(03-11-2022, 01:49 PM)BostonCard Wrote: In the meantime, apparently the line of how much NATO will do apparently lies between giving Ukraine anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, but not giving them jets.
BC
The idea of giving them jets has IMHO many issues that for some reason nobody is talking about. "On 7 September 2011, the Polish Air Force awarded a contract to the WZL 2 company to modernise its MiG-29 fleet to be compatible with Polish F-16s." This means a glass cockpit, changing the hardpoint rails to support NATO weapons, changing the communications system to NATO standard, and changing the IFF system to NATO standard. The cockpit should be quite foreign to the Ukrainian pilots. The weapons Ukraine is using are as far as I know of Soviet origin. The Polish planes can't carry them, can't target them, and can't fire them. The comms would have to be removed for security reasons leaving VHF voice with no encryption as the only communications, The IFF crypto box would also have to be removed. The transponder could be retained, but it is improbable the Ukraine is using a STANAG 4193 compatible system with their own crypto anyway. AFAIK, Ukrainian MIG-29s still are using Parol for IFF. It operates on completely different radio frequencies, so the antennas aren't even compatible. They aren't you father's Fulcrums.
As an update, the Polish jets apparently did NOT get updated for NATO weapons. They still use Soviet ones. The electronics issues are still there though.