It kind of got lost in the last thread but I was wondering if anybody here knew anything about alleged PESA radar mounted in the Zambian L-15Z? What sort of range and compatibility does it have? Do we even have a name?

IAI tight-lipped over $1.1bn deal with Asian customer

FA-50? I thought the KAI T-50 was being offered to Israel? Is this a mistake or are the Koreans offering the Israelis the fighter/attack variant of the T-50 rather than just the trainer now?

CATIC, the state owned corporation in charge of export of all things aerospace in the PRC have proven to be fairly ‘inventive’ with exports in the past, offering aircraft for resources, mining rights, or giving loans to pay for aircraft to many African and South Asian countries. And not strictly aerospace but often times fleets of new vehicles are ‘donated’ to 3rd poorer countries in exchange for maintenance contracts. The JF-17 is programmed in C++ rather than ADA and the sale of European (Thales, Thomas, FIAR) have already been bandied about long enough to know that they’re perfectly compatible. The problem with getting a Western or even a Chinese aircraft that uses indigenous weapons systems is training, supply, maintenance as pointed out by swerve already. A stockpile of new ordinance would need to be ordered. Pilots would need access to new ground based simulators to familiarize themselves or even travel orverseas to train or to have foriegn trainers paid to come to Serbia. Long term contracts would need gone over for maintenance and spares (an example of one of these that went horribly wrong was the Frnco-Taiwanese deal…). Communications systems changed or updated etc. etc. One of the last orders for the Chengdu F-7 was to Nigeria who spent $251 million USD on 12 F-7NI single seat fighters and 3 FT-7NI trainers. While its safe to assume a chunk of that is probably graft, that price included weapons, training etc. so starting from scratch from used F-4s or shiny new JF-17s is not always the cheapest way to go about business.

In late 2008 Russia was willing to give Lebanon 10 MiG-29s for free (which was eventually turned down), obviously there was a catch 22 on this deal (maintenance, training, weapons etc., nothing is ‘free’ in real life unfortunately) but if Serbia were to be offered a similar deal I’d say it would be cheaper overall to continue using Russian aircraft. While the J-22 could be supplemented with cannibalized IAR-93 parts from Romania, theres not much that can be said on what could be picked apart that would be useful to the J-22, it would be a real dogs dinner. With more years of wear and tear on the J-22s the airframes will start to be a problem, scrap or no scraps.

I dont know……the light fighter market is gettin kinda crowded now…..Gripen, JF-17, Tejas…….now this……

The key for the FA-50 is Lockheed Martin. The FA-50 is of course, first and foremost, a KAI aircraft but as far as the light aircraft market goes, its just as much as an American aircraft and that means a lot to potential export customers

Indonesia, Embraer sign Super Tucano contract

What a beautiful set of photos from a beautiful Seaside country! IMO the Super Galebs should stay, every sovereign country should have some ability tor police their own airspace. The non-function Galebs can be cannibalized for parts and the aircraft themselves are not terribly old (although may need a refurbishment sometime soon, I’m not too sure of their condition)

The LIFT variant (TA-50) has weapons capabilities and is equipped with an American radar (the AN/APG-67v4). The fighter variant, the FA-50, will be equipped with an Israeli EL/M-2032 radar (along with other notable features including ECM suite, F414 engine etc. etc.). The FA-50 actually doesn’t exist yet, its maiden flight is to be sometime next year but introduction is supposed to be fairly quick, since its a small aircraft and is not very too different from the existing T-50. All the more pressing since ROKAF F-5E/Fs that the FA-50 is supposed to replace keep dropping out of the sky and kill their pilots, they’re becoming increasingly unsafe.

please delete