Thanks HuntingHawk, thats the one!

How many SU-27SM upgrades were promised when and how many are in service really now?!

I’m rather curious about that myself – Ken where are you when we need you? 😎 :p

INK, there are many Nato countries which not only kept and upgraded their Soviet equipment, but even bought new stuff from Russia after joining Nato. Czech bought new Russian helicopters (Mi-35’s if I recall) just last year. Greece is also a major customer of Russian hardware. So being a member of Nato/EU does not mean you can’t buy Russian.

This is all true and yet it still seems incredibly unlikely to me that Russia would allow a NATO country (or even a PfP one for that matter) to operate its latest combat jet which is likely to incorporate a number of highly sensetive technologies such as the stealth features, AESA radar, engines, weapons, IFF codes, jamming and other ECM kit, plasma stealth (?) etc etc.

Is it me, or is there a large scale ignorance of defence issues when it comes to the media.

It deifinitely isn’t just you. They’re cr@p.

Often even the experts they quote or interview are useless as well.

And if you think they get things wrong about defense stuff you should see how much they get wrong about other things. In ’99 the Times (London) published a whole article about how in Serbia the children are forced to listen to patriotic music and that western music is banned (obviously complete BS) – the article was by the Times correspondent in Belgrade. I mean this guy was actually there, on the ground, and he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Christ! Don’t get me started – I could write a very long and very bitter book about how cr@p journos are*!

*Although I’d rather just find one and kick his head in :dev2: …Only kidding :diablo:

My estimate is that PAK-FA could be flying pretty soon but then come the neverending delays with funding and introduction into service. Look at Su-34..

Assuming that your estimate is correct and a prototype is flying soon there need not be the same problems budget-wise as with previous designs. Russia is a lot richer now than it used to be and its economic growth is comfortable to say the least – this is translating quite healthily into more funding for the armed forces. Throw in the fact that India is most probably going to be involved with the funding (if it isn’t already) to some degree and you’ll see that delays are more likely to come from the technical/design side of things than from purely financial factors. Of course, who’s to say that there won’t be political/procedural problems for the programme further down the line (there have been plenty already) and that these won’t cause significant delays. What is clear is that much of the work has been completed or is in an advanced stage of completion already due to the fact that a 5th gen design has been on the cards for bloody ages and that constant R&D work is being carried out on 4th/4+ gen designs. Obviously there is more to it than just chucking all the current Russian systems into a new airframe and hoping it works but its not like they are designing everything from scratch either.

Looks like you forgot to ask them if they really wanted it at all.

I don’t think Saddam really has anything to do with this anymore… Everybody seems to agree that the post-invasion situation has been ballsed up good and proper.

Seems pretty unlikely that the PAK-FA will be in service in the RuAF in 2015 and even if it is just entering service by then they are hardly going to export it to Serbia. India will be first on the export list anyway and Serbia may well be in NATO by then which will surely not endear Russia to sell us their newest combat jets. Forget the PAK-FA – it will never see service with the Serbian airforce.

The Swedish air force has surplus JAS39A available now.

I’m just curious: how many?