Another Mig 21 Lancer lost

Do you know that RoAF dismatled hundreds of 21's engines? Many of them with very few hours in service. As for the airframe I cannot pronounce myself, I don't know how good this aircraft is.

No. I did'nt know about engines. How manny moneys can cost 23 and 29 modernisation? So much, we cannot aford them? Hm... It's like Romania scrap PZL-24, He-112, Hurricanes and Emils and go to ww2 with PZL-11f...

In case of war, i bet none of the 23, 29 and 93 can be put 100 % ready for actions, from "saramura". I bet another thing: in case of war none of the ex. pilots can be 100 % ready to directly fly from first time in a 23 or 29, or IAR 93 to a war mission. So... we lie himself with this plane "conservation"...

Iama

Your analogy won't work today.I bet you that none of 23 or 29 will be put in action if a war would occur. That's simply because at the rate a war develops nowadays we (or anybody else for that matter) wouldn't have time to get those aircrafts (de la saramura) an put them in the combat line. Probably this would suit countries with a huge space (Russia, USA etc), not Romania anyway. Is sad, but true, once you put them into conservation ... that's to be scrapped. However, you never know, maybe they will fly someday.

Well when the decision to modernise the planes was taken , lots of factors where involved.
-number of available planes to modelrnise(hundreds of Mig21, 40 Mig23, 20 Mig29)
-repairing facilities (we mantained and repair the 21's in Romania , for the 23, 29 we depended on Russian support)
-know how. all our bases operated at least a type of Mig21, so more or less everybody knew it.
-quantities of spare parts. we had large quantities of spare parts already boght before Ceausescu starteed loosing it ..

so the 21 was the most fesable and logical aproach.

Tomcat, so why is the Mig21 upgrade only an intermediary program? I read in another post that Romania has to buy new fighters by 2009 or something like that.
The Mig21s are going to be scrapped, and if yes, why?

thanx!

take care

Because their resource will expire and to refurbish them and renew it, we will have to invest more moiney into them. This is why the MiG-29s were conserved. Their resource expired and the 50 million USD required t omake them airworthy again were not seen as a priority.

Thanx Victor, I understand that, but their service life expires that fast? When did the upgrade end or is it still on? I found somewhere that they started to come into service in 1995.
Also I found some sites where russians argue that their Mig21-93 upgrade is far better.
Any views on that?

http://www.enemyforces.com/aircraft/mig21.htm

take care

Better? In which area? This is the question . I have seen some photos from a russian site saying 93 is better than LanceR. OK, that is arguable but what they presented as 93 cockpit were 3 photos of our LanceRs. So much for credibility

Well, from what I understand there is a lot of competition for modernization contracts of the MiG-21, so both sides probably attempt to discredit the other one.

Pilot comfort isn't negligeable at all. IMO, the easier it is for the pilot to fly the airplane, the better he would manage in a dogfight. I don't think the 93 has a system comparable to the DASH helmets.

Maybe alexkdl can help us more.

Well that is actualy half true actually.
The 21-93 upgrade is better than Lancer A. Not many knew that LancerA don't have a good radar. At best it can be called as RangeFinding. The Lancer A is a Air ground specialised plane(if we can call it like that).It has powefull avionics system, but not a good radar set.
The Lancer C is a different bird in avionics. From what I found on the net, the radar is capable of many things including ground mapping , beam sharpening, TWS, etc. the Radar cam from the defunct Israeli project Lavi and same radar is used on Israeli F16's .
The Mig 21 was a gap filling solution. And a good one too. Just look at the countries from former WP block. Many scraped all the planes they had and used few planes(Bulgaria,Chech republic etc). Only now Chech and Hungarian AF started to train on modern planes. We did that for many years. For us using modern navigation , attack weapon is not a new thing. When the F-16's () will came we will know how to use them. Hopefully.

Yes,we have to know how to use these Vipers.If we wanted peace time fighter jets we'd buy Gripens. Now that's an aicraft suited for musem

Indeed, the upgrade of the Mig21 was a great job.
How about staying with Russian tech but going for a heavier fighter, like Sukhoi?
My opinion is that whatever we'll buy, it will be very expensive, so if the decision is taken it has to be a smart one, like the one taken when considering the Mig21 upgrade.
So my question would be for the fighter experts here, are there points in the favor of a Sukhoi contract?
Would a combination of Mig21-Lancer and a heavier Sukhoi be more reliable than a former-soviet-upgraded + western fighter one?
Or militarily they're both good, so the decision will be political? (highly probable, afterall)

However, I think in the present economical situation created by the 16% tax, it would be political suicide for the Gov. to sign any ambitious military contracts... probably the last thing they think about.

thanx

take care

I don't think a Russian design has any chance to be bought. One of the main ideas going through the heads of the top brass is to achieve interoperability with NATO forces. That means the use of similar weapons and ammunitions, communication systems etc. This is why the F-16 has most of the chances to be bought.

Victor, do you think there are any chances to find export markets for the upgraded Mig21 Lancer, in partnership with the Israelis?
Ofcourse, the Israelis could contract upgrades with any other country that has Mig21s, but I mean, could updated Mig21s be anything else than a stop-gap solution, and actually be bought as main fighters by some countries?
Romania could come with the Mig21 engine factory and the Israelis with the high-tech upgrades. Ofcourse, if that factory is still online...
What do you think?

thanx

IIRC Aerostar has already modernized Croat MiG-21s. Like I said there are plenty MiG-21s out there in need of upgrading and a lot of money to be made. This is why the competition with the Russians is pretty big.