Russia is selling out its Syrian patrons to get their hands on some nifty Israeli technology:
Israel has agreed to speed up delivery of the UAVs Russia recently ordered. This is apparently in response to Russian willingness to cancel an agreement to sell seven MiG-31 reconnaissance jets to Syria. Russia refuses to comment, but it was also reported that the deal was in trouble because Syria was unable to pay for the aircraft, and Russian upgrades to other Syrian warplanes. But the Israelis are apparently willing to push the Russian UAV orders to the head of the queue, if they can be a little more certain that the Syrian air force stays obsolete.
There’s an important lesson in this — don’t count on Russia. Or, more broadly, choose your allies wisely, but stand by even the ones you chose poorly. Else you might find yourself without any allies at all.
ALSO: Russia is going to come out way ahead on this deal. The MiG-31 is a piece of crap, really, and by all accounts Israel UAVs are wicked dangerous.
“The MiG-31 is a piece of crap, really…”
It looked much cooler when Clint Eastwood stole it.
On the contrary, you can always trust Russia – to look out for number one, and devil take the hindmost.
Gee, thanks Israel for selling good military hardware to an awaken Russian Bear.
On what do you base the claim that the MiG-31 is a piece of crap? It appears to be well designed to intercept low-level penetration flights.
And, how is the fact that Russia abandons its allies any different than how the US operates whenever the White House changes hands? At least you can predict the Russians, they essentially went for the mo’ money option. i.e. Nation A will let us purchase cool stuff. Nation B just gives us a headache.
I think you mean “Russia is selling out its Syrian client, not patron.
Russia is pretty definitively the patron in that particular patron-client relationship.
Must suck to be the Syrians, having to pay for all that clunky Russian hardware, when before you were given it for free.
Free was good as the Syrians Air Foirce found its Russian planes subject to being utterly trashed as in the Bekaa Valley Turkey Shoot where the Israelis knocked down 80 Russian-supplied Syrian jets for no losses of their own). Now Syria faces some added insult to injury to have pay for aircraft only to expect to watch them go down in flames later.
Hey David. You’re joking right? I don’t really don’t think a Mig-31 could turn inside an F111. It was the top fuel dragster of interceptors. All burn and no turn and pilots were instructed NOT to over-rev the engines. They’d burn up like bic lighters at full throttle. One hell of a plane.. for 1977.
Now a sophisticated UAV gives them a good jump on the future of aerial armament. Screw the damm Syrians.
2 cents..
Russia is sitting atop more gas and oil than it needs, Europe needs it badly, and that’s the simple equation that will determine just how much weight Russia can throw around. It’s probably too early to call Chechnya and North Ossetia modern-day Sudetenlands, but it’s also too late to not think about the possibility.
Steve D. All that was true of the MiG-25, not necessarily the MiG-31. I’ll agree that the -31 wasn’t a dog fighter, but it was well designed to attack targets flying at low-level. It also had a decent set of onboard avionics, allowing the pilot to actually have some situational awareness, unlike most other Soviet era aircraft that were pretty much controlled from the ground.
Um, David? You do know that pilot training and logistics have a lot to do with winning wars, right? And you do know that the Israelis have consistently kicked Syrian buttocks for over half a century, yes?
Just because the MiG-31 has a better radar than the -25 doesn’t make it a better aircraft, nor does that advantage negate superior training and doctrine.
I am forced to recall the ancient contest between the P-40 Warhawk (obsolete when Pacific WW2 started) and the state-of-the-art Mitsubishi Zero. The Zero had better range, far superior maneuverability, and (arguably) better armament, yet Claire Chennault’s showed that effective use of competitive strategies negated the physical advantages of the Zero fighter.
In fact, the majority of Pacific War strategies involved applying US advantages in power plants, speed, and protection in order to negate Japanese advantages in maneuverability and dogfighting
Basically, the Air Force pilots made a point of maintaining an indicated air speed of 350MPH or greater. At that speed, the Zero’s (non-power-assisted) control surfaces “stiffened up,” negating the latter’s maneuverability. This allowed the USAF pilots to zoom in, fire, then zoom out, resulting in a series of individual “ambushes.” In other words, the technically inferior Americans defeated the technically superior Japanese.
Bottom line: I’ll take IDF pilot proficiency over an allegedly superior Soviet aircraft any day of the week.