inkyeah your right i was only just thinking of the mig at as made on the licesne thing hopefully we make some money on that M-84AB1 sales.
Any funds earned from a possible Kuwaiti order would go directly (we hope) to upgrading the Serbian M-84s to the same standard.
inkHey, does anyone remember (or better still; have info about) Iranian FENCER missions over Iraq previous to the recent US invasion. I wish I could find the archived thread where I originally asked this question, I think TJ (or SOC perhaps) had posted some info on this quite some time ago.
inkI know, what a bloody shame, how can you have a first world country without an air force.
New Zealand is a Second World Country and has a very small population
There seems to be some overt blurring of the lines that constitute first, second and third world countries going on here.
inkFor Croatia
– sell, burn or sink the entire fleet of MiGs-21.
– buy some 15-20 helicopters for SAR and other navy/police/coast-guard/firedept missions
– do NOT buy used F-16s from Belgium or any other.
– invest the money that would be spent for purchasing F-16s to a UAV project(which was operational during the war. I can’t find a single picture on the internet)
– burn or give away three missile gunboats that are currently in service.
– build coast-guard boats.
– enhance coastal ssm-s and sam-s
– decommision the sub
– buy and build the Degman
– professional army of some 20 000- 25 000 units(btw, this is what is going to happen in a year or two, but anyway…)
– buy more Canadairs for fire dept.(this maybe isn’t a army issue, but still)
This sounds pretty sensible to me. Although I think that it would be worth having a squadron or two of fast jets to provide air-policing and to perform as a deterrent to regional rivals (they could also buzz past people on the beaches during tourist season to give them a thrill*). Also, surely the army could do with some sort of CAS aircraft to support their actions in the field (should it be required) – perhaps L-159s or similar would be suitable. Finally, is Croatia still thinking of getting some Be-200s for the firefighting role? I hope they are – it would be an effective aircraft in this role and its so good to look at too.
* A friend of mine said two Croatian AF ’21s buzzed the beach he was on last year at an altitude of about 200ft – he loved it!
inkThere is no plane in this pic but it’s a impressive weapon, Fuel-Air Explosive delivery sequence
Shame it ends so soon. It would be interesting to see how much physical damage there was to the target building… Or at least how much scrching there was.
inkAre you sure about this number?Wouldnt we see more helicopters shot down then
How many have actually been shot down to date?
inkI said relatively, not absolutely, if we see China has almost a J-8II per each F-16, Mirage 2000 and IDF Ching Kuo, if you add the J-7 and Su-27MKK PLAAF`s fleets, Taiwan ends up having a big air force to defeat.
Of course we are not talking of an absolute superiority for example the Su-15 was build in much larger numbers close to 1400 were build to cite a comparable aircraft.
For Chinese productivity the J-8II is a sophisticated machine and hard to build besides in 2005 is an obsolete design but against smaller nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia and others, the sheer numbers of J-8IIs is an impressive force to reckon with.The latest variants of J-8II with inflight refuelling, BVR AAMs and advanced avionics are a match for earlier F-16s and Mirage 2000s
It may have escaped your notice but the J-8II is an interceptor. In other words, its primary role is air defense and not air superiority. In this role I expect it perfectly meets China’s needs right now although I notice that they’re being upgraded and fitted with air-refueling equipment so perhaps the PLAAF is hoping to extend their role (probably as an interim measure until true air-superiority fighters are in service in large enough numbers).
inkserbia
Army Upgrade all of the M-84 tanks to m-84ab1
buy 40-s-300mpu2
150 tunguska
upgrade alll SA-6 and SA-3
4000 stingersAir force
I’m going to try to stay a little more realistic.
Agree with the M-84 upgrade plans. Also a widespread upgrade of IFVs and other vehicles is required. I’d also upgrade a number of our T-55s (new FCS, ERA package, new power plant etc). The army should be reformed to number about 30,000-40,000 professional troops backed up by some sort of reseve (a la National Guard or TA) force of weekend warriors. Basically from rifles to AT missiles to trucks; all kinds of new equipment needs to be introduced. New air defense equipment is also a must but I doubt very much that Serbia will ever be able to afford S-300s or similar. Perhaps the Buk system would suit our needs (if we can get second hand examples from somewhere – even better). The army needs new helicopters (attack and transport) and I’m all for getting a few more Hinds, perhaps 12 would be a good number, maybe 24… More Mi-17s would be nice too.
As for the airforce, we don’t need a whole lot – but do need a whole lot more than we can actually afford. Ideally some sort of (small) core force of fast jets is needed to control the airspace and to provide enough of a conventional deterrent against our neighbours in case of future conflict. MiG-29M2s would be perfect – two squadrons of those would be good. Then a larger number of trainer/light attack aircraft would is needed to both train pilots and provide support for ground troops in times of conflict. Yak-130s please. But I’d settle for G-4Ms.
This new force could then take part in UN peace-keeping duties abroad and face all of the security threats in the region.
In reality, I’d be happy if the professionalisation goes ahead and the most elite formations (63 paratroop regiment and similar) are equiped with modern equipment. Even that seems like a bit of a stretch at the moment.
As for this:
buy 100 used mig 29s for around 3mil a piece each and then upgrade all to SMT for 5 million per plane and everything zero hours.
upgrade G-4 to G-4M
12 Mi-24V
10-an-74
2 il-76
30 AH-64
80 Mig At
32 Mig 31
40 Su-30MK
40 Ka-50
3 Mi-26
Why does Serbia need 100 decrepid old MiG-29s? Do you really think you can get an SMT for $8million? Why does Serbia need 12 Hinds + 30 Apaches + 40 Ka-50s? Why does Serbia need 40 Su-30MK(S)? What the hell would 32 MiG-31s do in our tiny airspace? Why does Serbia need transport assets like 10 An-70s + 2 Il-76s + 3 Mi-26? Where are our troops going on a regular enough basis that we need to have all those transport assets? You’d be a rubbish defense minister and with all those unnecessary purchases you would be the perfect candidate for a bit of baseball bat politics :diablo: 🙂 .
Even my humble plans would cost many billions of dollars that Serbia simply hasn’t got at the moment. Maybe if the US finally pay war reparations for the 1999 air campaign we could do it but thats only likely to happen on the same day that genetically modified pigs flap their large scaly wings and take to the air.
inkAny intake that allows radar to illuminate rotating compressor blades is naturally unstealthy.. There are many other aircraft like this: F-15, F-16, J-10, EF2000(?)…
Sure, sure. But there is no culprit as guilty as the FULCRUM.
inkDidn’t know where to post this.
TEHRAN, March 31 (RIA Novosti) – Iran successfully tested a new Fajr-3 ballistic missile Friday, local television reported, citing military sources.
Iranian television said the rocket is versatile and also invisible to radar.
Earlier in the day Iran began large-scale navy exercises in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, a strait connecting the Islamic Republic to the Arabian Sea. The training exercises will continue through April 6 and involve over 17,000 servicemen.
During the maneuvers, around 1500 military vessels, planes, helicopters and missile launch systems will be used.
I must say that my BSometer is getting a reading on the claims at radar invisibility… Still, anything is possible. Hey, lets assume that the Iranians really have developed a stealthy BM – how does the Israeli ARROW system work? Does it use radars extensively to detect and track its targets?
inkdespite what people say about it i still think it is one of the most beautiful aircaft flying after looking at that first pic of the desert camo fulcrum!
I’m inclined to agree even though I’ve recently been getting very annoyed about one irreversible feature of the FULCRUM’s design (applies to FLANKERs too); namely, the straight through intakes. I don’t know why this bothers me so much and, in theory at least, it shouldn’t take anything away from the plane aesthetically… But for me it does. Maybe its down to years of propaganda (most of it probably completely true) about thenatural unstealthiness of those kind of intakes.
inkSounds interesting:
VLADIVOSTOK, March 31 (RIA Novosti, Anatoly Ilyukhov) – Large-scale naval exercises will be held in Russia’s Far East in early April, the press service of the Pacific Fleet said Friday.
The seven-day exercises off the Kamchatka Peninsula will involve main naval groups of the northeast joint command, including ships, submarines, aircraft and coastal defense troops, which will practice interoperability in simulated combat operations.
“Coastal troops will conduct direct artillery and small arms shooting practice. They will be supported by aircraft of the Pacific Fleet’s air force and air-defense force,” a representative said, adding that pilots would be eliminating targets at different altitudes and in cloud conditions.
The missions of anti-submarine ships, minesweepers and submarines will form the central part of the exercises.
inkI stand corrected.
inkThe LERX auxillery intakes are also often a decent clue.
inkMusashi,
Or was this all made up?
Some of it was and some wasn’t. Please remember (or find online or in a book) the kind of figures that were eminating from NATO spokesmen and NATO politicians during the air-campaign: Numbers such as 100,000 Albanian men mass-murdered come to mind. If I’m not much mistaken the most reliable and recent figures put the number of dead during the whole conflict in Kosovo (1998-99) at ‘upto’ 10,000 – killed in fighting, executed in war-crimes, died of exposure or disease etc… On all sides. I’ll try and dig out the UN report that that figure comes from. For an intense anti-guerilla conflict with an air campaign and with murderous *******s ready to kill civilians on both sides this does not seem to high.
Viper01,
I am pretty sure about Bosnia, though.
The evidence given during the Milosevic trial at the Hague suggests strongly that he had no direct control of forces there from the outset of the conflict. Influence (as shown by the Dayton agreement) over the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs does not qualify him for command responsibility over those forces and their actions.
Lonevolk,
The trully pro-western political parties in Serbia have only marginal support from Belgrade elitist circles, while the nationalist Radical Party has at least 40% support (probably more since the funeral)
This is not true. The Radical Party won around 27% of the vote in the last parlimentary elections. Most of the rest of the vote went to parties belonging to the democratic block. The very large number of such parties and the splits between them means that the Radical party was the largest single party but it is still a long way from having the kind of support necessary to win a parlimentary majority (and fortunately, their chances of making a coalition government are really really poor*). Even outside of the metropolis and other cities Serbia is largely in support of democratic government.
* The coalition building after the last election shows that no one party was willing to build a coalition with the Radicals – even the Socialists (SPS) turned their nose up at the prospect. Bogoljub Karic’s Serbian Mentalists Party would have been a good likely candidate if they hadn’t fought so hard to steal the Radical’s traditional support base.
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