Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Are they shore-launched versions? AFAIK, if Ukraine has any navy at all left, it would take some doing to mount Penguins on essentially Warsaw Pact vessels. I imagine it would also be very tricky to rig UAF planes to launch Penguin (on the avionics-weapon targeting links side of things). The simplest, most practical platform ATM would, I imagine, be a land-based mobile launch system.
It makes a lot of sense to offload former Pact members' Pact-based heavy weaponry and aircraft and replace it with western stuff. A sticking point may be who foots the bill for it all. Western stuff is more expensive to purchase and maintain. What needs to happen (and we're starting to see a bit of it already) is that all NATO member nations' defense spending needs to pick up.
Re equipping the Baltic States' air forces with F-4s and other older models, it'll still take a couple of years to train up pilots and, by the time they're ready, those aircraft will be even further out of date. I'd love to see a deal between the Baltics and Sweden for Grippens. Not only is it a newer, arguably more capable (and probably cheaper) alternative, it would bind Sweden closer to NATO.
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Ukraine had virtually no navy to begin with - their largest combat vessel was a single 257 ton
Matka-class missile boat (captured by Russia).
Re: Gripens, they're actually fairly expensive. Back in December as part of a pitch to India, Saab revealed that the bid price to Finland for 64 Gripen E was 125 million Euros each with a weapons package, or 101.6 million Euros for just the airplanes (the pitch was to show that Gripen was half the price India was paying for Rafale). Maybe some of the older C and D models could be leased from Sweden as they get more E, like what the Czechs and Hungarians have done, but if they're going for a complete switch from WP to Western aircraft, the F-16 is far more likely to have surplus aircraft become available, given that more than 4,600 of the Falcon have been manufactured to less than 300 of the Gripen.