Two more:

1) They probably distribute free beer next to the Mirage. 😀 As a joke goes amongst greek aviation enthusiasts, “why go to vote for them (politicians), i spent my time much better in HAF’s celebration!”

2) Young pilot ready to inspect his cockpit. 🙂

SwAF fly Gripen C for 2500-3000 USD an hour..
Wonder what makes that more than 3 double, when NG suppose to be cheaper to operate with F414 and graceful degradation of the AESA?

The Gripen on the newspaper could be a bit lower, but i quote from memory. It’s close to the F16 in any case and the newspaper had asked the data from the respective company.

The cost depends on what you calculate, but i want to believe that the newspaper asked the same to all.

For example, i think i had read once, that in HAF they count the fuel, spare parts and the mechanic’s salary that corresponds to ready the aircraft for 1 hour flight. Salaries vary from country to country, but on the same country costs are the same. Also spare part cost varies with the number of aircrafts you operate, since if you buy more at once, usually they give you a better price.

“but either way, aircrafts like the Rafale and Typhoon, will be IMHO too heavy for Greece to sustain”

Please elaborate?

I mean, heavy economically. Twice in greek newspapers, it was quoted as 30.000 per flying hour the cost of the Typhoon, 20-25.000 the Rafale, whereas F16/Gripen are at around 9.000. What does this mean? That HAF with the same budget, must fly them 3 times less than it does with the current F16s. Is that acceptable? To me it’s not. And not only, the new Mod, is preparing 15 year procurements plans with review every 3 years. Already the money for the Land Army, together with the restructuring of units and retirement of older material, has been written to fall from 25 billion to 15 billion. Don’t you think that it is likely that more cuts will be done to airforce and navy too?

For this year, already there are 2 bln missing to reach the memorandum target. On Nov. 16 this will go up, since they will anounce that deficit and debt are even higher. Mass sacking from the public sector are around the corner. At 2012, if we follow the memorandum at the letter, debt will be close to 150% and in order to stop it and start reducing it (unless we do debt restructuring), will be to have growth at +4,5%. Even if there will be a prolongation of the payment of the loans or debts, these will wait us around the corner, so positive growth will be required any case as imperative.

That’s what i mean by “heavy”. Heavy for our wallet. Even if we accept that the MoD will take money from something else to give it to HAF, it’s a vicious circle. Because something else will suffer and already HAF is the less affected. How much more will one affect navy and army?

I have heared alot lately like selling F-16 blk 30 & mirage EGM/BGM to acquire 30+ mirage 2000-9, also 10 more new blk 52+, modernization of our blk 50. Leasing 40 EF-2000, which is quiet feasible.

Also the Rafale F4 and Fa-18 E/F is not out of the game.

Gripen NG, politacally it doesn’t have much of a chance. As an aircraft it’s very capable.

I would also like to add that the HAF have being screaming for twin engine aircraft for years.

Cheers Neo

The purchase of UAE Mirage (where the Arabs should release them around 2013), is a cheap solution that solves many problems in HAF. It could actually prove to save more money getting more Mirage and not having anymore to support A7 and RF4E. Once we have more clear picture as to what the economic situation will be (time prolongation of debt? restructuring? plain halting of payments?), we could see about a new purchase.

Mind you, i don’t deny that our politicians have no backbone whatsoever and will probably continue the tradition of buying anything they deem politically correct, even if this damages the economic or the operational ability of HAF.

I don’t know if HAF is so desperate for 2 engined fighter… The F35 is single engined and chances that the lobby inside HAF will want it are existing…

What i would like to underline, are two other things that have been repeated again and again by more magazines (even Defencenet before her blind support of Typhoon):

1) HAF wants AESA radar.
2) HAF wants to maintain decent numbers (mentioned by defencenet as reason for HAF not wanting to exchange the Mirage mk2 with Rafales at about 3 to 1 ratio).

About buying older Typhoons, i have written my opinion earlier in this thread. The available ones are T1s, which are like buying F16 Block 5 , with the difference that they cost much more to maintain and have no future in them, since their own constructors don’t bother to upgrade them.

About leasing Typhoons, i think it would be counterproductive to have a maintanance line in Greece for such an expensive aircraft. If we were Austria, we wouldn’t mind to send them to Germany’s support line. But we ‘re not Austria, we need to service everything locally. Assuming the current 75% availability, out of 40 Typhoons, 30 will be battle ready at all times. Will 30 win the war? Do they worth the expense in support? I don’t think so. Bild wrote that they cost at German airforce twice the cost of the Tornado, which was already the more costly aircraft in the Luftwaffe. The British minister had warned EADS that won’t buy T3, unless they bring down the costs of serviving. All countries have cut down the number that will get. And… we are going to endure such costs??? With our economy? Well, we can, but availability will probably fall to 50%…

The fact that our politicians won’t (politically) choose the Gripen NG, doesn’t stop me from supporting it as the only logical option. Greece in a way or another, will have a long way in reducing the debt that will require at least a decade. Now with the new rules about fines for whoever has more than 60% GDP debt, we ‘re going to forget the defence budgets that we were counting on before.

Personally, i think it’s time that the Greeks (and i hope for the politicians too), get out of the “gunfight at OK Corral” mentality, where in a case of crisis the 2 airforces are supposed to rise on the air on a head on mega-showdown to the last man standing and start thinking , what’s the best deterrent we can get with the money that we can place on the issue.

And i honestly, don’t see the best deterrent in “shooting down F35 with Typhoon”. So you will kill 20 more Turks that will become “martyrs”. That’s no deterrent against a politician.

And i honestly don’t think that the Typhoon is worth its money difference compared to the Gripen, against the F35. I ‘d rather get more Gripen NGs and spend the rest of S400 and a more dense radar network, nothing too fancy, a few low band radars in strategical spots and more mobile radars on the islands. The location of the islands will do the rest at least as far as detection goes.

But i repeat,IMHO it’s vain to hope to cope with Turkey, despite Erdogan’s rhetorics, Turkey has engaged in her biggest defence procurement ever, Greece can’t follow like in the past, this isn’t going to change, turkish economy is growing faster, at the end, if we insist in the traditional “OK Corral” mentality , we will end up in a ridiculous position similar to that of Taiwan against China and we will pretend that we can “win the war by shooting them all down”. Taiwan would also really want to defeat China in an air war, but alas, it’s not possible.

The best deterrence for Greece, is now to be able to destroy valuable infrastructure along the coast. Nothing else. Give HAF enough numbers and ammunition to do that and that’s the best we can do. Besides, should a crisis occur, it’s not going to last like the Battle of Britain.

Greece, to put it very simply, has lost her arms race, at the same way Russia did in 1990. The difference being that we don’t have the nuclear weapons. Thinking that we can keep up like before, is non realistic. Turkey can outspend us more than ever. New situations call for new ideas. Will the greek politicians understand that? No. But i won’t change my idea on the matter.

Greece, must go for best cost-quality order for new gen aircraft, around 2014 or if the delays on F35 are confirmed 2015. In the meantime, if we can get 32 or all the UAE Mirage and get rid of some older types, i think it’s a good deal, that will pay off.

And Greece should start planning more based on the geographic reality. Till now, the islands have been receiving mainly the 2nd rate material and nothing too expensive. I think we should reconsider that and deploy a better SAM coverage, more Exocet land batteries and on big islands more rocket launchers. Cheap rocket launchers like the RM-70 we have, if put on virtually any island near the border, can come out of protected positions and sweep the coast within minutes at very low cost, but dealing big economic blow. They are much cheaper systems than most of the mega-purchases of the past, yet, they could be of much better deterrent and operational efficiency, helping both navy and airforce , multiplying their force.

That’s a deal….

And if I add Carla Bruni and a case of family owned domaine de Chevalier, you invite me in your summer villa for the vacation?

Nic

Sure! I ‘ve already deployed the camouflage net over the swimming pool! 😀 (the greek state finally decided to look for non declared swimming pools using… google earth and HAF photo reconnaissance and the mega tax evaders replied by deploying camouflage nets to hide them).

Ehm… I hope Sarkozy isn’t reading this. 😀

P.S.: Isn’t if funny how easyily foreign policy and arms purchases are concluded in a forum? 😀

Photo from Savas Savaidis:

5 Photos from Geomar83 from modelclub.gr:

2 photos from Heater from modelclub.gr:

From F16 solo display:

Amateur video from Geomar83 (modelclub.gr) from the F16 B52+ display flight (quite shakey unfortunately). Approx. 225 MB

http://rapidshare.com/files/429438582/F-16_Demo_Team.wmv

Mod Edit: These images were too large. Please re-post in a smaller size, or provide links instead.
Done.

So, Loke, since it appears that they allow to approach the F35 simulator, you have still 3 days to get to Larissa and take advantage of the open gates. 😀

You guys need your own version of the US Tea Party, maybe led by some one named Sara Palaeologus 🙂

Ahaha! Nice one. 😀 In Greece, weather is generally too hot for tea. If you drink tea, most people think you are sick. 😀 I would settle for a “yoghurt party”, if it would mean getting rid of the 2 corrupted parties. But, given that they have bred 2 generations with leftist ideology, a “normal” right wing party in Greece is unlikely to appear soon. If it depended on me, i would grab Sarkozy if the French won’t vote for him again. His grandfather was from Thessaloniki, this would qualify Sarko in taking greek citizenship, making him eligible as PM. 🙂 Two days ago, the vice PM of the greek gov, came out of the blue to say that “the military is the most non productive sector of the greek society”… According to him, an army officer should be… producing some product for sale apparently… Maybe he should get the pilots to cultivate watermelons instead of piloting aircrafts. Such statements don’t happen in any african repubblic, since even there, politicians are more serious.

In any case, i want to believe that this crisis will cause some change in the greek political scene, in the balance of power between parties. The 2 ruling parties have proved how dangerous they are in their omnipotence. Even now, our PM is blackmailing voters for the regional elections, that unless they vote for him, he will regard it as vote against his policy and go to premature elections after only 1 year from the previous ones. Spreads in greek bonds skyrocketed from about 750 base points to 930 base points as a result. They won’t stop before anything in order to win elections. Even if it damages the country. Why he does this? Because he sees that numbers don’t add up, that the 2011 will be even harder and he is scared… In he wins the regional elections, he can say “the people gave me green light to go on with the IMF reforms”. If not, he can unload his burdon off his shoulders to someone else. Either way, at the end of the memorandum, as Merkel’s position last week implied, Greece will make debt restructuring, unless some other EU countries are still very weak, which in that case, they will probably find another temporary solution.

why does greece have two different engines for F-16s? I know they want to diversify the country of origin of their weapons, but they also have to diversify origin of the engines too?

Defence magazines were talking about this about 10 years ago, but i don’t remember what they were writing anymore… We started with GE, at some point had requested a stronger engine, US denied, later we moved to P&W, which proved as far as i know to be more reliable. Now, as to why originally we went for GE… I can’t remember, but given the recent revelations about weapons purchases, one possibility is bribery…

AFDS

Yes.

Some news. Nov. 1-5 was conducted the “Durios Ippos” (Trojan Horse) EW exercize, with partecipation of various systems.

Photos from HAF:

Photos from defencenet:

According to defencenet, there was also partecipation of Erieye, Sa-8B, Patriot PAC-3, Crotale NG, Velos, Asrad and they discovered some “black holes” on some of the aircraft EW suites, since in some cases, some of the SAMs overcame with ease the jamming and performed virtual shots in situations where they shouldn’t on paper. No specification as to which EW suites and which SAMs are involved.

Other news: the programmed excercize between HAF and Rafale F3 of Charles DeGaulle was cancelled at the last minute. According to Defencenet, the last time, the greek B52+ supported with Erieye arrived to a 6 to 1 kill ratio against the Rafale F3 and opened the way for the “sinking” of the Charles De Gaulle by Mirage2000 armed with Exocets.

http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15252&Itemid=141

Do i believe the 6 to 1 ratio? Personally, when it comes to Defencenet and aircrafts involved in the future HAF purchase, no. Defencenet’s preferences are very clear in the matter and go like this: Su-35> EF > Super Hornet >> Gripen> Rafale >>>>>>>>>>> F16/F35 (LM is the devil). The difference being that F16 is considered by Defencenet as a “non contender” and thus harmless in a competition for next gen aircraft. Also, other magazines at the time hadn’t written quite the same story and when magazines don’t agree on something like this, i ‘ve learnt that there’s someone is inflating or making things up or narrating half the truth.