Eastern Europe's Fighter Acquisitions

All the countries in Eastern Europe need to replace their fighters. And that means all, including Greece and Turkey, who both use a relatively small number of old F-16 versions, while the bulk of their air forces is composed of old F-4 Phantom and F-5 fighters.
The other, former communist countries, have large air forces composed mainly of MiG-21, Su-22, Su-23, Su-24, Su-25, MiG-23 and MiG-29 fighters. Although the latter is compatible with current USAF fighters, the others will definetly need to be replaced until 2010. By far the largest air force in the region is the Romanian Air Force, which currently uses only 110 upgraded MiG-21 Lancers in active service, but has 164 MiG-21, 40 MiG-23, 123 IAR-93 and 18 MiG-29's in storage, all with flight resource available.
Except Romania and Bulgaria, the other former Warsaw Pact countries (except Albania), Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, plus Austria, have long been expressing their desire to acquisition new fighters.
While Poland and Slovakia have been more cautious with expressing their chosing, Hungary, the Czech Republic and especially Austria, have swapped, signed and canceled contracts on an assembly line. Austria has signed and then canceled contracts for the purchase of jet fighters almoust on a monthly basis, in the last three years or so. The Czech Republic and Hungary have also long fluctuated between American F-16's and Swedish Gripen's.
In 10 March 2003, the Hungarian Parliament has signed authorized the Government to start the acquisition program for fourteen (14) newly built, NATO standard JAS-39C/D Gripen jet fighters.
Roughly in the same period, Poland has signed a final contract for the acquisition of 48 brand-new post-level Block 52M+ F-16C/D's.
Here it is, only two countries signed final contracts, and already they are buying two different planes.
Let's look at a table, containing a list of the current active service, current flight-worthy storage, as well as future acquisition planes for jet fighters, in the Eastern European countries:

Country Active service Storage Future
Austria 24 ? 24
Bulgaria ? ? 24
Czech Republic 4 4 24
Greece ? ? > 60
Hungary 11 16 14+12
Poland 60 ? 48 + ?
Romania 110 320 ?
Slovakia ? ? 18
Slovenia 0 0 ?
Turkey 100 ? ?

 

As you can see, the reduction rate for the ones which used to be the large air forces, is rather big. However, that is not the point. My point is, if all these countries would have stayed together, in a block negociation for the purchase of a large number of jet fighters, the results would have been different.
Since all these countries need fighters which should last until 2030, since they all need NATO compatibility, inter-operability between their pilots, equipments, weapons, procedures, etc, and since all of them need the same type of modern airbases with advanced radars, communications and smooth strips, the future fighter for all these countruies could have been only one: the largest fighter program ever developed, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
If we count the needs for future acquisitions for all these countries, and we include the ones who have already signed contracts (48 for Poland and 14 for Hungary), as well as 100 planes for Romania, 80 for Greence and 80 for Turkey, we end up with only one number: 412 !! 412 jet fighters, not including the future needs of Poland, and Slovenia, which has not been counted. There you have, the possibility of selling 450 or so fighters to these countries in a block negociation. Who wouldn't want such a multi-billion dollars contract ?
If these 10 countries would have stayed together, and signed, together, a 40 billion dollars contract for roughly 400-450 JSF's, they would have all had the same number of jets, but all of them would've been fully compatible and inter-operable Joint Strike Fighters. Stealth, supercruise and supermanoeuvrability, as well as the capability to land on air strips, aircraft carries and highways, plus the latest weapons, would have then be available to them.
However, political and business pressure meant that these countries will now buy different types of planes, in different intervals, and perhaps even at a different price!! The result will be 10 countries, with 4-5 types of planes, which use 4-5 types of missiles, 4-5 types of radars, perhaps two types of fuel, and all have different ranges, payloads and capabilities.
Is that inter-operability ? ...

Links:
Hungary buys JAS-39C/D,
Poland buys F-16C/D.


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©2003 Sorin A Crasmarelu

June 2003

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