Only two examples I could think off where PAK FA might (and its a big might) take away from Eurocanards are:

-Greece – Again having been there for extended period, Greeks have relatively mild attitude towards Russians. Most are very annoyed at west and US in particular over what they see as favoritism of Turkey. They see Turks as huge threat and most believe it will attack again with in a decade. Considering that Turks are level 2 Partner in F35 program Greeks have been looking at Eurocanards to add to their arsenal of Block52 Falcons… and with Turks getting F35 in addition to upgradingA w, ECM ,Coms,Weapons etc. could be seen as giving Turkish fatboy run for its money.

Well, regardless of what we think, the turkish generals in 2003 thought a good idea a limited war with Greece, to boost and unite national spirit and rally the people behind the army and kemalism against the islamists.

After the initial revelation of the plan to provoke greek pilots until they shoot down a turkish aircraft or if necessary crash a turkish aircraft on purpose and blame it on Greece,

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/470/tarafplan2003.png

we have the plan of land invasion of north Evros (it’s the border greek region), by a limited armor assault on the northern part of the border. It’s google translated from the turkish newspaper. Kardak crisis refers to the 1996 greekturkish crisis.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/1089/english.png

Original in turkish
http://www.taraf.com.tr/haber/46700.htm

They were also thinking of applying again the successful plan they applied to the greek minority of Gockceada island (Imvros in greek), in the 60s, where in order to make the minority (theoretically protected and in special status according to treaty of Lausanne), they first declared the island a free penal colony where the convicts were moving freely and then militarized it. Greeks gone.

Of course about this plan you won’t read much in european and US media, for political reasons, because it’s bad for Turkey’s profile as peaceful, modern country ready to enter the EU.

So, it’s more important to read about the daily hoax about rumours for plans saving Greek economy , despite having been denied 100 times and the greek PM and ministers having repeated a gazillion times that they didn’t ask for bail out plan. But it’s important to repeat the hoax, so the denial will follow again and again and spreads will go up, so the same that spread the panic can buy greek bonds at higher interest, the pound and $ may gain on euro and so on.

Who cares of such little invasion plans of a EU candidate or nice coup plans. They aren’t news.

In the light of the above coup plans (called war games by the turkish army… i wonder if these are war games, then how coup games are…), the 2006 incident with the mid air collision between greek and turkish F16 may not have been an accident, but voluntary incident as some greek “conspiracy nut cases” have proposed, included a retired HAF officer (2nd in HAF rank), who said on TV that they had info that the Turk pilots wanted “blood” and that the turkish F16 hit the greek on the canopy to kill the pilot.

I myself didn’t believe back then that a pilot could arrive to that, but after reading the turkish plan, i had to rethink. The turkish generals had predicted a “special squadron” with “loyal” pilots (Ozel Filo) to provoke and if necessary to crash their planes so to blame greek pilots. So anything is possible.

A westernized PAK FA would make perfect sense, if it wasn’t for greek politicians. The greek PM is US born and raised (mother is American), has grew up in US, Canada and Sweden. For him, use of weapons is something he can’t grasp and defence is the last thing he cares about. He said he ‘d like to make Greece the “Denmark of the south”. I suppose Turkey in that picture, is Sweden (the eastern neighbour of Denmark). It’s funny, a few days before the turkish coup plans were revealed, our PM declared the the “policy of greek-turkish friendship that I had envisioned and started as Foreign minister is 1999 is finally now giving its fruits and is being acknowledged by everyone as successful”. AHAHHAHA! Of course when the turkish newspapers revealed the plan, he didn’t comment on anything, because there wasn’t much he could say without ridiculing himself.

I will be very surprised if Greece buys anything russian (apart the BMP-3, because it was signed from the previous goverment and the current one is renegotiating to give more workshare on greek industry) with this PM. I ‘d be SHOCKED if ANY of the current greek politicians would dare to support the idea of buying russian aircraft. Despite to popular belief, Greece didn’t order the S-300. Cyprus did. When Turkey threatened to make an air raid on Cyprus if deployed, Cyprus sold them to Greece. Greece had ordered Patriot PAC-3s for herself. The only russian material that Greece has dared to order is material that doesn’t attract too much rage from other NATO members and specially USA or systems that are almost “unique”, so there isn’t any western competition to complain about. So Greece has bought ex german BMP-1s, SA-8Bs, some non specified russian jammers, TOR-M1, ZUBR, Kornet-E.

There is no way we will buy PAK FA, even if reason says we should. Politics.

Theoretically, EF is the favourite, BUT, the airforce always wanted AESA. The new PM on the other hand is notorious for being pro-American. LM has also the strongest lobby in the airforce. On the other hand, now a new parliament commission is formed which will review all weapons purchases , as to promote transparency and the most “profitable solution”. This includes members from all parties. So the influence of the goverment is reduced, since this commission can raise havoc if the goverment proposes a purchase for political only reasons or that appears to be a bad offer (it’s like the US Congress Comittee). On the other hand the new MoD is preparing new procurement law, which will greatly reduce the importance of offsets and increase workshare for local companies and best price-performance ratio, although direct purchases from a country will be still possible, as in the latest EU directive. He also said he is reviewing from scratch the previous’ gov procurement plan.

Bottom line, is that things are more uncertain than ever about future purchases, one thing is sure, that there isn’t the political will to follow Turkey in an arms race, the new PM just asked Turkey to go to Hague again, i doubt it will happen, i expect us to make concessions to Turkey in the next 10-20 years with or without a small military crisis. The problem is that our politicians don’t care about defence (if they did, PAK Fa would be in deed the first choice), don’t believe in war and don’t believe that Greece should even try to resist in a war with Turkey. So since 2000 more or less they ‘ve been degrading greek defence and making irrational, bureacratic moves.

Greece would have much more deterrence and much more efficient armed forces, if it had serious politicians who know their job. While the turkish generals were making their plans, Greece in the Procurement Bureau, had a man who once replied to the commander of the armed forces complaining about bureaucratic delays and irrational moves “Wow, cool down Chief! Relax! It’s not like we ‘re going to war, are we!” . The incredible thing, is that the same chief of Bureau, survived the change of goverment too. I hope he won’t survive much longer.

Greece, if a crisis does come, will remain in the anals of military history, as the country where good systems didn’t perform as expected for “unknown” reasons. For example, the previous gov ordered Leo2A4/A6… With DM33 rounds… The new MoD is planning on correcting this and many other things (like finally installing the EW suites on the older F16 B52+ which have been lying in a greek hangar for years).

P.S: AFAIK the turkish F16 fleet isn’t going to be upgraded the the same standard equipment. Older blocks if i remember correctly are supposed to have lesser upgrades. Not that it changes much, since in Greece there is no interest or political will to be prepared for war. I hope that at least greek politicians will have the decency to go towards weapons that allow striking inside Turkey. Meaning stand off ammunition. Because i don’t see them as willing to take defence seriously or to maintain the ratio we were keeping to this day. Probably if a crisis should occur, some moron like the one who said “wow, cool down chief”, will come out and say “Ooops, we forgot to send ammunition to that island…Sorry!” or “well, we forgot to buy spare parts for the aircrafts, so don’t fly them a lot, ok?” or “was that tank ammunition you had asked for? I thought it was artillery ammunition! Can’t your tanks fire artillery rounds? They both have a cannon, don’t they!”.

The new MoD is a clever man, but with no love for the military and the gov is also pretty much on the “put roses in the barrels” mood. Basically, the greek politicians, don’t even want to imagine themselves having to handle a crisis situation or even worse a war. They would really abolish the army tomorrow. They keep the army, just because the common citizen, doesn’t think like them and isn’t prepare to just giveaway anything without firing a shot. So they keep the army to fool the simple citizen that they care about defence or that they will really give him the chance to take full advantage of the weapons systems if needed. But they ‘re just fooling us. Just like they were fooling the common citizen about the economy deficit, not just the EU.

PAK FA for Greece? Sure! Maybe if Greece had the PM that was alive up to 1996. Today? NEVER. Because it’s what a reasonable man would do. But for a politician, russian aircraft is “strictly out of bounds”, even if this means hurting your country’s defence.

they seem to disagree with you

http://gbulten.ssm.gov.tr/arsiv/2006/11/30/01.htm
The Eurofighter consortium, maker of the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft, has raised the stakes in its competition with the U.S.-led Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) group to sell over 100 jets to the Turkish Air Force by offering a $9 billion local work share for Turkey’s defense industry.

The four-nation Eurofighter group is proposing to Turkey an “equal partnership with equal voting rights as other member nations have” and a $9 billion work share for its local defense industry if the Ankara government decides to buy 120 fighters, $6 billion work share for 80 aircraft and $3.2 billion work share for 40 aircraft.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/eurofighter-makes-turkey-an-offer-02856/
Eurofighter officials said that the group has made Turkey an offer of its own for the estimated $10-12 billion fighter program. The consortium is offering Turkey “equal partnership with equal voting rights as other member nations” and a sliding scale of local work share depending on the number of fighters bought

As if i didn’t know that… One thing is making offer, another is how probable it is that your offer will be realistically accepted.

As i have stressed 1 billion times in this forum, politics play a big role in arms deals. Turkey, is also a country that likes “encouraging” competition, a very reasonable thing to do too.

The F35 will be giving guaranteed workshare for Turkey for many, many years. The number of EF that will be sold, can’t come close to the F35, not even the in wildest EUconsorcium dreams. And it will be uninterrupted line. Contracts will be coming all the time, while in EF they will be sweating all the time in the wild goose (or arab) chase to keep the lines at a decent production rate. Not to mention the political and operational drawbacks of EF i have mentioned.

Russia has offered to Greece Su-35. We haven’t said no. The real chances of getting them though, are 0.01%, for political and operational reasons. Then why did Russia offered them? Because offering costs you nothing. Saab did the same for Gripen. Chances for Gripen are now a bit better, for the sole fact that our current PM has lived and studied in Sweden for a while. But that’s it. It is still a huge underdog.

This is from the first arrival of Russian Sus in Greece for common excercize. Since we were the first NATO member to buy Russian material after the fall of the “wall”, the Russians thought to make a push for sale of aircrafts too. They thought “why not!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Lcys6nYuw

(Tanagra AB, around 1999, when Greece was considering new purchase)

Turkey *might* have really bought EF, if Greece had bought EF in 2000. Now, with the F35 so close, there is no way in hell that Turkey will leave US fighter for Euro-fighter, unless the political situation for her EU accession changes drammatically.

I ‘ve said it before, in this forum, you are aviation enthusiasts, who have no contact with reality of arms sales. You think that countries are enthusiasts who pick aircrafts based on your criteria. Then of course you are all in awe when some contracts come out where you can’t possibly figure out how a selection was done, that you wouldn’t expect.

Turkey, has already been subject to a half-complete (because in reality it wasn’t total and was partially bypassed by sale of heavy US material through other NATO countries) weapons embargo after the invasion of Cyprus. The embargo of course was lifted soon enough, because USA wanted her NATO ally fully armed. It was done actually against Kissinger’s will, who was furious about the embargo, but by the Congress’ will, which was unaware of Kissinger’s role (and green light) for the Cyprus invasion. The UN had condemned the invasion, it sound a good way for USA to appear as abiding by UN resolutions.

It lasted only about 4 years, but has made Turkey pretty paranoid about this, especially their military. Their military is already Kemalists, who many think that the EU is unjustly favouring Greece over Turkey and think that actually the EU has a plan for demolishing Kemalism and ultimately Turkey through the so called democratization process that EU asks. The hardcore military sees that as western plot against Turkey. That’s why they ‘re planning coups against Erdogan every 6 months. Now to that, add the fact that if something does go “kaboom” with Greece and Turkey is still outside EU, the first thing Greece will ask from EU members, is to do weapons embargo to Turkey, regardless of the result. And the EU , even unwillingly, will have a rough time to justify a “no”. This will leave Turkey with 120 Eurofighters with no support.

If you get the idea, then go try to convince the turkish generals to buy Eurofighter. They may have done a small purchase of say 30 pieces, if Greece had bought it early on. Because there wasn’t at the time a US 4th gen aircraft for sale. But now… No. And at least, not in the wild numbers that the EF consortium was hoping.

Just my opinion. But turns out that in these matters my opinion is later proven by the facts more often than not…

The day you hear some EU official, specially German and French, go on TV and say “the turkish EU accession isn’t open ended. It is guaranteed that Turkey will become full EU member”, that is the day that the Euro-consorcium will have real chances in selling aircraft to Turkey. Or, to put it in another way. If you hear the EF consorcium selling aircrafts to Turkey, prepare in the next few months to see on TV German and French politicians saying that “Turkey will become full EU member”.

BTW, in case you haven’t noticed, the airforce is the only turkish army branch, which never does tenders for fighter aircrafts. They always go “US all the way” (LM i am sure is thrilled about it). The other branches or even for other systems , they do make tenders , even if some contenders have no real chances.

You are free of course to believe what you want (just like Sens). But if i later come and say “i had told you so”, take it like a good sport.

Regards

Greece didn’t meet EU standards when it was admitted, but was let in on political grounds, & Romania is not the only exception since then.

You ‘re confusing periods. Greece was in the EEC since 1981. The EEC was not the EU. It evolved into the EU, but the existing members didn’t have to apply again. The EEC was a common market area, criterial were only political and economical, based on single countries interests. Basically, if the others thought that it was in their financial or political interest to put you in the common market area, you were being admitted. The “criteria” were individual national interests. Mrs Thatcher says “aye”, mr. D’ Estaing says “aye” and so on. These were the EEC criteria.

When Romania made application, it was the EU (past-Maastricht), which is different than EEC, because admission was now made by Copenhagen criteria.The Copenhagen criteria were supposed to be a “commonly accepted charter” of requirements.

Well, you mentioned warships, that’s why I bring the second hand frigates. Those were given for for free by UK, but Romania had to pay for modernisation. The whole modernisation will go over 500 mil. Euros. So you see that not only US that give “poisoned” gifts.

Yes, US isn’t the only one. It’s just the country that most often comes with “free” deals. You ‘ll see… I am surprised the UK made you “free frigate” deal in the first place. And YES, the “free” ships are usually the worst deal. That’s why (well, one reason) we ‘ve been declining many US frigates since the 90s.

And that’s why i said “When they will offer “free” ships, be very careful. They can cost a lot in the long run and tie your Navy to US designs/weapons systems.”

Exactly because some ships may be in such a bad shape that “free” is a joke. I didn’t know the UK had made you such a deal, but well, i am not surprised that they charged you so much at the end. It’s just much more usual for the US to give away ships like that. In our case, i ‘ve never heard of UK offering any ship (let alone a frigate) for “free” to us. (And trust me, we get many such “free offers”, because we maintain a relative high number of equipment, even more so in the past). When it comes to ships, the rule of “send your inspectors” is even more valid.

And, even if offsets are not always fulfilled by exporters, you must agree that < 10 % is insignificant

I agree that’s insignificant, but it’s not strange. If they start getting the impression that you accept this situation, offsets that never materialize, will multiply. In Greece we call them “ghost-offsets” and prior to 2002 was the rule. Because our politicians didn’t care. So everyone was giving us “ghost offsets”, knowing that only a small part would really materialize. The next goverment reduced the importance of offsets to the contracts in deciding the “best bid” and the new MoD is thinking of further reducing them or even abolishing them, substituting them with more “local added value” terms (workshare for local industry).

Basically, if you don’t bite them immediately, they ‘ll start thinking “Oh, they don’t care much about offsets, we can promice them “10” and at the end we ‘ll get away with “2”.

Another trick that companies do in their bids is including “impossible offers”. For example, you say that if you buy my weapons, we will transfer this specific technology to one of your local companies. Dumb politicians accept it. Later, they find out that the transfer of technology is impossible to happen, because your local company lags so much behind this specific technology, that can’t really make anything with it. So the transfer doesn’t happen at all and you can’t blame them for accepting their trap either. All they do is take advantage of your idiocy. If you say anything, they will reply “Well, we wanted to transfer, but your company can’t make heads or tails out of it, they have no project that can take advantage of it, so it’s not our fault”.

Bottom line is, weapons dealers are shrewd people, nothing like priests and you should double check what you sign before you sign something, because you can lose a lot of money.

Surprised they are actually doing nothing?

There is a difference between doing something and us knowing about it. They may be doing something, without trumpeting about it. It wouldn’t be the first time either.

The only thing that could be a sign against the stealth tech was/is the introduction (limited) of that VHF AESA radar….but is that a stealth counter? or is just the natural evolution for more that 50 years developing such radars? 🙂

If old tech works, why not use it and save you some money. The Russians (and Chinese) don’t have plans for imminent war with USA. There is no reason on why to push mass productions of systems they won’t need in the near future. It makes much more sense to spend the money on research and in the meantime, sell the “old technology”.

Oh and the PAKFA, which is the last priority for the russian defense, pretty last, if you compare it with the SAM technology, and is more a test to survive the arms market, than a great homeland defender.

By the time PAK Fa comes out, the Russians may have enough research to do something about its radar for homeland defence, if that becomes an issue.

Wow, this video is so full of crap. In the moment i saw the “H” logo i knew that it will be waste of time.

But you must admit, putting the Berkut in the video is very “hollywood effect”. The audience must have loved it. 😀 “How cool is that Russian! It’s unreal!”.

You can rest assured that is what they will do, if it comes to it. Back in the mid 90’s when we were offered “free” C-130B, a team went over at AMARC and rejected one of the birds. The guys in the Air Force are capable enough and know what to expect in this type of purchase, the politicians have no clue and most don’t care – unfortunatly it’s the latter who take the decision, not the military.

If you can, certainly inspect them.

IIRC the Colombians complained some years ago that they’d been swindled by the USA over some “free” helicopters. I think they said that the price charged by the USA for freighting them to Colombia was more than the value of the helicopters, as most were fit only to be scrapped. Of course, they stripped the scrapped helicopters for parts, but few useful parts could be recovered, because most were worn out.

I assume that since then, they’ve insisted on inspection before acceptance.

I can’t say i am surprised. In these deals, everything beyond the “object of sale” , is paid for, including transportation and bringing it back to operational conditions. Even in “hot transfers” the material usually needs an overhaul or it will be breaking down all the time. And sometimes, you get such crazy situations. It’s also common that if you just accept the “batch” they give away, you will get a mixed bag. Some will be in good shape, some will be utter trash. During Cold War, we were accepting virtually any US “giveaway”, for the sole purpose of numbers, having communist countries on north and Turkey to the east. So we were taking everything and we were happy about it too… After the Cold War, we still buy 2nd hand, but less american and we inspect first or make a separate deal for a number of total trash pieces, which we then cannibalize in time, when the spare parts are needed. For example instead of paying a “low fee” for “250 items”, we arrage to pay “200” at low fee + “50” trash pieces at a close to zero price, which will be cannibalized to add to the spares stock.

Even so, you can still make mistakes, if you don’t know the technology you ‘re taking. In our case, the most characteristic was ex-east German BMP-1P/OST. Even after a refurbishment to bring them to operational condition, they were showing too many problems that made the army to be eager of the time to get rid of them. This despite being inspected (and refurbished), because our army had no idea of soviet tech and didn’t know what are common problems of the BMPs , where to look for faults, etc. They were inspecting based on what they knew from western vehicles.

The most trashy US equipment that i recall, where Knox frigates. We took them 2nd hand in 1992 and decommissioned them in 1998 and they were mostly there to make numbers of launching tubes and heli platforms (and because Turkey also got them). They were so obsolete already and with reliability problems, that pretty much convinved the Navy to deny subsequent major surface units from US “giveaways”.

Europeans usually let you cherry pick with the order they propose the material. For example when Germany had 2nd hand Leo2A4 we cherry-picked 183 of them first, tied to the Leo2A6 contract. So we got the best of the 2nd hand Leo2A4. With the Americans it depends. In the Navy they just tell you “we have this vessel and that vessel for you, just these 2, you can’t choose from others of the same class, because we will be offering them to others”. For example they offered us the 2 oldest Perry Class frigates of the USN, we denied them after an inspection. Fortunately the Cold War was over and we didn’t have to accept just any junk anymore just to build numbers.