Russia freezes deal to deliver MIG-31E planes to Syria - report

rock45

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MIG-31 / Photo: www.snr.com.ru
Russia freezes deal to deliver MIG-31E planes to Syria - report

20 May, 11:06 PM
Russia has frozen its deal to ship eight MIG-31E fighter-interceptor planes to Syria, a newspaper has reported suggesting either shortage of funds on Syria’s side, or pressure from Israel.
According to a report published Wednesday in Kommersant daily, the $500 million contract to supply Syria with Russian fighter-interceptor planes was signed in early 2007.
The Sokol aviation plant began works on the modernization of MIG-31s from Russian Air Force reserves in the summer of 2007. However in April 2009 the works had to be stopped due to “absence of contract”, the paper reports citing sources at the aviation plant. No official comments were available.
According to a source close to the Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state enterprise responsible for import and export of weapons and military products, has told Kommersant that the contract had to be frozen due to pressure from Israel.
“In a similar way, when Russia signed the deal with Syria for delivery of Iskander-E missile complexes in 2005. The Israelis put pressure on Russia, and the contract was annulated.”
However a different source at the Defense Ministry, also cited by the paper, said the contract was called off because Syria could not afford the planes.
In winter 2005 Russia wrote off 70 percent of Syria’s debt, but Damask still owed Russia $3.6 billion.

Link
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2009/05/20/tosyria/
 
LOL, I was just about to post this. Not that 8 MiG-31E would change the total disadvantage of the Syrian airforce compared to any possible rivals...But still intresting.
 
Cold war bird

I'm not aMig-31 fan and never have been to me it's a cold war design made to hunt waves of B-52s. Russia should have retired them many years ago and went to a all Flanker standard across the board to cut on training and operational costs.
 
yes, but its still a step up from what the syrians have. Their best piece
right now is Mig-29s fron the late 80s...The Mig-25, father of the Mig-31, gave the IAF alot of trouble untill we got our F-15s.
 
Syria sure does have some old Fulcrums and like Iran they never upgraded or bought more I'm sure there AF is in bad shape.

Once that Mig-25 landed in Japan we knew it was trash can't imagine the Mig-31 being that much better based on the way Russia makes aircraft. Some of there equipment were filled defects every single Indian made Fulcrum had one to three different engines replaced and some still had tools left by Russian workers built into them, what a mess.

Can only imgaine how poorly made their ships anb subs must be?

Listening to you and other tankers there tanks designs could have been better as well.
 
Somehow they look good on paper and than very bad in real life. Sometimes I think they try to solve things with more brute force.
 
That's good news. No one in the neighborhood wants Syria to have a stronger air force. But as Sherman pointed out, it wouldn't tip the balance of power toward the Syrian side even if they got those 8 planes.

It's weird though, I'd think an OECD country like Syria could afford $500 million on 8 fighters any day.
 
What is OECD?

Vietnam order 12 Su-30MK2 for around $500/600 mil but I think it goes deeper then just the fighter money. Syria owed Russia money and oil output is down for Syria that's a bad combo. Not that I'm crying over it that's for sure Syria been a terrorist hub my whole life.
 
Syria is a weak country with Israel to its south, Turkey to the north and the USA in Iraq to its east. You can bet they want those birds bad enough. Dont think that the Syrians are incompetent though, they can be very smart tactically and stratigically. If you dont see the point read about 1982.
 
If I were these guys, I'd give up on the fighter jets and just plan to have a very organized guerilla resistance once taken over.
That's money better spent.
That and man portable SAM.
 
Back in the day when I trained to repell a Russkie seaborn invasion we were worried about being able to stop their largest ships (the Ivan Rogov class) with our RBS17 systems.
A few years later it came out that not one of them in the Baltic would have been able to make the trip fully loaded.

As it often turns out..
The russkies got the kit, but it´s never as good as it is supposed to be or it´s never in fighting shape.

//KJ.
 
Syrian oil production aint much to talk about.
Yeah but they're not really investing the funds in their infrastructure or improving Syrian people's living standards either. So, I'd assume that those jets would be higher up on al-Assad's acquisition list. Hmm.
 
Yes. The problem is that they have already spent so much money they did not have trying to catch up to Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. They had like 14 billion US$ debt to Russia and russia deleted most of it. The Syrians buy stuff all the time. mainly missile systems. In the last few years they bought the AT-14 and AT-13 in large numbers. They bought the AT-15 in smaller numbers. They upgraded somewhere in the region of 800 T-55 to T-55AMV standard and they Upgraded some of their T-72s to T-72AV(i think thats what it is called). They also picked up alot of diffrent rocket artillery(mainly ammunition for older systems). Plus they rebuilt much of the fortificationsand obsticals on the Israeli-Syrian border.

They simply spend too much of their non-existent funds on their defence.
 
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