Source: wikipedia
My friend M pointed out:
- that the cost would be 5 x $15m =$75m, plus all the annual maintenance, repair, and pilot training, will probab result an NPV of over $125m for GoSL.
- All because of a handful of light propeller aircraft!
- buying and training pilots will probably mean that it will take at least a year to properly field the planes operationally (i.e. we will have to get some expensive Russians to fly the planes for us in the interim..)
- we could easily obtain several dozens of man-portable, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air, and sea-to-air anti-aircraft missiles...and they could probably be made operational within a month.
- there must be a far better way to counter 5 subsonic propeller aircraft, than spending $125m on ultra-sophisticated supersonic war planes
Source: wikipedia
Now this is a war horse. Unfortunately the troika in power has pissed off most of the international community and have to deal with Russia who would be willing to sell them Mig-29s – which are great fighter aircraft but useless at countering a subsonic aircraft ..
7 comments:
MIG's are an awesome idea...they are capable of subsonic air attacks, are equipped for air to air combat and are relatively cheap! (being russian) the A-10's are NOT at all suited for the occasion!!! they are ground attack craft..thats exactly what we DONT need...the LTTE dont ahve that many tank and the A-10 is designated the "tank buster" so it serves little or no purpose in downing light piston aircraft! furthermore MIG-29's will be able tosecure our airpsace for years to come because they are one of the best attack crafts in operation today! so i'll have to totally disagree with you on this one...! :) sorry!
And Dim's an expert on the subject, albeit a shy creepy sick green tinged one. So up yours dawg.
I believe these MiGs could be upgraded to function as ground-attack crafts in due time as well. These were made to fight American F16s and F18s, so they are the very best we could have.
Supersonic speed is definitely vital because we would be at least 15 minutes behind when launching counter attacks against fleeing LTTE planes.
IMHO - the MIGs are overkill. we already have supersonic capability with the KFIRs and the KFIRs need to be reconfigured for aerial combat. I think very highly of the MIG 29 and would have preferred that we had procured them originally vs. the KIFRs. However we now have a different reality - we need to go into ltte "terror"-itory and wipe out their 5-10 aircraft - much in the way that you would want to destroy a tank division - hence the need for the A-10s. I am proposing more of an offensive strategy as opposed to purely defensive. "air offence being the best form of air defense" - apologies to Sun Tsu
Mahinda has just sent his son to UK. Its not cheap to educate your children over there. Hence if he made $600 million from the last deal. How much will he made now.
Its the deal between him and the LTTE. They attack but do not get shot down. In return he goes to buy big useless weapons so that he can make tons of money. All are winners except Sri Lanka.
Mahinda Cithnaya at work
I heard that the government was to spend Rs.20 billion on 6 planes? Can someone confirm the figure?
Well, i think we need need get rid of kfirs sooner.. cos i don't think current fleet left any good flying left in them. plus we can upgrade MIG29 to MIG29SMT variant (Awsome Multirole Variant)anytime lately. and remind you guys. kfirs need 20 mins lag time to charge.
Hi, I agree that MiG-29s are overkill. Somebody is making a lot of money from this deal. The MiG-29 was designed to for a look-down shoot-down capability against fly-by-wire supersonic F-15s and F-16s.
We could shoot down the LTTE Cessnas with our existing arsenal of KFirs and MiG-23s.
I also agree that we should be buying A-10s. I have been thinking this for years and in fact raised it with one of my uncles who is a former AVM in the SLAF. The A10s bring an ability to execute precision kills - we need to take out a truck of LTTE, not raze a poor Tamil village.
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