Cheap airplanes die quickly. Igla-S and QW-2 are both cheap and are being proliferated at an ever increasing rate. You can teach an illiterate tribesman how to use one in 15 minutes. And they very deadly to any airplane below 15K feet AGL because flares don’t fool them.

What illiterate tribesmen have the Igla-S? Even the better organized rebel groups can’t get anything better than the SA-7 or maybe SA-14 (or their chinese copies), and these are not that effective against a modern striker with modern ECM. And the only reason they were even able to get their hands on those is because of the unstable political situations in the ex-USSR countries following the breakup of the USSR, but things are becoming more stable, so the proliferation of manpads is decreasing, not increasing.

Also A-10’s have been known to take direct hits from a SA-7 and still make it back to base.

Any war Serbia would fight would be versus NATO. There is no country around that is not member of NATO or at least under its political protection. And there truly no point in armed conflict for anyone. The only reason I could think off is a forced re-attachment of Montenegro, but what for?

Anyways, any conflict would be small and dirty, basically fought by infantry and mortars. Aircraft are a total waste of resource in such a scenario (except for reconnaissance). You are lacking worthwhile targets for interdiction, you can hardly use them as battlefield support without extensive technology, and any NATO involvement would take out your air force in a matter of hours. The availability of MANPADS would threaten your limited assets all of the time, requiring them to fly medium level at strike and hence reducing any effectiveness.

The most likely threat to serbia comes from lightly armed rebel groups, not another country. During all past balkan wars, strikers like the J-22 and G-4 were used extensively and proved themselves very valuable, you cannot replace them with mortars/howitzers or helicopters. A mig-27 would only be better, however I would rather choose something better armored like the A-10 or Su-25.

What was the reason?

Very nice! Thanks for sharing

>another project called Piranha …. does anyone know this project ???

Wasn’t this the indigenous Swiss program?

Regards, Glenn.

The Polish project was called the Pirania. It appears to have been a prop driven CAS aircraft similar to the IA-58 Pucara.

Anyone got any info about a fighter project called the Kobra 2000? There’s a (bad) picture here: http://www.powiat.mielec.pl/poser/samoloty/pozostale2/kobra.htm

I think more respect should be shown here. A Snowbird pilot has lost his life on May 18 / 2007 and your here talking about what planes should be used 😡

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=d5711afe-e2ed-4189-87ae-e378b6052b26

He took that job knowing full well how risky it was. People in risky lines of work lose their lives every day.

Thanks for the pics.

How come Croatia has basic trainers and jets, but no advanced jet trainer?

Had those BUFF crews been in Valkyries, they wouldn’t have been shot down.

And they would’ve had to make a hundred runs at their targets, because precision bombing at that speed before the advent of smart bombs was almost impossible.