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Comment by firebaze | Hacker News Reader

How can Romania as a NATO member possess a MIG 21?

Romania is a kakistocracy and all branches of government and defense are affected by it. With the exception of troops sent to afghanistan and iraq the rest of the army is in a very poor shape. Despite spending 2% of its gdp on defense pilots dont get adequate flight hours.

Here is an article in romanian about a similar mig accident from 2018 (there was one in 2021 as well) and it will detail the lack of training (please use language tools to translate): https://www.vice.com/amp/ro/article/kzyed9/mig-21-prabusit-b...

The helicopter sent on a rescue mission today also crashed. Also old tech and poor training. Similar crash happened in 2013.

The migs are called “flying coffins” in romania. A few years ago one lost an engine at or after take off (it literally fell off), cant find the article.

Since the army is not much in the public eye, i can only begin to imagine the state its in. Sad but true.

Edit: new f16s are available, but given there isnt sufficient training available they cant operate all of them.

> From Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”), superlative of κακός (kakós, “bad”) +‎ -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”).

What a lovely word I learned today, thank you.

Romania had about 400 Mig-21 bought during the cold war when it was an ally of USSR. In the begining of 2000s, they modernized about 70 Mig to NATO standards [1]. There were frequent issues with them with about 20 fallen in 30 years. The aircraft were modernized but it only included the avionics and elecronic+weapons to NATO standard, I think the engines remained original. After Romania left the Warsaw pact, the Russian didn't provide engines or parts anymore.

[1] https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-defense-25405860-cate-avioane-v...

> How can Romania as a NATO member possess a MIG 21

Romania was a Warsaw Pact member before it was a NATO member

Also, the US, which is also a NATO member, possessed (and operated) MiGs, including MiG-21:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4477th_Test_and_Evaluation_S...

Romania is a former member of the Warsaw Pact and has therefore still MIGs in service.

I thought only Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria have MiGs? Due to that article where they were considering giving them to Ukraine.

Which they ended not doing, for reasons unknown.

Maybe. There's also reporting saying that Poland might still transfer some of their fleet if the details can be figured out: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/is-poland-sending-fighter-...

(I'm not sure of the relative timing of this article and the Polish government's statements)

Apparently there are a number of technical challenges, mostly related to the pilots not being up to speed with the weapons conversions, ensuring they are not identified as NATO planes and the time required for training. Someone else pointed out that it may also be the case that through channels Russia gave some kind of ultimatum about this, but that is pure speculation.

It seems like Europe announced the plane transfer without enough consultation from the countries who would actually have the planes needed. At least, that's the impression I've gotten from how fast most of them denied any MIG loan to Ukraine after the initial announcement was made

I think that's for Mig-29s specifically. To put it lightly, mig-21s are much older and wouldn't exactly be helpful to Ukraine.

Also, the romanian Mig-21 are converted to NATO specs, the ukrainean are not able to use them without training. Maybe it is the same issue with the Polish/Bulgarian Mig-29.

And some conversion lest Russia thinks that NATO planes are in the theater.

We bought them before we joined NATO.

OK, just realized how old they are. Thanks.

For everyone's convenience: Introduced: 1959

And Romania got them starting in 1962.

And made famous during the Vietnam War.

I just recently learned that even though the MiG-21 models outwardly look quite similar, the plane was redesigned many times over during its long life span, numerous versions and massive build quantity.

Interestingly Germany flew MiG-29s until '03 (sold to Poland)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-29#Germany

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