MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentina considers renting fighter aircraft from Brazil for the G20 summit in Buenos Aires
Argentina will be hosting the 2018 G20 summit of world leaders and is considering renting fighter aircraft from Brazil as part of the security preparations since the country's air force is mostly grounded or with very limited interception and strike capacity, according to Argentine military sources. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesU.S F16 will take over that task for sure.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 11:01 am - Link - Report abuse +2Leave it to the USAF. Argentinians without combat experience would be to risky.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 01:01 pm - Link - Report abuse +3Another scenario would be for the USN to park one of its carriers outside Argentina's territorial limits. Their aircraft could be in the area of B.A. in less than 15 minutes.
FIG could protect Argentina by flying aircraft out of Mount Pleasant...
Aug 31st, 2017 - 02:05 pm - Link - Report abuse +3As long as Argentina drops its fictitious sovereignty claim.
I can understand Brazil's reluctance to let Argentina use it's own pilots.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 02:18 pm - Link - Report abuse +2At least if the Brazilian planes are flown by Brazilian pilots they would return to Brazil after the conference was over.
The superlative Andorran Air Force has volunteered to provide Argentina with air space protection, and their immensely capable navy has offered to interdict its drug traffickers and fisheries violators. Meanwhile, Pakistan's tribal leaders have indicated they can secure Argentina's porous terrestrial frontiers, and Afghanistan has already sent its team of anti-corruption specialists to the Argentine capital. The mayor of Houston has promised to advise Argentine officials in flood disaster preparation.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 02:36 pm - Link - Report abuse +1Wow. Fighter aircraft to protect the summit against Molotov-throwing protesters?
Aug 31st, 2017 - 02:58 pm - Link - Report abuse -8We can be sure juicy contracts and commissions are underway under the business-friendly Argentine government.
Meanwhile, a promise of the Macri government to build 3,000 new kindergartens has fallen by the wayside.
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/2046151-revisan-el-plan-para-construir-jardines
As such, the Macri government is doing as so many did in the past: promise one thing and doing another after getting the vote.
Predictably, Ridiculous Reekie doesn't understand the fundamentals of international security agreements and obligations, and the nature of threats posed by hostile drones or purloined aircraft, as occurred in the US in 2001.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 03:28 pm - Link - Report abuse +4According to reports, Argentine conscripts shit in peoples homes ( and I don't mean in the toilets) so maybe they ( pilots ) will shit in the aircraft.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 04:46 pm - Link - Report abuse +3E.M
Aug 31st, 2017 - 05:03 pm - Link - Report abuse +3All it needs is for some loony to fly a small Cessna Skyhawk loaded with explosives into the centre where the talks will take place. It could fly at treetop height and below ground radar .
Argentina's air defence system is not the best around.
A military jet with doppler radar could pick it up and deal with it. Far fetched ?
Years ago a small aircraft crossed the Soviet Union evading their sophisticated air defence regime, and landed in Red Square !
The only actual human feces I've ever found in a plane was in a Grumman Albatross - a recently decommissioned Chilean one.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 05:08 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I don't know if this a Chilean custom upon retirement or if the previous operator had scared the crew shitless.
I understand they have their own problems regarding floods Marti.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 05:24 pm - Link - Report abuse +1http://www.thebubble.com/flooding-agriculture-impact-argentina/
Lending aircraft to the Argies ? what a daft idea.....absolutely no guarantee they'd be returned in the same condition ....perhaps as scrap iron ?
Aug 31st, 2017 - 08:27 pm - Link - Report abuse +2Regarding Reekie's comment “As such, the Macri government is doing as so many did in the past: promise one thing and doing another after getting the vote”, I presume, when he says “as so many did in the past and....” he is referring to CFK.
I think that the money that Ridiculous Reekie believes could have been spent on kindergartens in Argentina was thrown over a convent wall by one of Cretina's Crooks.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 09:19 pm - Link - Report abuse +2Kirchnerism's best: Ricardo Jaime
http://www.thebubble.com/who-is-ricardo-jaime-an-explanation-of-his-many-corruption-charges/
Isn't the act of hiring these jets, albeit for a determined period,merely Argentina engaging in the very behaviour it accused the UK of over Mount Pleasant Airbase ? Namely “militarising” the South Atlantic. Asking for a friend.
Aug 31st, 2017 - 09:26 pm - Link - Report abuse +1http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/567850/Falklands-Argentina-Falkland-Islands-UK-war-mongering-defences
Weren't the media recently proclaiming as a fait accompli the Argentine purchase of a bunch of obsolete French Super Étendards? Or was this just another in a series of Argentine hoaxes?
Aug 31st, 2017 - 10:16 pm - Link - Report abuse +2And even though the Brazilian F-5 is itself rather ancient (based on 1950s design, albeit upgraded) one has to wonder whether there are conditions extant that might prevent the Brazilians from loaning out the aircraft to irresponsible neighbours. Que yo sepa, Argentina was never allowed to have their own F-5 aircraft.
@ML
Sep 01st, 2017 - 06:48 am - Link - Report abuse -5Good to know ML is still alive and well. I thought he had been hit by apoplexy after reading the final results of the PASO election in Buenos Aires province.
Not surprisingly, he was more attracted to comment on a move to spend some dough on war aircraft--hey, what's a few more borrowed millions--than to comment about Cristina's win “for a handful of votes.”
Looking from a practical viewpoint, it would be more cost effective for Brazil or Chile themselves to quietly provide air cover during the summit.
Sep 01st, 2017 - 02:10 pm - Link - Report abuse +3...why on earth is the G20 Summit even being scheduled in Argentina???...
Chicureo: “...why on earth is the G20 Summit even being scheduled in Argentina???...”
Sep 01st, 2017 - 02:59 pm - Link - Report abuse +3Why, you ask?
1. It provides the opportunity to remind the world of how long it takes to recover from the considerable crimes of a recently replaced corrupt populist-nationalist government.
2. It serves to reveal that Argentina can't even provide the most modest level of protection of its airspace, the result of (1) above, a reflection of Argentina's continuing fourth-world status.
3. It provides yet another time and place for CFK's goons to take to the streets and conduct themselves in their usual criminal manner.
@ML
Sep 01st, 2017 - 04:30 pm - Link - Report abuse -4I am simply amazed--but not surprised. Here we have, clearly expressed, a single sentence that pretty much summarizes all that's been wrong in Argentina for the last 50 years, so thanks for your conceptual clarity, ML.
“It provides yet another time and place for CFK's goons to take to the streets and conduct themselves in their usual criminal manner,” notes Martillazo in short and to-the-point style.
This is exactly the point I have been trying to make in this forum for some time, that is, the ferocity with which a significant segment of the Argentine society has been criminalized by another narrow segment that supports obscene concentration of wealth and social backwardness.
ML's cold dismissal of a whole segment of the population explains better than I could the cruelty with which Argentines were treated in past years, using every means including death squads, the media and the army.
And this just days after what ML loosely calls “goons” participated in an election that in spite of clear signs of information manipulation remained calm and confident till the true results were released--two weeks later.
This comes almost two years in which the current governing team was able to implement the bulk of its policies with very little resistance--even with help he needed
from the opposition in Congress.
ML is apparently oblivious to the fact the Macri government is responsible for the wrong imprisonment of citizen Milagro Sala for over a year in Jujuy province, and worse, the disappearance of citizen Santiago Maldonado for one month after police forces dispersed a group of Mapuche natives in Patagonia.
Meanwhile, ML keeps parroting how the Ks are just a bunch of “goons.”
@Marti Llazo
Sep 01st, 2017 - 06:14 pm - Link - Report abuse +3So Mr. Ricardo Jaime, received USD 12,5 million in bribes and is ordered to return 2 million pesos....a bloody joke.....just like the rest of the Kirchnerites....
No use trying to reason with Reekie...his conviction that CFK was a great, and honest president, blinds his perception of reality.
Ridiculous Reekie seems to forget that Sala was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison. And that Santiago Maldonado is presumed to be hiding out in Chile after participating in crimes in Argentina. (The “dispersion” reekie refers to was in fact a response to the commission of crimes).
Sep 01st, 2017 - 06:28 pm - Link - Report abuse +5Ridiculous Reekie demonstrably retains his ignorance of the constitutional separation of powers in the Argentine government system, in which the executive branch is distinct from the judiciary. Although we must say that Kirchnerism did attempt to blur the distinction.
Shall we list the many indictments and convictions of the criminals from the Kirchner government? I don't think I have an allocation of sufficient alphanumeric characters to even begin to address the topic. Let us just say that the short answer is M, where M = a Very Large Number, though presumably finite (there is some debate about the finite nature of the number of Kirchnerist criminals, however).
Since I live in Argentina - and Reekie doesn't -- I get to see the goons and their works in first-person.
It remains to seen how well and how soon this country may emerge from the long, dark night of Goonism.
“Borrow some fighter aircraft” !!!!!
Sep 01st, 2017 - 06:56 pm - Link - Report abuse +2There's a whole world of difference between “able to fly it” and “operationally ready”
An armed unprepared pilot would be as likely to crash it or hit the wrong target if an incident that required fighter interception occurred. Such a plan could only be for show while praying nothing actually happens.
@ML
Sep 01st, 2017 - 10:00 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Shall we list the many indictments and convictions of the criminals from the Kirchner government?”
Yeah go on; just the ones who've been convicted would be fine. There's something convincing about a list of names that isn't conveyed by any amount of hyperbole.
@EM
Aren't there violent groups associated with Kirchnerism though, like the Quebrachos? And lots of protests involving blocking roads with burning tyres etc?
@Idlehands
Yeah, it seems like a bad idea all round, and sounds like Brazil won't lend them anyway. Perhaps if they are flown by Brazilian pilots instead they might agree to it.
As I said,you cannot transfer to a different type of aircraft without a conversion course which takes time. To be proficient in its combat use is a different matter. That takes months of intensive training including interception techniques, radar control, air gunnery and missile launching.
Sep 02nd, 2017 - 07:46 am - Link - Report abuse +2I am not saying that the Argentine pilots could not qualify but it seems a waste of time and money when there are highly proficient alternatives available. For a start, the Americans would not allow their president to be protected by doubtfully qualified Argentinians.
When the G20 was held in Gleneagles years ago, the foreign visitors arrived at Prestwick airport. There was a RN Frigate off-shore, snipers in the control tower and a top cover of RAF Typhoons flying around the local airspace covering their onward journey.
I am also sure some F-15's from Lakenheath were stooging around in the background.
It's not only the lack of air security, but the inability of Argentina to patrol its coastline with an operational navy.
Sep 02nd, 2017 - 01:18 pm - Link - Report abuse +2Of course, the real humor is imagining the finding more than two functioning tanks (the infamous TAM) to quell street violence)...
Clyde15 - you make good points. But even if reasonably competent Brazilian pilots and their own aircraft were leased (improbable in any event), you would still be missing a vital element since the air cover does not act autonomously but instead as part of a tactical C3I system, and Argentina is seriously lacking in that department as well. One does not simply arrive on station one day and become functional as a part of such a system, since effective integration requires considerable training and experience, and a sharing of classified information. Add to that the language barrier: the Brazilian pilots (albeit C-130 drivers) I know speak English better than argie Spanish, and the argie military are generally bereft of decent speakers of Português brasileiro. The result of such Heath Robinson improvisation would likely be the sort of chaos we have come to appreciate here, and a message to G20 members that perhaps they should consider sending their more expendable juniors rather than VIPs. We have no doubt that CFK's goon supporters will try to make a mess of the conference.
Sep 02nd, 2017 - 03:06 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I don't think the aerial danger is from hi jacked airliners but from small aircraft or helicopters hugging the ground. It takes a sophisticated radar to pick up this.
Sep 02nd, 2017 - 04:06 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I see that they have a McDonalds, Burger King and Pizza restaurant close by... the delegates should be well catered for.
By coincidence, as I write this, a Catalina flying boat has just passed my house about 200 yards away at about 250 feet up. Prior to this a Griffon engined Spitfire MkXIX came growling by at a fair rate of knots.
I keep swiveling round in my chair to see what is next. Two Mustangs and a Mig 15 are due shortly and the show will be closed by a Typhoon GR4. That should be noisy and set the windows rattling.
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!