Originally Posted by
Beamr
highly unlikely as Ukraine hasn't had those in service since the fall of USSR. They have no pilots, technicians nor spare parts for those.
And the old MiG21's would be suicide missions against just about any AA equipment or FJ's in the air.
A topic about aviation... !
The MiG-21 is a very easy and pleasant flying aircraft, everything that the MiG-15 was not. It is able to be fixed with a hammer and crowbar mainly, and you can probably go to most museums and fill it up with gas 'n go. Early ones got pretty squirrelly at high speed down low, but the later versions like the ones that the Romanians fly were good aircraft. Between an A-4/F4 or a MiG-21, the MiG will still get airborne and won't need much care. The A-4 is still a neat plane, but it was a surprise to find the 21 had some systems that were much better designed. It isn't going to survive above 100', and probably going to still have issues below that. it has limited ammo for the cannon, and getting to any height that will allow anything other than a SNEB at an unseen target would indeed be high premium, flying low level and firing rockets will frag the plane if it is fortunate enough to hit anything. About the same as flopping into the area in a Mi-8 or Mi-17.
DJI drones are aviation... kind of, and give real-time targeting and directed ordnance on target. The one thing that civil versions miss is an image L/L output, but that could be done with the info that exists from the drone already if someone wants to do some good work for the Blue 'n Red. Laser is nice, sure, but you have AHRS attitude, and mag heading (or even better GPS track and video offset, so that gives the geometry, add the GIS terrain map and you have a good L/L of the center of the video. Gotta be better than calling estimates of shot fall correction. Coordinated, accurate strikes on multiple targets would help get the
"Russians, go home". They don't seem to be taking the hint yet.
We look at all problems with our own heuristic bias', the builder sees the need for a hammer, the plumber needs a wrench for the same job. Asymmetric responses need effective solutions in a timely manner, and that means M1A2, A-10C's, AH-1Z, etc are way further out than the current horizon. The guys in the field need to increase the accuracy and effectiveness of their fire, and that means targetting accuracy is needed. More T-72's give more targets for the Reds.
Glad it isn't my decision; I offered improved TB2 performance, that is at least something.