Romania ‘Likely’ to Clear Fighter Jet Purchase

03 September 2008 Bucharest _ Romania’s government is likely to give its approval to plans to buy fighter aircraft to bring its outdated air force up to NATO standards, Defence Minister Teodor Melescanu says.

Romania joined NATO in 2004 and has agreed to replace its Soviet-made MiG-21s with new aircraft.
The minister has said in the past the government had plans to spend at least €4 billion euros for 48 aircraft.

“Very soon, maybe in a week or two, the government will agree on the procedure to acquire the planes,” Melescanu was quoted as saying by the local Agerpres news agency.

Last month, Melescanu said the government would either invite companies to take part in a tender after approving the purchase or start direct negotiations with one of them.

Five aircraft are in the running: the F-16 built by Lockheed Martin Corp, the F-18 from Boeing Co, the Rafale from France’s Dassault, the Gripen from Sweden’s SAAB and the Eurofighter from EADS.

Bucharest’s choice will depend, in part, on the offers made by aircraft makers to offset costs with reinvestment in Romania.

Speaking at a news conference also attended by Swedish Defence Minister Sven Tolgfors, Melescanu also said Gripen’s offset offer so far was “generous”.

“But it is at a preliminary level,” he was quoted saying.

The second-poorest European Union member, Romania has been a staunch ally of Washington’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/12831/

this has got to be one of the coolest gripen paintjobs out there.
the black painted 2nd prototype gripen 😮

that is indeed a good looking aircraft, looks just like the ealy CGI images.
i had to take another look if it was indeed the real thing.

to me, the F-4G was retired to early, the last ones entered service at the end of the 70’s, most dont even have as much flying hours as the F-16.
i really wich they would bring back the wild weasel phantom 🙂

looking closer at the 2007 picture of the SU-47, i notice that the internal weaponsbay under the landing gear is open. i had no idea that the SU-47 had an internal weapons bay, does anyone have any better pictures of this 😕

as for belgium, i dont think a new trainer would be bought after the alpha jet retires. all the Ajets are now based in cazuax, france where they are operated allongside the french Ajets.
the cost to replace the jet trainers these days would be to high, especially for belgium. so my guess is they will either retire the Ajets with no replacement or invest in a multinational NATO training system.

if belgium were to replace the alpha’s, my bet would be on either the M-311, PC-21 or the MAKO (it it was still alive that is, 1-seaters would make a great low-cost F-16 replacement)

most likely to get replaced in the next 10 years is the SF260D/M’s since they have been flying since 1969 and accumulated over 500.000 hours. despite having been recently upgraded to to M standard, the frames cant last forever. the PC-9/21 or the GROB type aircraft would make a good low-cost replacement.

perhaps some Ex-Belgian F-16’s or Alfajets.
maybe some Ex-Isreali F-16A netz fighters.

as for the hornets, they could buy over the F-18D models from the RMAF if they should buy the F-18F’s