Air Forces Monthly - June 2005

[Webmaster]

A bit late this time, but here is the review for the June issue of AFM. I hope still useful to some of you:

News:
Nothing special and not much news if you have been watching the news on the internet last couple of months. Some nice news from Albania, although mostly plans. Some old news on Polish Fitters going to Vietnam. Two items from Uruguay, not something you see often. Blurry but interesting pic of PLAN Su-30MKK2. And Libya wants to buy second-hand Super Galebs  .

Goa-Dabolim
Nice report of this Indian naval airbase. With nice photo of the Tu-142, Harriers, Kiran and the carrier INS Viraat. Good information on the resident aircraft. Very nice.

Bat's Stormy Revival
Shlomo Aloni writes about the revival of the Bat squadron of the IDF/AF, now reequipping with the F-16I. Some photos, but not the best I've seen of the F-16I. Some info on the capabilities, systems and weapons. But nothing special...

UK Future Maritime Airpower
Nice article on the plans for the Royal Navy's future. The articles argues for a conventional take off and
landing ship with the more capable F-35C and the E-2 options. Preferred over current plans for Merlin AEW and F-35B. Also discusses possibility of V-22 and UAVs. Nice article.

Twilight of the Tomcat
Overview of the Tomcat current and past service with the US Navy. Addresses service entry, upgrades and combat debuts and gives a table of the F-14 squadrons. Worth reading and fairly interesting, although not much new information for most of us I think. Lots of photos, but bigger ones are US Navy photos also found on the web.

Waddington ACMI calls Time
History of the ACMI NSR range, describes the system, gives an overview of its customers (being a BAE undertaking). Goes only into detail for the participating aircraft that operated from Waddington and the NOMAD exercise (which was covered in the past). The only interesting part is where is explains why it is closed...that's why it is covered, the range closed end last year.

United Arab Emirates Air Force and Air Defence
Interesting article with nice photos. After a short history, the inventory is discussed aircraft by aircraft, giving a good overview. For (almost) each aircraft there is a photo, delivery info and current fleet. Although the latter are partly 'guesses' and 'unknowns' it is very useful. The article also gives an orbat, and short info for those types withdrawn in the recent years.

Organising RIAT
AFM always covers RIAT in full detail. Here's another one, going into the required steps to invite aircraft, organising participants stay. Fairly nice to read, if you are interested.

Feedback
Some feedback on the american air dominance article, but is just a Typhoon fan it seems (which had hardly been mentioned in the article). Someone is still wondering about the name Case White for the Typhoon service entry. Someone submitted a somewhat better Ukraine Air Force orbat (but without inventory counts) and criticizes the counts in the last article to a limited extend.

Attrition
Unfortunately aircraft do crash, and crashes sometimes take lives. Not much interesting, apart from the flawed computer software in the F/A-22 which caused it to overstress the airframe (pulling to high Gs) resulting in 3 million USD damage.

ALTHEA Healing a Broken Country
Lost track of operations in Bosnia? This articles gives a good overview of the EUFOR organisation which took over from SFOR. It discusses each helicopter deployment, in terms of type, number and  routines. Some nice snowy helicopter pics and IAR 330 pic, make it a nice article, worth reading, but the subject itself is not that interesting nor the info it provides.

Conclusion:
Not worth buying unless you are interested in EUFOR, or a big F-14 fan really short on info of its USN career. More and better pics can be found here: http://www.milavia.net/aircraft/f-14/f-14_pics.htm