Posted on 11/02/2014 8:03:57 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Austria is a tiny, politically neutral country with no nearby enemies. And yet the Austrian air force possesses 15 high-performance Typhoon jet fighters.
Not only are the twin-engine, supersonic warplanes arguably unnecessary in light of Viennas defense needstheyre also too expensive for the governments modest military budget.
The 15 Typhoons rarely fly. And when they do, they carry only a tiny fraction of the weaponry that other Typhoon operatorsthe U.K., Germany, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabiaroutinely hang on the high-tech fighters.
And in stark contrast to other countrieswhich usually employ twice as many pilots as they have fighters, thus ensuring theres always someone available to fly a particular plane into battlethe Austrian air forces payroll is sufficient for just 11 front-line Typhoon pilots and one trainee.
In other words, Austria has way more high-end air-combat capability than it can afford to actually make useful. Taken together, Viennas air-power investment produces almost embarrassingly modest results.
On any given day, just three Typhoons are combat-ready with pilots and weaponsand only between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Their operating budget allows for a combined 180 minutes of flying per day within those business hours. The Typhoons take off so rarely that, at current usage rates, the airframes could last for centuries with adequate upkeep. Unlike, say, U.S. Navy F/A-18s, which fly so often that the Americans worry about them wearing out after just 20 years of use.
And when Austrias fighters do launchto patrol over some high-profile meeting or to escort a wayward airlinerthey often carry only a single, short-range air-to-air missile.
So much warplane for so little firepower.
Best plane bribery can buy Alleged bribery could explain the whole, absurd Austrian Typhoon debacle. Its possible Vienna shelled out $2 billion for warplanes it doesnt need because Eurofighter, the consortium that produces Typhoons, paid off key officials.
To be sure, Austria needs some warplanes. Most industrialized countriesisolated New Zealand is one exceptionpossess at least a few jet fighters for aerial self-protection, otherwise known as air policing.
But countries of Austrias size, wealth and situationnine or ten million people, a GDP of a few hundred billion dollars, no immediate military threattend to favor inexpensive fighters. The Czech Republic and Hungary each bought 14 copies of Swedens single-engine Gripen fighter, priced to move at just over $60 million apiece.
In the early 2000s, Austria rejected the Gripen in favor of the $125-million Typhoon, even though Austrias previous fighter had been the 1950s-vintage Draken, the Gripens uncomplicated Swedish predecessor.
It would be years before Viennas preference began to make sense. In November 2012, German police raided the Hamburg home of one Frank Walter P., looking for evidence of corruption.
During the sale of Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Austria, an estimated 113.5 million ($144 million) is believed to have been transferred from [Eurofighter member] EADS to the accounts of dubious companies, Der Spiegel explained.
Public prosecutors in Vienna and Munich suspect that the millions of euros may have been used to bribe Austrian decision-makersor as kick-back payments to greedy EADS managersor perhaps to establish slush funds within the consortium.
In any event, in the early 2000s, Vienna wanted 24 Typhoons. Then leftists gained power in Austrias 2006 elections. Vowing to cancel the Typhoon deal, they discovered that the cancellation fees would have been more than a billion dollars.
So they cut the order to just 15 copies of the most basic Tranche 1 Typhoonand ultimately paid for just a few IRIS-T heat-seeking missiles, 12 pilots and no more than 1,070 hours of flight time per year for the whole fighter fleet.
After all, with an annual military budget of just $4 billion, thats all Austria can afford. Every Typhoon flight hour costs as much as $15,000 once you count fuel and maintenance. A Gripen can fly for an hour for around $5,000.
The operational cutbacks are the inevitable result of a small country buying too much fighter. And limited flying time can have dangerous consequences. Austrias air force doesnt have many responsibilities, but it must as last protect the countrys air space.
Thats hard to do with three hours of flying per day. Just ask the Swiss. On the early morning of Feb. 17, the copilot of an Ethiopian Boeing 767 airliner flying from Addis Ababa to Rome hijacked the plane and its 202 passengers while the pilot was in the toilet.
Italian jet fighters intercepted the airliner and, later, French jets followed it until it landed in Geneva. The Swiss air force was unable to send its own F-18 fighters to help with the aerial policing because Switzerlands flying branch wasnt yet open for business.
Realizing its got its own gap, this fall the Austrian defense ministry announced it would upgrade 12 of its nearly 50-year-old Saab 105 combat trainers, which are subsonic and even more lightly armed than the Typhoons.
The Saab 105s will fly 1,200 hours of air policing every year, 130 hours more than the Typhoons do. For Austria, it would have been better to buy cheaper fightersmore powerful than Saab trainers but less powerful than Typhoonsand fly them more often.
But then, possible bribes worth potentially tens of millions of euros have a way of defeating reason.
Shall not be infringed. Austrian’s get to decide what they protect themselves with... Not some outsider.
You can have my j15 when you pry it from my cold dead... Nope i kicked your ass with it. Nevermind.
Teeman
The main thrust of the article is government corruption. Bribes paid by the manufacturer to get government officials to buy this particular fighter. The “too much fighter” is the symptom.
True dat.
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/pentagon-downgrades-jet-specs/
Perhaps they can get the Spanish to re-open the Buchon production line for a smaller and cheaper fighter for the Austrian Air Force? And I recall that a few years ago the Russians had started making Yak-3s to sell to folks in Europe and North America, who wanted to own and fly a WW2 airplane.
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