Originally posted by troung
“Not the Mig-AT, T-50, Hawk, nothing.”

Well the Hawk has sold very well, the T-50 is in testing and the MiG-AT…………..

Bae has managed to sell the Hawk to 3 members of its former empire: Australia, Canada and South Africa. I dont call that selling very well. Noone is showing interest in the T-50 and Im willing to make you a very large bet no customers will suddenly appear when it reaches production status. Same for mig-AT. Do you want to know why this is? As Dubya explained about africa:

And as countries’ militaries deteriorate they cease being an effective threat to other countries who are in the same boat.

For example countries such as Mozambique no longer operate fast jets because they can’t afford it and because neighbouring countries no longer operate any themselves. So arguably most thirds world countries don’t even need fast jets.

This reason also holds true for the decline in AF purchases world wide. Since their are no cheap options for 3rd world nations to buy new fighters, they continue to use old ineffective fighters like the mirage 3/5 or mig-21. If the F-5 were to come back on the market and under developed countrys started buy them in large quantity, I garantee you would start seeing the richer developed nations buying up the new generation advanced trainers to counter this.

Originally posted by Dubya
I think the problem with many airforces is that in the past they were effectively subsidised by either the USSR or USA. So the philippines could operate dozens of F5’s and F-8’s or in the case of Syria, 100’s because the superpowers paid the bill.

Now that this subsidization has stopped, these poorer countries are proving to be incapable of supporting militaries that were to large and unwieldy in the first place.

And as countries’ militaries deteriorate they cease being an effective threat to other countries who are in the same boat.

For example countries such as Mozambique no longer operate fast jets because they can’t afford it and because neighbouring countries no longer operate any themselves. So arguably most thirds world countries don’t even need fast jets.

I agree with you about Africa. But their are alot of countries in Latin America that desperately want to update their AFs. I think if Chile had the choice of buying 10 F-16s and 50 F-5s, they would choose the F-5s. And I even think the Philippeans would like to maintain some sort of level of air defence, and the F-5 would fit that bill just fine.

Originally posted by RobAnt
Rowan’s BofB won’t run on XP. So I’ve got it, but never been able to get it to work. It is true, however, that although I do have an ME installed PC, I’ve never bothered to load it. My guess is it will work quite well on a lowish spec machine!

Im inclined to agree that it will run best on a low spec comp. I first ran it on a 800 mhz duron with onboard graphic memory and had no problem whatsoever. Now with my 1.6 mhz Athlon and 128 mb radeon 9000 it runs a bit quirky, but still not what I would call buggy.

Bradburger- Thanks for that Rowans BoB update site.