Well, as Iraq, Yugoslavia and now Lybia have proven, if you get to be the target of a large nation or coalition, there is no small airforce or large AA umbrella that can save your military (and civil) infrastructure…So why bother and spend all this money to purchases of missiles and planes and fuel and pilot training and not use it to improve domestic civil areas? In most cases, the arms purchases where the perfect aliby for officials in corrupt governments to get rich and nothing else.

@snafu

I read it, did you?
“…
Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi,…”

Where exactly in this paragraph does it say that coalition forces can destroy Lybian military assets 1000 km South of Tripoli? or that it should destroy all military assets around the cities of East and West Lybia defending militants on halftrucks with heavy machineguns and rocket lunchers attacking government forces Outside the populated areas defined in the resolution?
And by the way how come UN resolutions are becoming so devastatingly serious in this case and not in the case of Cyprus or Israel (there I did it again), or any other place in the world? Why Lybia? Because there is oil and there are contracts to go to the right countries. That is why I am trying to have you see that it is not right to focus only on Lybia and ignore the rest of the world.

By the way, as you correctly comment my beggining paragragh is repulsive but that is exactly what will happen if the “rebel” forces take over Tripoli. And after all there will be Lybians killing Lybians for right or for wrong; what will be our excuse? Have any of these people being on the side of Gaddafi (by fear or by loyalty) ever done anything wrong to you, or me, or any of the countries bombing them and trying their best to make them lose this conflict to their adversaries? And I am not talking about troops here but about common folks trying to live their lives.

The shooting of the Galeb and the bombing of the Mobile artiliery outside of Benghazi were the only valid targets in my opinion with regard to the UN resolution.

@snafu

First of all I guess I need to clear out that I do not support Qaddafi in any way. BUT:

There are no defenceless demonstrators, and never were since they have tanks, AA guns, multiple rocket lancers even a whole MiG23…these are members of a rival tribe that want to get the upper hand on Lybia. The rest is just pep-talk for the World Public Opinion.

Wherever there is a protest that becomes violent by protesters calling for the fall of the goverment and such, there are security forces that will have to try and bring law and order –hopefully without the use of lethal weaponry. If you believe that whenever protesters were killed there should be a war by UN on that nation then US should be the first to go down for using the National Guard and killing college students in their college demonstrating in Ohio back in the early 70s. In Greece we have demonstrations every once in a while and the molotov bombs are used by the dozen against the police; are you saying that if the police try to defend themselves they are murderers of inocent defenceless civilians? When most of the wounded every time are policemen…It is just that in Middle East, under the existing non-democratic regimes, the police units will not wait to get beaten up. They use force to bring back the order of things as they know it.

What you have in Lybia is a clear Civil War. To get an idea of what a real public revolution looks like, take a look at what happened to Mumbarak in Egypt. There the Security forces also opened fire to “bring peace and order” and the Army was commanded to shoot at demonstrators, BUT the Army sided with the people of Egypt (the whole Egypt) since there are no different tribes there, no them and us, and thus they brought Mumbarak down. When things almost got out of hand once Mumbarak left, the Army took position that they would enforce the peace with arms…Thank God this wasn’t necessary.

The reason for me crying out : Hypocrits! Is that the Brits and US and first of all the French, decided to go all the way in bombing Lybia’s Armed forces out of existence for less causes than what we see happening every day in Gaza by the Israeli forces, in Bahrein by Saudi Forces and so on. Now suddenly there is a Qaddafi situation in Syria….Can’t you see the pattern ? Or is it that I am the only delusional in this forum…

Actually the Hungarian pilots did quite well in WWII and they also flew FW190 and Me410s.

Here is my contribution:
A Bosnian – Croatian (I believe) PZL 18 Dromader in full camo during the 1991 balkan war and a croatian PA25 during the same era. During the Yugoslavian war, a few of the cropdusters of the ex-Yugoslavian Airforce were put to military service (some mentioned, even with gunpods – no positive verification though) for the different fractions that were fighting each other.

By the way, if anyaone has some more photos of camouflaged crop-dusters please post them. I have a photo of the PA25 (provided I find were I have saved it) and a Venezuelan camouflaged PZL Kruk

Because we need to order new planes now in order to have them available in 2020 when we will need them against 200 Upgraded F16s and 100 F35s plus some f4s of the TuAF.

Re-read his posts. He is claiming that an F-15 wreck was filmed in Bosnia during the conflict. A wreck showing engines and tailfins. He is also alluding to the fact that Major Radosavljevic might be the cause of the demise of this ‘F-15’. This ‘F-15’ wreck video would be positive proof of an undisclosed loss. Do you not agree? I reserve the right to challenge such a claim and heaven forbide that I use sarcasm. How naughty of me! Not the first time that poor recogniton skills have caused such a claim.

Teej,
The wreck video is the one depicting the engines and parts of tailfins of the Serb Mig29 that crashed in Bosnia. This has been “declared” as an F15 wreck since day one for (I guess) propaganda purposes. The fact that Sveto is using : would, might, etc shows clearly that he is covering something that he is not sure how true it is ad thus restrains from declaring a confirmed F15 kill. On the other hand, do not be so 100 % sure of what the USAF says that happened every time, because USAF too has some propaganda reasons to cover on her own. For example, let us not forget the F18 that was the first US aircraft to be lost in the first IRAQ war, that took the US 10 years to finally accept that it was shot down by an Iraqi MiG25 and not by a SAM!!!
Or the fact that the number of MiG 29s declared destroyed by the Alied forces in Yugoslavia were double the number of MiGs operated by the Yug. AirForce, and yet 5 planes did actually survive the fight with one more plane having been written off due to accident………
So, I find Sveto more controlled on his post (even if I too believe that no F15s where actually lost in Yugoslavia) than your sarcastic comment on his recognition abilities and such…..When you have the facts on your side, there is no need to be sarcastic.
Remember that Truth is ALWAYS the first casualty in any war.

The Mirage 2000-5 of HAF are still great fighter, why to spend money to replace them???

We will have to either upgrade them or retire them in the next 10 years and the cost to upgrade them to say level 2000-5 is close to the purchase of 10 Rafale. So the french offer for exchanging 15 M2000 with 15 new Rafale and paying only the difference in price (which can be negotiated) is an excellent offer which the HAF staff has to take into consideration for their new fighter decision. In other words, if HAF chooses the Typhoon, they will have : 40 +20 Typhoon and 15 Mirage 2000 to be upgraded to M2000-5 with say x amount of money. Thus 40 + 20 4th generation fighters + 15 3rd generation fighters (+ the rest of HAF 3rd generation Fighters)
If they choose the RAFALE, they will have 40+20 new Rafale +15 Rafale for the M2000 = 55+20 4th generation fighters (+ the rest of HAF 3rd generation Fighters), for far less money than choise no1. And by pushing the envelope a little more they could even get an offer for 55+25 new fighters to create 4 new squadrons of 4th generation fighters for the same money.

Now let us not get into the abilities openned for deals of co-production etc as the first export customer of the Rafale.
Plus the fact that the Rafales can be used from day one by the HAF personel along with all the air to air and air to ground weapons in the greek armory due to the Mirage 2000-5 experience…

So I ‘d say Go RAFALE!!!