An interesting article over at Foxtrot Alpha about The USAF's 480th Fighter Squadron with F-16CJs participating in Exercise Dacian Warhawk and engaging in dissimilar ACM against Romanian MIG-21 Lancers.
The Romanians have certainly gotten their money's worth out of their MIG-21s. A write-up of the upgrades performed by Israel in 2002 on 102 of Romania's MIGs, giving the MIGs all-weather capability and upgraded avionics and weapons systems can be found at Defense Update.
The upgrades included 25 aircraft configured as an air interceptor variant and 85 configured as a ground attack variant. According to the Foxtrot Alpha article, 36 of the 108 remain flying.
Not bad for fifty-year-old aircraft still flying today. Romania is moving to replace their MIG-21s with F-16AM MLU Vipers coming from Portugal. The MIG-21 will still continue to fly in other nation's air forces including India and Croatia.
Perhaps the Romanians will surplus out their MIG-21s and hopefully they'll wind up on the market in the US for sale. A MIG-21 Lancer would be quite an upgrade for Murphy's Law.
2 comments:
I could do wonderful things with a Mig-21.
OH man the gas bill though...
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