B-52 the better by far in my book

Second that. Thats not to say that BEARs aren’t damn good at what they do.

127TH KNIGHTS,

About half would be left for modernization and procurement a year.

I’d say that decidedly less than half would be left for weapons procurement. Current budget for 2006 is ~730million USD with around 118million USD set aside for equipping. Now clearly, this ‘equiping’ budget cannot only be for weapons procurement and other things, computers, uniforms, trumpets etc must be included. The increase should give the budget an extra ~180million to play with but even if this was spent entirely on weapons and was combined with the 118million ‘equipping’ budget it would amount to ~300million per year for the next four years. This, however, is clearly not the case and all this money cannot possibly be spent on acquisition of new weapons. In fact, probably only about 150million a year will be spent on weapons purchases – still pretty damn good though if you ask me.

Icarus,

Well that could be enough for a small overhaul/refurbishment of the Fulcrums I guess.

You have to be kidding me – it is easily enough to buy more FULCRUMs and to upgrade the whole fleet to SMT standard – if thats what gets you your kicks.

I really don’t think they’re gonna be able to professionalize by 2010. 40,000 troops (what the MOD website claims to be the goal) at $1,000 a month costs $480,000,000 a year just in salaries! It’s impossible for them to be able to pay that until at least 2015! I think a closer percentile of maybe 1:1 or at least 1:2 would be effective. This would bring down salaries closer to $160million to $240million a year. Besides, what are your all powerful proffesional troops going to use? AK-47s and T-55’s? Maybe TheSerbian could supply them with mi-6’s! Low blow sorry, had to be done.

Current 2006 budget caters for 300 million USD for salaries alone. Assuming you are right and that all professional troops will get 1000 USD a month (better than a general’s salary at the moment) the extra money coming in should be able to cover it. However, considering the fact than most soldiers will not be payed that much it seems reasonable that some money will be spent on procurement.

Do you not think that’s enough? An additional USD183 million a year for the next four years is great. Right? That is what we’ve all been waiting for isn’t it?

No, its great! I just posted the dollar value for non-Serbian members so that they have an idea how much this is worth.

This money, combined with the military’s selling off of land and buildings (during the continuing down-sizing) should be enough to professionalise the army and to equip it in a more modern fashion. I’m just hoping that most of it gets spent in Serbia on locally produced equipment.

Heavy news if true – 50 billion dinars amounts to 731 million USD.

I haven’t yet found any other sources for this announcement by Dinkic – will let you know when I do.

Djnik,

You’ve excelled even your very high standards! I think you should be writing for aviation publications and getting paid for it and not posting stuff like that on here… Although I am grateful!

Flex (and anyone else here with similar roots or background),

how keen do you think some of the WP aircrews would have been to throw themselves headlong into a full-scale war with NATO at that time? Having spoken to plenty of service personnel from the former WP nations I’ve become less and less convinced of their loyalty to the Soviet Union. I’ve often wondered if this would have been a decisive factor in the event of a conflict.

The other indefinible quantity in all of this would be serviceability of aircraft assets.

Steve, for what its worth, I agree that the loyalty and determination of some WarPac member states (and, more importantly, their troops) in an eventual conflict should be called into question. Unfortunately, I think that this may also be the case for some NATO member states, Spanish, Greek, Italian and (perhaps) French troops/pilots (etc) may not have had the same determination as their German, British or US counterparts. All depends on how the conflict begins though of course. A long build-up and drawn out state of tension is more likely to improve the moral of troops (because propaganda machines would be working at full steam) and, conversely, a cold start would be the most damaging.

the performance of Soviet equipment in Iran-Iraq war, one can say that some weak spots were identified.

Hardly worth comparing Iraqi units and equipment with frontline Soviet and WarPac kit is it?

And anyway, the 1st west vs. Iraq war also highlighted the dangers of flying low through heavy AAA… I expect both sides would have suffered catastrophic loses by doing this through the much more congested (especially on the WarPac side) air defense systems. So ground attack aircraft would quickly become SAM meat* – the battle in the air (i.e. at higher altitudes) is surely the one we should focus on more as it is the one where the outcome is least certain.

* Furthermore, even ground attack aircraft which do not get shot down would find it pretty damn hard to acheive their missions in such a dangerous environment and mission kills (even ones where the target aircraft is not hit/damaged) would outnumber actual kills probably by a very large margin. Obviously this will, to some extent, be offset by the target rich environment (i.e. drop your bombs anywhere and they’re likely to land on a tank 😎 ) but the extent of this is open to debate.

You are right, there are so many variables. The US would not stand by and look at it, if such a event would happen. What about the UK (RAF)??, Norway and Italy would be involved. I highly doubt the presented numbers especially on the NATO side. Furthermore a more clear scenario with evolving events should be presented to say something about the outcome. Also Airpower in the WP doctrine was seen as support only. The main battle would take place on the ground. So I agree with ´bring it on´that a debate is pointless…….

rokosowsky with all due respect,there are just so many variables and external considerations about this hypothetical scenario that it is pointless to debate in my opinion.

Don’t wimp out guys, if there are plenty of variables, lets discuss those. By not including the bulk of the USAF and RAF it seems that we’re only talking about the openning few days of a conflict – but that doesn’t make this discussion pointless… After all its an internet forum; most of our discussions are pointless.

Anyway, I’m curious who is going to advocate Soviet numerical superiority over NATO technical/training superiority.

Here’s a question to kick off discussion: Considering NATO’s failure, in ’99, to inflict heavy casualties on the VJ would winning superiority in the air really mean much to the Soviets?