Romania - US military relations

The real problem has been that unupgraded Mig-29s can do the job they were designed for.
Why spend money upgrading them to make them multirole when you just want to use them as interceptors anyway?

I think it is a shame the in service RuAF Mig-29s didn't get an SMT upgrade as part of the upgrade includes self testing components that reduce maintainence costs by a reported 40% yet cost only about $6 million per aircraft.

Over the life of the aircraft operational costs are often similar to the overall purchase cost so a 40% saving is significant.

BTW the change from Mig-29 to F-16 has very little to performance and everything to do with Politics.

I don't understand Romanian politicians. Saab was willing to sell new Gripens for the same price as used USAF F-16s but they still don't want it. Romania doesn't need Eurofighters, Gripens are good enough.

Can only be two things in my opinion.

Either the bribes are larger from the US offer, or they are actually buying power and influence. In the latter case buying good will from the US results in more potential power than Saab could ever offer.

...and lets face it Romania doesn't need real fighters anyway, Hawks or Yak-130 type LIFT (Lead in Fighter Trainers) jet trainers are really all they actually need for air policing duties over their airspace.

Without politics the best fighter for most of eastern europe would have been upgraded Mig-21-93s with helmet mounted sights and R-77 and R-73 missiles, with perhaps a new engine fitted that was a bit more fuel efficient and with a slightly larger internal fuel fraction.

It creates a relationship with the US armed forces.

The US will not invade Russia to help Romania, but now it might favour Romania over another european country that doesn't buy old out of date US products, like France or Germany.

Romania has become part of New europe as opposed to old europe... the part of europe that thinks for itself and is not led around but the US hunting commies... whoops terrorists.

It is basically a declaration of How many bodies do you need in Afghanistan for your war to provide drugs to Russia by Romania.

Sorry, I was not clear.

I said

"It is basically a declaration of How many bodies do you need in Afghanistan for your war to provide drugs to Russia by Romania."

you said:

Drugs to Russia get there throw Kazakhstan not Romania

What I meant to say was that the choice of worn out old model F-16s instead of nice near new Gripens is a case of Romanian politicians saying to the US we are part of the coalition of the willing, so how many of our soldiers can we send to fight in the various wars you (US) are involved in. I singled out the war in Afghanistan as the one they seem to currently want to focus on with the result that Afghans can now grow drugs with impunity to kill Europeans in general and Russians especially and earn money doing so.

Lots of Jamacians killed recently because the US wanted a drug dealer sent to America. It seems it is a different standard for people who create drugs for different markets.

Romanian politicians are incoherent and incompetent.

Good to know they have embraced democracy and capitalism so quickly.

Romanian politicians just want to kiss some ass.US offer no power and influence.

The ass kissing is noticed in the US. I can't deny an F-16 purchase will certainly gain Romania much more in terms of power and influence than a purchase of Gripens even though it is a much better aircraft in this particular case.
Down the line you will find closer ties with the US, and joint training exercises etc etc which would not occur if you bought Gripens.

Regarding real fighters vs LIFTs, I think national interests and pride get in the way too much in Europe.
You would think that Europe would have sorted its sht out and been much more pragmatic than it has but the power of the MIC is too much.
The result is the Gripen, Rafale, and Eurofighter and purchases of F-18 and F-16 and F-35 in the fighter aircraft category yet there is no decent medium transport aircraft in Europe yet. They are working on the A400M, but there is no European equivelent of the An-124, or Il-76.
You'd think they'd get together and instead of everyone buying fighters that some could just get LIFTs and spend limited defence budgets on something NATO needs.
Right now there is only the US which has all the pieces of the chess set.
The rest of NATO combined comes up short in lots of crucial areas.
Look at Kosovo, everyone turns up with fighters yet there are only American long range bombers, jammer aircraft, etc etc.
One of the main reasons that my country (New Zealand) got rid of their LIFTs and Skyhawks was the realisation that they were costing us money and against any threat that could attack us down here they would not last long. We are very active in international peacekeeping operations, but we know the last thing any international coalition wants from New Zealand are subsonic Skyhawks that have been upgraded to 90% the capability of an F-16... especially when everyone else brings fighters too.
So we cut the fighters that we never use and spent some real money on our navy an army, both of which we use a lot.
Somebody hijacks an airliner here and threatens to crash it into something and our airforce probably couldn't do much about it now.
When we had two dozen Skyhawks and a similar number of Airmacchis we would probably not be able to do anything about it either, because more than half were based permanantly in Australia and the other half were in Ohakea which is quite a long way from our main cities and international airports and both aircraft are subsonic.
So nothing is changed except our Army and Navy are better funded.

Then you don't understand Europe and national interests are very important.

I know that personal self national interests is what makes NATO incredibly inefficient.

If it was a group having picnic everyone brings chocolate cake and only one or two countries bring the rest of the food.

Within NATO how many different fighters were there?

How many different JSTARS aircraft or AWACS aircraft?

Everyone bought material to support their own industries instead of what the collective organisation could make use of so in the end on any mission to invade xyz country each NATO country will bring their own fighter aircraft... few of which will have much in common apart from fuel types and it will be up to the US to pay for the expensive bits that are called force multipliers like AWACS and tankers and jammers et al.

The new Eastern European additions haven't improved the situation because they are busy retiring their old Soviet fighters and replacing them... largely with old NATO fighters.

The new entrants should be buying stuff NATO needs like transport aircraft or tankers... the former they could use commercially to offset their cost and actually be useful to the countries economy as well as being useful to NATO... but no... in the East of Europe they need fighter planes...

The irony is that the economies within the EU are different enough to warrant different currencies, because export oriented economies benefit from a lower currency value, but in the Euro zone the Euro is kept with a high value to suit countries like Germany.

If they could unify the currency you'd think unifying the military purchases would be easy in comparison.

NATO should have been dissolved in the 1992

Agree, but with every bureaucracy there is power, and few give up power so easily.

How many countries need them?

Every country that goes to war in another country should have them.

They are essential force multipliers that greatly increase the chance of success.

Because it creates jobs in their on countries an gives the countrie some independence to producing is own weapons.

The high moral Europe/West should not be creating jobs and economies with weapons of war, the purpose of such technology should be for defence... as dictated by their defence departments. Countries should be allowed to produce what they want but such products should not be forced upon their own country just to create jobs... it would make rather more sense to spend that money on products your citizens actually want, and being a small cog in a military machine their defence spending should not be to create local jobs, but to provide collective security.

Sadly the reality is that NATO turns up to a fight with a dozen different types of fighter aircraft and all the gaps have to be filled by the few... US, France, UK... but of course with every deployment it is tradition for the UK government to cut military funding to the bone.

The new Eastern European additions are to poor to buy or are not interested in buying super toys.

That is why I am suggesting specialisation. The poorer countries don't need to waste money on hundreds of fighters... NATO forces already have plenty of those. Buy tanker aircraft. Transport aircraft. Jammer aircraft. Find a gap in European forces and fill it.

But no everyone needs flash shiny fighters they may never use except at airshows... the New Zealand Air Force was the same... money wasted on things we never used.
We could have spent money on long range transport aircraft which could have been useful. Maritime Patrol aircraft are useful. Even two or three AWACs aircraft would have been more useful than our two dozen Skyhawks.

When assisting the Australians in East Timor would they be glad to see two AWACS aircraft arrive? Or would a dozen A-4 Skyhawks be more useful?

This is because the EU is led by countries like Germany ,France ,Great Britain sometimes to the detriment of other countries members of EU.

Exactly... one or other side will win... High Euro vs low Euro. What the EU needs is two currencies, one that is high and one that is low and the countries can join one or the other depending on their economies.

Instead it is one size fits all... which is never true.