TIM RIPLEY / LONDON
Military aircraft in service are dwindling, with fourth-generation fighters like the Raptor and Typhoon slowly replacing their obsolete predecessors
The world's fleet of military aircraft continued to decline during 2003 as the block obsolescence of Soviet-era combat aircraft gathered momentum. Iraq's defeat by US-led forces also destroyed what was left of the country's air force and removed 600 aircraft from the Middle East.
More than 500 aircraft from non-NATO European and central Asian air forces were retired or scrapped during 2003, leading to 3.3% and 5.7% drops in their inventories. These figures suggest a far deeper problem with serviceability and operational readiness rates of the remaining fleets. Reliable data on the readiness of several non-NATO European and central Asian air forces is hard to come by and suggests many of them are non-functional as fighting organisations.
The inventories of European NATO and US air forces have remained broadly static over the past year, but the arrival in military service of the first Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptors and Eurofighter Typhoons has raised the prospect of fleet renewal with fourth-generation combat aircraft getting under way in earnest at last. The modest number of aircraft delivered so far - 18 Raptors and around 14 Typhoons - suggests that this process is going to be long and drawn out. Operational evaluation and training processes for the deployment of these aircraft are only just beginning and the first frontline combat units - on either side of the Atlantic - will not have them until 2005 at the earliest, if everything goes to plan.
This year is also likely to see renewed focus on the exact number of F/A-22s and Typhoons US and European air forces will purchase, because of a continuing decline in procurement budgets in real terms, despite the spike in spending caused by the global war on terror over the past two years.
The US Navy's decision to push for early delivery of its Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets is beginning to pay off: to date it has received 170 of the new combat aircraft, which saw service over Iraq for the first time in November 2002.
Lockheed Martin's F-16 was the world's best-selling fighter again last year, achieving 76 sales. This placed the design ahead of the Mikoyan MiG-29 with 29 sales and the Sukhoi Su-27/Su-30 with 25. These sales were a mix of new-build and refurbished machines from government stocks, illustrating again that the global fighter market is extremely tight.
Helicopters scrapped
Military helicopter orders are also proving tough to pick up, with new sales not covering the withdrawal from service of hundreds of 1960s- and 1970s-era machines. In the attack-helicopter market, Boeing notched up two orders for its AH-64D Apache Longbow, but overall numbers declined because of the scrapping of over 100 Mil Mi-24s by Bulgaria and Ukraine.
The airlift and special-missions fleets of the world remain strong and are one of the few elements of air forces that have not been downsized because of economic cutbacks, as they are too useful for the deployment of peacekeeping and intervention troops. Even in former Soviet Bloc countries, airlift forces have benefited from this trend and several of these air forces have rebranded their airlifters as civilian machines and put them out to work on charters - sometimes to NATO air forces - to earn revenue that has paid for the maintenance and servicing of their own fleets.
The growing availability of surplus, low-priced Soviet-era equipment has begun a round of equipment renewals in sub-Saharan Africa, with Eritrea, Ethiopia and Tanzania all acquiring secondhandMiG-29s, Su-27s and Mi-24s in small numbers. These have the potential to re-invigorate the air forces of small African countries, but questions have been raised about the necessity of these purchases and the business practices of the vendors.
In the Pacific Rim, the improvement in economic conditions in Malaysia and Indonesia has set off a round of new purchases. China and India continue their preference to buy new hardware from Russia, with the Su-30 continuing to top their shopping lists. The overall size of their fleets has remained virtually static, but question-marks remain about the operational readiness of the two countries' fleets of MiG-21 and MiG-17 derivatives.
Prospects for new fighter sales to Latin America during 2003 failed to materialise, with Brazil putting on hold its new purchase. Venezuela opted to buy new AMX-T armed trainers and Peru decided on a major upgrade and renovation programme for its inventory.
In the Middle East, fleet obsolescence is a growing issue, with hardly any major purchases by the air forces in the region, except for F-16 acquisitions by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, over the past decade. Low oil prices and poor economic performance suggest huge reductions in fleet sizes in the coming years. Even Israel has begun to opt to reduce the size of its fleet rather than spend money maintaining an unsustainable force structure.
Spending on new military aircraft is likely to remain largely static in 2004, with few new procurement projects. Within NATO and the USA, defence procurement budgets look set to decline in real terms and this makes rescheduling or scaling back of existing projects a higher priority. Further afield, the cost of replacing ageing and increasingly unserviceable hardware with modern equipment may prove challenging for most countries.
Source: Flight International
