{"id":180109,"date":"2017-07-16T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/16\/the-problem-was-the-original-purchase\/"},"modified":"2017-07-16T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T01:11:00","slug":"the-problem-was-the-original-purchase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/16\/the-problem-was-the-original-purchase\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem Was the Original Purchase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Austria will <a href=\"http:\/\/aviationweek.com\/defense\/austria-plans-phase-out-costly-eurofighters\">be removing the Eurofighter Typhoon from service ahead of schedule because they have found it too expensive to operate<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">It is a matter of concern for an aircraft manufacturer when one of the richest countries in the world declares its fighter is too expensive to operate.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But then Austria is a something of a special case. Critics generally agree that the landlocked neutral state probably never really needed the 15 Eurofighter Typhoons it ordered in 2003.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In Austrian hands, the advanced multirole fighter, originally designed to tackle the latest Russian threats, has been relegated to an interceptor role, with many of its advanced electronic warfare systems removed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t get why they bought the aircraft in the first place.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not like Slovenia is going to invade them any time soon.<\/p>\n<p>My suggestion would be to replace it with an inexpensive subsonic aircraft, something like the BAE Hawk, but if they feel compelled to go with a supersonic aircraft to deal with the threat from Switzerland or Italy, I would suggest the Chinese\/Pakistani JF-16, which is less than half the purchase price of western aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>But even in this case, to quote Eisenhower, &#8220;Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Austria will be removing the Eurofighter Typhoon from service ahead of schedule because they have found it too expensive to operate: It is a matter of concern for an aircraft manufacturer when one of the richest countries in the world declares its fighter is too expensive to operate.But then Austria is a something of a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,446,381,371],"class_list":["post-180109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-budget","tag-defense-procurement","tag-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}