Presidential Air Fleet Much Better Than NAF A renowned author and columnist Dr. M.K. Hassan expresses concern on the issue of budgetary spending. Despite drop of oil prices, the draft of the 2015 budget reportedly contains an allocation of N400m for purchase of a brand new presidential jet. This may lead to the situation when the Presidential Air Fleet will have more modern and functioning aircraft than the whole Nigerian Air Force (NAF) combined. One of the reasons the Nigerian military cannot to deal with Boko Haram is out-of-date air force. Instead of arming the NAF with modern fighter jets, Goodluck Jonathan has been building a fleet of brand new presidential executive jets. The struggling NAF is left with obsolete aircrafts to fight insurgents. The Nigerian citizens, especially in the North East, have been left in the mercy of marauding insurgents taking over the country’s territory. With this kind of careless defense strategy from the president, how can the country defeat Boko Haram? According to one of the leading international defence and security sources, IHS Janes, “the NAF currently fields a very limited offensive counterinsurgency (COIN) capability in the guise of 11 Chinese-built CAC F-7 fighters; as well as 21 Aero L-39ZA Albatros, 12 Alenia MB-339, and 12 Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet trainer and light strike platforms. It also fields seven Mil Mi-24 ‘Hind’ assault helicopters. With the exception of the F-7s, which were acquired in 2010, the NAF’s fixed-wing combat fleet dates back to the early 1980s and needs replacing.” The 12 German-French Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jets have been the main fighter jets in the fight against Boko Haram in the last six years. Alpha jets are out of production since 1991. They have some of the most obsolete surveillance capability one can think of due to low computing and imaging processing power of the electronics on board. These jets were designed for the attack of long-range fixed targets like barracks in conventional warfare and not close and highly mobile targets like Boko Haram’s pick up trucks convoys. To summarise, the capability of these Alpha jets, it is like trying to use the early version of the black and white Nokia 3310 phone for Facebook and Internet browsing nowadays, instead of taking devices like Blackberry Z30 or iPhone 6. For all his promises of defeating Boko Haram, President Jonathan is trying to use these jets as his main fighting air power to defeat the insurgents. How would it be possible to find Shekau using these?! The Chinese made Chengdu F-7 jet fighters were acquired by Obasanjo in 2005 and delivered up to 2010 as reported by Janes. “Made in China” goods and OBJ have one thing in common: unreliability, and high failure rates when and where it matters most. The Chengdu F-7 were among some of the jets that have been crashing and burning down during this conflict. I believe any fighter pilot that is asked to go on mission with any of the unmaintained jets, will definitely make his last prayers before flying one. The Russian MI helicopters are among those crashing helicopters we have got, and some did crash recently and were in the news. I am not going to talk about the Czechoslovakian made Aero Albatros L39 and the 12 Alenia MB339 military trainer jet aircrafts. Those are so old that they are supposed to be in a museum, and not for training our Jet Fighter Pilots. Some of these jets were burned down by Boko Haram when they attacked Maiduguri in March 2014 as shown in the pictures released online by the insurgents. This begs for explanation, why were even some of the jets parked in Maiduguri, the epicenter of Boko Haram, instead of outside the region? Why would Air Marshall Badeh allow this? At least we know that for security of defence assets, in most war setting situation.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 04:27:02 +0000
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