What fighter plane do you think Romania should use?

The US is the exception that confirms the rule. It is exactly because of the agressive behaviour of the US that everybody else has to keep their heads dow. As long as we are alleied to the US we are safe. If we are invaded by the US we are toast. I have allready discussed this point in the previous post.

This actually proves my point. There are no threats because the Americans take care of them so we don't have to. If there was no NATO and no US, there would be a whole lot more threats, blieve me.
Allso, you make it sound like the US is fighting so many wars because the defense contractors are strong, and not the other way around.

I'm not talking about unsubstantiated beliefs here. I wanted to say that there are observably less wars of agression going on today, and there is an observable willingness to punish aressors (again, with the exception discussed above).

Anyway, here's some more news on the subject:
Geoana despre achizitia de avioane: Basescu si Tariceanu se bat pe o miza de 3, 5 miliarde de euro

Apparently, the decision has not been made yet. And Tariceanu is right, for once: We are too poor to buy cheap things.

The US is the exception that confirms the rule. It is exactly because of the agressive behaviour of the US that everybody else has to keep their heads dow. As long as we are alleied to the US we are safe. If we are invaded by the US we are toast. I have allready discussed this point in the previous post.

OK, but saying that it is no longer possible to start wars and invade countries is a too generalising statement and imo it runs against the recorded facts.

The US case was the most recent and visible example, but there are more. Ethiopia vs. Somalia, Ethiopia vs. Eritrea, Irak vs. Iran, Ecuador vs. Peru, India vs. Pakistan, Britain vs. Argentina, Israel vs. Lebanon etc. All just in the last 20 years.

US "takes care" of iraq mainly, which is eating up a large chunk of the yearly defence budget. it's a fight, a less fundamentalist administration would probably have avoided and as it shows now, 5 years later, it's a quite useless one.
it's also a fight, the US picked, mainly against the arguments of her allies.
given a different scenario, where more NATO members would have been convinced of an actual threat, the burden would have been less.
also, you arm yourself for different threat scenarios. for the EU, at this point there is none, that would justify a 660 billion $/year spending (to match the 4% defence budget of the US). present weapon systems are quite adequate to deal with hypothetical, non-NATO adversaries, pretty much in all areas.
while replacing old equipment and implementing new projects that make sense is recommended, none of them would drive the budget into a comparable region.

i am referring to the purchase of hardware and the replacement cycle.

The US is the exception that confirms the rule. It is exactly because of the agressive behaviour of the US that everybody else has to keep their heads dow. As long as we are alleied to the US we are safe. If we are invaded by the US we are toast. I have allready discussed this point in the previous post.

OK, but saying that it is no longer possible to start wars and invade countries is a too generalising statement and imo it runs against the recorded facts.

The US case was the most recent and visible example, but there are more. Ethiopia vs. Somalia, Ethiopia vs. Eritrea, Irak vs. Iran, Ecuador vs. Peru, India vs. Pakistan, Britain vs. Argentina, Israel vs. Lebanon etc. All just in the last 20 years.

Britain vs. Argentina and Iran vs. Irak were more than 20 years ago, and the rest are just border skirmishes, not major wars.

I just thought about something else. How come there is no plan to procure any new trainer aircraft? We want to have 40 fighters but we only have 22 advanced trainers of the IAR 99 type (10 of which are unupgraded). There are several good reasons why a rational procurement plan for RoAF should include a large number of trainers.

Trained pilots are more important than aircraft. Aircraft can be bought quickly in an emergency (or built, if we had the necessary industry), but pilots take a long time to train and we should allways keep a large cadre of qualified piolts.

Buying IAR 99 encourages the Romanian defence industry and the Romanian economy in general

Trainer aircraft are very versatile: They make excelent COIN aircraft (by far the most likely mission for the airforce in the near future), and in case of a conventional war they can be used as attack aircraft or as helicopter-killers.

So, why not get more of them?

Hi SiG,
Do you have any idea how many pilot students were admitted for training last year?

7 ( seven) !!!!!!!
So....

Ethiopia occupied 3/4 of Eritrea and is now in Somalia, Israel went deep into Lebanon and recently bombed it etc.
My sole point or observation was that saying "war is no longer possible" is a generalising statement that can mislead. Maybe it would be better if you narrow it down, like "war is no longer possible in Europe" or something like that.

Anyway, irrespective of that, you started an interesting discussion.

I was rather hoping that we could use trainers to help the regular pilots stay into shape, as flying (and maintenance) is cheaper for trainers than for high-performance fighters.

And in reply to Imperialst: Thank you for your corrections, but I never said that "war is impossible" in the first place. I was talking about Romania and I said that we are unlikely to engage in large scale conventional warfare in the near future. You cannot compare us to Lebanon and Somalia, not unless islamist terrorists take over half our country and provoke an intervention by a foreign country.

This is what you said SiG:

In those times, it was possible to start a war and invade a foreign country and get away with it (think about the Mukden incident), today this is not possible (think about the Gulf War).

Indeed, you referred to Romania and 1932. But the examples (Mukden - Asia; Gulf War - Middle East) made me interpret a rather global amplitude of your hypothesis (today starting a war is not possible). Looking globally, several wars had started in the last decades and they hadn't been stopped through massive intervention like in Gulf War II.

Anyway, I hope you understand my intention in making that observation was constructive.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on April 11, 2008 05:37 pm

Portugal bought over 40 F16 second hand 15 years ago. They were supposedly up to date, so much that they cannot be operated with the other NATO F16's and that those sent in Italy in 1999 to support NATO's campaign in Serbia were restricted to reconnaissance flights along the Italian coastline being considered unfit to front line roles. Besides they were lacking modern friend/foe ID electronic equipment.
I think this is the main problem with an F16 purchase.

According to lastest news I saw the USAF is cutting its purchase to just 160 F22 instead of the 300 that were supposed.

As for Romania's AF a JAB Grippen is a versatile, multirole cheap plane perfectly suited to Romania. We cannot expect to gain air superiority by ourselves. Or then, use the MIG 29 modernized to fire NATO ordnance, just like Slovakia just did. Cheap, well known equipment and adequate. The french Rafale, for much as I like it is too expensive for maintenance, even if it has already proven its worth in Afghanistan.
I think the main point Romania has to decide is whether to have a contract that can include parts to be built in house. That would be the best solution in order to have a return from the investment and to ensure that spare parts and technological transfers are also beneficial for Romania both from a military autonomy point of view and from an economical defense industry point of view.

Mat

183 is the figure quoted everywhere for the past 2 years. Where did you get the 160?

Show me just one picture/news release of Slovakian MiG-29 with western weapons (the one with the Magic II mock-up does not count). The MiG-29 is far from cheap in day to day, peacetime ops. And it's not well known in the RoAF, it never was. As for being adequate, it is anything but adequate for NATO ops.

Completely agree on that.
Rafale and Eurofighter are too expensive for us, Gripen or NEW Block 50/52 F-16s would be a better choice.

As for the 183 F22 fighters You are right.. I was wrong...

As for the Slovak Mig 29 see the russian RIA Novosti and the slovak news referring to a RSK Mig Press release indicated that the 12 slovak fighters had been delivered to the Slovqk Air Force. If most of the ordnance and equipment are still eastern blocks all the friend / foe ID systems and navigation systems are NATO produced in Germany / USA / Czech and Russian

According to the Slovaks the ammount of weapons stock is enough to keep using the equipment. Besides the main question and that was what I meant id not if you use a US or Russian Air to Air missile but simply the integration of communication and electronic compatibility between air forces. It is exactly the same as to use US F15's alongside French Rafale in Kandahar. In this aspect the Slovak Mig 29 are perfectly operable by NATO standards. As far as I know they will be officially presented at the Berlin Air Show between the 27th Mat and the 1st of June. We'll see then...

The real question, and I think that for Slovakia it was important is that a 2nd hand F16 for Poland costs 40 to 50 million dollars a piece and a new MIG 29 costs 23 million dollars plus between 5 and 7 million dollars for equipment to make it compatible with NATO. This means for the Slovak state to have modern planes available for operations up to 2030. Can't say it is not cost effective. If you see, most of the Greek Air Defense is Russian built and is perfectly integrated in NATO's operations.

As for the adequacy of a MIG 29 it is absolutely not under a F16 and certainly in simple dogfight might even be superior to the JAB Grippen. The problem is that it goes against the Romanian policy to keep using Russian built equipment. Simple.

On the other hand and in this lies the main swedish advantage is that their offer allows for almost 100% of technological transfer and in house construction, exactly what Romania would need to revive both IAR and Craiova...

Mat

About IAR Craiova,lets not fool ourselves.Fabrica de Avion Craiova will most certanly become a mall !

A mall most certainly not, but it is already lost a part of its platform (about half of it), which was turned into an industrial park, where several bussinesses operate. While in Craiova, I heard on a local radio station that Saab and a Czech company were interested in the factory.

I have been inside it and in somep laces it looks like an abandoned building.

In you previous post you clearly stated that they are upgraded to fire NATO ordnance, which they are not. As you correctly indicated above, only the IFF/com/nav systems were upgraded (along with some structural work)

Polish F-16s are NEW BUILT Block 52+, at the time the contract was signed the price was around 37 mil per plane.
There are no new built MiG-29s (except few technology demonstrators and Indian Navy K/KUB). All the 29s sold since 1991-92 when production ended are from stocks of planes undelivered to the Iraqi and Soviet AF (around 100 airframes). Algeria recently returned 15 MiG-29SMT/UBT to Russia because they were not new built airframes, but refurbished.

Of course everybody knows that aquisition cost of Russian hardare is lower, but I was referring to day to day cost of operating it and total lifetime cost - and lifetime duration. I doubt we'll see Slovakian MiG-29s still flying in 2030. Their (enhanced) lifespan is about 4000 hours, while a new F-16 or Gripen will last 8000 hours.

MiG-29s are not adequate for NATO ops due to very short range.

This post has been edited by Zapacitu on April 19, 2008 09:54 am