Indonesia Agrees to Buy 42 Fighter Jets from China
For all the people complaining about the U.S. selling aircraft to Qatar and other Muslim nations, here is the alternative China sells them the aircraft instead:
Indonesia’s top defense official said Wednesday that Jakarta will acquire at least 42 Chinese-made Chengdu J-10C fighter jets, marking the country’s first non-Western aircraft purchase deal. Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin told reporters in the capital, Jakarta, t
hat Indonesia would soon buy fighter jets from China as part of a plan to modernize its military. Analysts said the deal could touch regional sensitivities and have geopolitical implications. “They will be flying over Jakarta soon,” Sjamsoeddin said. He declined to provide further details of the purchase.
You can read more at the link
Serves them right…
Indonesia has 33 F-16s.
Like a few other countries that have American fighters but have bought fighters from (ideologically) competing suppliers, they don’t want to be prisoners of American foreign policy.
America cannot be trusted.
Neither can France, Russia, China, Turkey, or South Korea…
…but if you have two different wings from competing geopolitical blocs, you have a better chance of having at least one operational…
…maybe two, if you successfully play them off against each other.
Well, they’ll find out…
They can use them for “red air”. Perhaps ironically.
The CIA B-26 Invader pilot who was shot down on May 18, 1958, over Ambon, Indonesia, was Allen Lawrence Pope.
After Pope’s B-26 was hit by anti-aircraft fire, an Indonesian Air Force (AURI) P-51D piloted by Captain Ignatius Dewanto was scrambled from Liang airbase and attacked the already crippled bomber, contributing to the plane’s downing.
Indonesia will be able to get real practice against F-16s and J-10s.
If you know two Indonesian words, you can understand 10% of conversations.
Rusak and Besok.
Rusak mean broken, as in “The airplane is broken at this time.”
Besok mean tomorrow, as in “Maybe we will fix it tomorrow.”
I had a rough landing at an Indonesian jungle airport and when it was time to go, the airplane wouldn’t start. An investigation showed a battery had fallen through its corroded tray at some point in the past and was hanging by its wires for some unknown amount of time. At the landing, one of the wires popped off.
This was an easy fix with a Leatherman and a shard of skanky plywood.
It is likely still the fix.