Just like the evil Americans haven’t bought Harriers, Dauphins, Falcons, Hawks, PC-9s, and tried to buy A330 tankers? :rolleyes:

All pretty minor purchases except the A330 tanker purchase, and oddly enough the tanker purchase has been overturned.

Now congress would have a field day to overturn a foreign purchase if it concerns a front line aircraft, if it could overturn the A330 purchase that easily.

And I’m sure that you know perfectly that the US would NEVER buy a foreign stealth bomber, so you may as well cut the hypocrisy.

Besides I never mentionned the “evil” whatever in my post. ANY business who got a monopoly will rape its customers as soon as there is no more competition. It’s the simplest consequence of the rule of supply and demand. So buy a pair of glasses if you have issues understanding what one says but don’t put words into their mouth.

N

I won’t argue with the fact that if the Russians ever regain their Soviet period military might and invaded any of the Nordic countries that country would have an up-hill struggle on it’s hands. But I think you underestimate how easy it would be for the Russians to roll over some of these countries in a conventional war. I suppose the Baltic nations would be hard to defend, Iceland doesn’t even have an army but is way to important a strategic asset for the USA to allow the Russians to gobble it up without a challenge. Whoever controls Iceland effectively controls the North Atlantic. That leaves the Scandinavian nations. Even with massive Russian numerical superiority in the air the Scandinavian air forces aren’t exactly a push over. They are technically competent, enjoy a high standard of training and are well equipped with relatively modern armaments and the same goes for their ground forces. Neither Norway, Sweden nor Finland are exactly prime tank country, only Denmark’s terrain would favour a highly mechanised army and to get there you have to go through Poland and Germany. The fact that the terrain of Norway, Sweden and Finland heavily favours the defender would make for heavy Russian losses, at least on the ground. The last time the Russians tried to invade one of those countries (Finland) using massive amounts of armour they lost just shy of four hundred thousand men, a couple of thousand tanks and a not inconsiderable number of aircraft. The Scandinavians are considerably better prepared for war today than they were back then.

I won’t dispute the fact that the Russians would roll over those countries in a conventional war, which is exactly why they should not fight a conventional war. IMO they should just let the russians go deep in their territory and mount ambushes and local attacks as much as possible once their supply lines have stretched. Highly mobile commandos with a lot of dispersed weapons caches…

Fast jets may be survivable enough to do a lot of damage to the invaders, and I have no doubt of the quality of those countries’ airmen, but I feel helos wouldn’t be survivable enough against the most modern russian SAM and AAA.

Nic

I think you’ll find that the price for F-35 included the offset created by Norway’s share of manufacturing work… their parts will be on all 1,000+ (more like 2,000+ in reality) F-35s sold to anyone… that’s a lot of return to lower what is being paid out.

Additionally, this is part of an actual spreading out of aircraft design & build capability across the Western world, caused by the “multi-national production” aspects of both the F-16 and F-35 programs.

It is due to this that a number of nations have any military-aircraft-related industry at all!

Well it is all well and good until Saab, EADS, Dassault close their military planes division, and then you will see how the prices of the US hardware will go up… if there ever is a only US/Russian choice.

Nic

So, how do bugs taste? Which was your favourite? 😀