Message posted by Magoo on February 15, 2000 at 19:07:25 EST:
I've heard the Moldovan MiGs are at AMARC awaiting a decision on their future. My feeling is they will probably be either scrapped or just stored in the open, as they are very early export models, and would be very expensive to return to flying status for DACT flying purposes. The German MiG-29s were flown against in Europe in early 1990 by USAFE pilots, almost as soon as the wall came down and the East German AF was integrated into the Luftwaffe. They regularly fly against UK based F-15s, and other NATO aircraft. The Australian Air Force had the pleasure of flying against some Malaysian MiG-29s last year, and our F/A-18 pilots found that, although close in the '29' could turn with them, they had no 'legs' and no BVR capability without the helmet mounted sights and R-73 and R-77 AAMs carried by Russian and some other export MiGs (e.g. India). The Malaysian MiGs are being updated now to the latest 'M' standard. You're right about the actual hardware used at Nellis not being used as targets. A friend of mine flew at Green Flag last year, and he said the signals were sent to a cheap target emitter via ground link from the actual radar site positioned out of harms way. The emitter was a small dish placed on a plywood replica of what the type of radar site would look like, and this is what was targetted and attacked. The actual radar hardware could be re-used over and over in this way. There is actually a unit at Nellis that is divided into Russian and Iraqi sub units, and these guys operate all this equipment, and they eat, breath and live like Russians and Iraqis. They know the tactics, wear the uniforms, have pictures of Lenin and Saddam in their rec areas, and basically go the whole nine yards. Magoo
In Reply to: Re: Janet Flights posted by Richard Cliff on February 13, 2000 at 19:37:42 EST:
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