’s MiG-21 will be the first and last fighter operated by that force. Government is unwilling to invest any money in defence. It didn’t buy new fighters before GFC and now has a handy excuse to not invest anymore.

I think the bigger issue would be buying Chinese.