Re: Useless AF’s

Originally posted by Dubya
Anyone of these AF’s that maintain a symbolic “air-defense” capability with 12 or so jets. That means the likes of Croatia, Qatar, Hungary (how many of those MiG-29’s are actually operational?), Czech Republic (L-159 is a glorified trainer), Moldova etc.

12 – 20 jets are not going to last at all in major combat operations so maintaining such an AF is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Most of these what you call “symbolic” air forces maintain actually just the minimum amount of jets required for air policing.
Austria for example doesn’t claim it could resist any major (unlikely) attack from the air, yet it wants to be able to perform air policing, search and rescue missions (avalanches), fire fighting etc. itself. It happens time and again that airplanes can’t be identified and threaten civil aviation in various ways be it out of stupidity, neglect or purpose.
Looking at it from this perspective, the above mentioned air forces might not be that useless after all. It is actually useless whererver airforces would be in need of air defence capabilities (because they have unfriendly neighbours) but are clearly not, like in Albania.

Here’s sth. to support my “choice” (Even though the author seems to be more than a little biased favoring the Macedonian Air Force)

By Igor Bozhinovski
Translation by Zlatko Arsenievski

…
In the beginning, I would like to point out, that because of many objective and subjective facts, the comparison between the armed forces of the Greek Republic and the Macedonian Army, or any other country in the region might not be considered suitable. Greece, the only Balkan member of the NATO and EU, today has 180 helicopters aimed at various purposes, from which only 20 are AH-64A Apache.

Macedonia, on the other hand, has 12 Mi-24 fighter helicopters, all in excellent shape.

Krumovo air-base, near Plovdiv, is the site of the complete helicopter fleet of the Bulgarian Air Force. Bulgaria uses fighter helicopter Mi-24 as basic air support for the ground forces. The reform of the Bulgarian armed forces, envisages retaining 24 helicopters of this type, which are currently in rather desperate condition. Already catastrophic condition of Bulgarian helicopters Mi-24D/V worsened even more after a storm hit the helicopter base Stara Zagora in the summer of 1999. The strong hail destroyed the main rotor blades of all helicopters parked there. So far, the Bulgarians managed to repair only four helicopters of the Mi-24 type. 25 Mi-17 helicopters reside in Krumovo, also. In the transport/fighter configuration are 19 of them, while four of them are in ECM – electronic counter messure configuration (Mi-17PP). Level of technical readiness of all of these helicopters is catastrophically low. In the 1999 the helicopter base of Krumovo was reinforced with 6 new helicopters of the type Bell 206B-3, and in the 2000 with the luxury helicopter Bell 430 used for transport of high state officials. With the exception of the helicopters “Bell”, the greater part of the Bulgarian Air Force is grounded due to lack of resources or reserve parts.

The condition of Yugoslav Air Force is not much better either. Readiness level of approximately 120 various helicopters is critically low, due to the many years of international embargo for import of weapons and military equipment, and the cut-backs in the military budget. Yugoslav Air Force uses about 40 helicopters of the type Mi-8 for transport and transport/fighter tasks. They also have about 40 anti-tank helicopters of the type SA.342L Gazele-GAMA. Additional 40 aircrafts of the type SA.341H Gazele-HERA are used as light multi-purpose helicopters. Yugoslav police also has two Mi-24V fighter helicopters.

Albania is a country which definitely has the weakest and most obsolete Air Force in Europe, and is at the low end of World scale, also. Most of Albanian aircraft have been grounded or put out of service during the late 1990’s, due to severe lack of fuel and reserve parts. The only refreshment of the Albanian Air Force was the several light multi-purpose helicopters donated by USA and Switzerland. Currently, Republic of Albania is the only country in the region without fighter helicopters.

…

(The author regularly writes for many eminent local and foreign military and aeronautical magazines).

http://www.realitymacedonia.org.mk/web/news_page.asp?nid=1812

Originally posted by Phil Foster
Now this is pure speculation on my part but what I think he was trying to say is “look, I’m an ordinary bloke and I can build a cruise missle in my shed. If I can do it anybody can. I could launch it from anywhere, even a small fishing boat. If I can do that somebody on the Indian sub continent can do it, sail unnoticed to the islands and launch it and guess what? Even if we could see it coming we wouldn’t be able to do anything at all to stop it because we have no air combat wing. We are defenceless even against this ‘Heath Robinson toy'”.

I think it was an important point to make.

Yes and no. Against such alluded terrorist attacks a fighter wing would be utterly useless anyway. Not even the US could prevent this sort of attack. All you can do there is count on watchfull police, officials and citizens.

Originally posted by Phil Foster
How about the RNZAF air combat wing? No disrespect to New Zealand they are as angry about it as anybody but they don’t have two fast jets to rub together at all.

You got a point there. But if you consider the likeliness of them ever using a fighter plane, they probably did right: Unlike in Europe, no one violates their airspace because the country’s simply too far off. Any nation capable of deploying a naval air force would probably outpower anything the New Zealanders could afford anyway. So it seems more reasonable to seek an alliance (for example with Australia) and forget about a fighter wing. They do have a C-130 to contribute to an alliance but should probably consider a second one. I remember when they were about to deploy troops to the gulf and the deployment had to be postponded because of some engine problems of their Hercules. That was quite funny. 😀

Re: Ur opinion on the World’s most useless air force

Originally posted by alex
Just a change to voting who the best is, who do u think deserves the title of “Worlds Worst Air Force”? This can be any nation of any size, to get the ball rolling my opinion is the Irish Air Corps, I mean what’s the point??? They have no enemies to protect themselves from and even if they did I doubt the piston powered crap they fly could do any damage to anyone.

Don’t insult their PC-9. It’s a fine plane and it’s brand new. Of course it’s of limited use in case of a ( very unlikely) conflict, but it can keep at least some pilots well trained. That’s probably all they need for the moment.
A useless airforce would be one that doesn’t seem to be able to hold back a likely agressor. I’d vote for the Albanian AF: All more or less obsolete planes and a neighbour they don’t really get along well with with superior strength (Even though there ain’t much left there either).

This is in Switzerland! Since you didn’t specify continent or country, but only mentioned “south” I was making a little fun of you. (Sorry!) Locarno Magadino (I made a mistake too: it would be Lugano Agno or Locarno Magadino) is in the south of Switzerland in the Italian speaking “Ticino”. This is an international forum. (But I am sure some of your compatriotes can help you out). I hope you don’t mind.

The appropriate answer to this paint job would be to air brush Asterix ans Obelix on a -let’s say- EF and chase the boar! 😉 😀
Witty look!

Here’s the latest with two Taurus:

SAAB Commentary:
“Gripen has achieved another significant milestone in its weapons release programme with the successful carriage of the Taurus long range stand-off missile (LRSOM). On Thursday the 20th of November, Saab’s Gripen test aircraft 39.208, made a captive flight with two TAURUS KEPD 350 (Kinetic Energy Penetration Destroyer). TAURUS KEPD 350 is a high precision stand-off weapon system developed by TAURUS Systems a company owned by German LFK and Saab Bofors Dynamics.
The purpose of the flight was to test the impact on Gripen’s flying capability with this heavy load. The flight was carried out by FMV (Swedish Defence Material Administration) test pilot Richard Ljungberg with assistance from FMV test facilities and test personnel from Saab. After the flight, the test team reported with great satisfaction that everything had gone as planned, and that the Gripen had displayed very good flying characteristics when fitted with the KEPD350.”

The missiles look rather big in comparison to the aircraft, it seems…