SInce 1979 when Brazil, with United States cooperation, negotiated a $70 million contract for purchase of twenty A-4KU and three TA-4KUs from Kuwait. Re-designated AF-1 and AF-1A, respectively, the ex-Kuwaiti Skyhawks arrived in Brazil in early September 1998 and were placed in overhaul maintenance status for significant upgrading. The upgrading program is continuing and AF-1 and AF-1A aircraft are currently operational in Brazil. On January 18, 2001 an AF-1 Skyhawk successfully landed aboard the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais and later successfully catapulted, making Brazil’s carrier force operational.

Brazil bought the A-4K from Kuwait in 1998, only because there was a need to put some fixed wing aircraft on board the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais later replaced by the ex-french navy Foch. By law, a stupid one by the way, only FAB was allowed to operate fixed wing aircraft. Mr. Cardoso administration changed that law an the Navy was allowed to operate fixed wing aircraft by it own. In the past, FAB operated some Grumman S-2 Tracker on board the Minas Gerais, it also tried to upgrade those plane, but the program was a complete disaster and ended with an accident in the fight deck with no casualties but enough to kill the program.

Brazil use to buy lots of used stuff but most of the cases these are usefull ones not uselles like these ex-RSAF would be.

Another loosers.

YF-23 Black Widow II

YF-17 Cobra

The OKB KAMOV joined the competition of design studies for an Army assault/transport helicopter and presented the Ka-25F but it lost out to the competing Mi-24 helicopter.

Mil V-12. Technical problems were almost certainly responsible for development of this aircraft being abandoned in favour of the Mi-26.

Another loosers:

T-4-100. Tu-22M preferred

and Yak-30 Magnum – Tandem two-seat jet basic trainer. Development of the Yak-25 fighter. The Czech L-29 Delfin was selected by Soviet Air Force in preference to Yak-30.

This is the Ilyushin Il-102 that lost to the Su-25 Frogfoot.

This is the Lavochkin 250 that lost to the Ilyushin Il-28 Beagle.

and Aurel, where did you get the 30,000-50,000$ per hour figure for the Sukhoi ?!! thats a ridiculous number ! back it up with some evidence please.

This allegation is part of EmFraer´s defamation campaign against the Flanker.

If the FAB had any intention of acccepting the Mirage 2000 as the new FX fighter it would have been bought YEARS AGO!

Regards

Hammer

Good point. FAB always wanted Gripens, but Embraer political pressure and lobbying prevented it. Embraer had evaluated Mirage 2000 before the forced marriage with Dassault and pointed out that Mirage was oldest and the “one with the least prespective of having a future”. Gripen was the choice at that moment.

How accurate is this list though? We have no real idea of how many of these aircraft are still operational.

I don´t think this list is 100% precise, but we can use it just to compare what could we do with those airplanes, if worths to upgrade the MiG-21/Su-22 fleet or replace them with former VVS MiG-29 refurbished or even new ones.

It appears Lybia always had more MiGs than pilots. If this is true we can assume that Lybia´s fleet of fighter are low hour.