Will the Polish “Golden Eagle” peck the Russian “Sushka” or choke?
Theory is a wonderful thing. It allows you to do such things with your mind (or madness) ... However, in today's plot there will be both the first and the second in abundance.
In general, actually, why did the excitement suddenly start? And with information from our eternal “friends”, the gentry. There, you know, “ganbu” (more precisely, “hanbu”) are shouting and want to imprison the minister. The former Minister of Defense, Matt Blaszczak, who since December last year is no longer a minister, but a simple deputy in the Sejm of Poland.
Why is that so? Well, it was like bad luck: we bought new luxury planes, but... it’s not the devil in the details, but the Apocalypse in the individual Air Force.
It all started recently. In the summer of 2022, when the aforementioned Blaszczak burst into hysterics about the fact that the Russians would soon go to war in Poland, and the country’s Air Force was in an indecent state. By the way, he was partially right: throughout the 90s, Poland, which jumped out of the ATS, did not acquire a single new combat aircraft. Yes, some were purchased on the used equipment market, a MiG-29 from the Czech Republic in 1995 and from Germany in 2004. And these MiGs, along with a small number of Su-22s, were Poland’s air shield until 2004, when F-16 Block 52+ were purchased. Naturally, not new.
Well, in 2019, Poland’s application to purchase the F-35 was approved. In 2020, the Polish government signed an agreement for the supply of 32 aircraft, and, apparently to celebrate, decided to transfer all its MiG-29s to Ukraine for disposal. But since the F-35 is a slow business, the Poles did not want to stay after the famous bare-sky events began, and therefore began to look for where they could buy it urgently and cheaper.
In general, there was a certain reason for the disposal of the 29s; it became almost impossible to obtain spare parts for them from Russia, and it must be said that the Polish government made simply titanic efforts to this.
On September 16, 2022, the Polish Ministry of Defense and the South Korean company Korea Aerospace Industries signed two contracts for the construction and supply aviation technology. A total of 48 FA-50 aircraft were ordered in two versions.
The first contract provided for the supply of 12 fighters in the FA-50GF modification, for which the Poles paid about $700 million ($58,3 million each). The planes were delivered to Poland at the end of last year.
The second part of the contract concerns a personal modification of the FA-50PL, created to meet the requirements of the Polish Air Force. 36 vehicles were contracted for a total cost of $2,3 billion (about $64 million per unit). Deliveries should begin in a few years.
Many people (including in Poland) asked questions like “What the hell?” and why can’t you purchase already studied and tested F-16s? With which there will definitely be no problems?
Air Force General Ireneusz Nowak responded:
“Buying combat aircraft is not like buying cars. These are years of waiting. And we have the opportunity to receive the FA-50 almost immediately. In addition, American fighters are three times more expensive.”
Perhaps this is exactly the case when the saying about “expensive but cute, but cheap but rotten” has a certain sinister meaning, but there is no need to rush.
But Polish officials were in a hurry to the Ministry of Defense. Either the SVO hit everyone in the brain, or there were problems with them, but in reality, today in Poland many people say that the fighters were bought in a terrible hurry, as if tank The columns of the Russian army were not heading towards Kharkov, but towards Warsaw.
Well, plus the eternal army mess, fierce and indestructible. The Polish Ministry of Defense, rushing to conclude agreements, did not even bother to request specifications from the Air Force, that is, to ask what kind of aircraft they actually needed?
That is, if at that time the Indians had sold Tejas, they would have bought it! It's cheap...
The premiere of the Polish pilot in the cockpit of the FA-50 took place on November 16, 2023. A short flight took place, which was immediately dubbed in the press “historical».
However, on April 15 of this year, the Polish publication Onet reported that flights on Korean fighters had been suspended since the beginning of this year, and today these aircraft “represent more of a problem than a benefit for the Polish Air Force.”
Why is this happening so suddenly? Formally, the reason was stated to be the lack of any certificates from the manufacturer. Well, yes, of course, planes cannot take off without a certificate, this is well known. And you simply cannot go into battle without a certificate. But in fact, the answer is much more interesting: Polish pilots adapt very poorly to Korean aircraft. Despite the fact that the Golden Eagle is maximally standardized with NATO products, a Korean aircraft and an American aircraft are far from the same thing.
But the situation is further complicated by the fact that the eternal chaos of the Polish military department has led to the fact that Polish officials “forgot” to order the simulators with which any training begins. Yes, they were later ordered, but they will arrive no earlier than 2025. The same thing happened with ejection simulators.
Plus aircraft maintenance, and this is a serious problem.
Training technical and engineering personnel in Poland is a long process, and sending aircraft for maintenance to the other side of the world is not the easiest task. We are generally silent about major repairs.
By the way, similar things are happening with the South Korean K-2 tanks purchased by Poland. The Polish technical staff turned out to be completely unprepared to work with such modern and advanced technology. And in order to solve this problem, a decent amount of time must pass, and who you can sincerely sympathize with is the Polish technicians, who were attacked by Abrams, Leopards, and Black Panthers over the course of seven years. And repair it - I don’t want to, but I have to. Despite the fact that Polish mechanics never went further than the T-72M.
So what kind of “miracle” did the Poles acquire? “A suitcase without a handle” or, after all, a combat aircraft capable of solving the problems of defending the Polish sky from... However, we will return to this a little later.
The T-50/A-50 Golden Eagle was originally conceived as a combat trainer and light attack aircraft.
The developer is the South Korean consortium Korean Aerospace Industries, which was formed by the South Korean companies Samsung, Hyundai, Daewoo and the American company Lockheed Martin in 1998.
The aircraft is a modified version of the KTX-2 combat training aircraft from Samsung, almost 100% equipped with American electronics from GEC-Marconi Avionics, Honeywell, Smiths Industries, Rockwell Collins, Marconi, Parker, Messier-Dowty, Raytheon and Hamilton Standard.
The engine is American, bypass turbojet F404-402 from General Electric, equipped with an electronic digital automatic control system FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) and a diagnostic system.
The aircraft's avionics consist of a multifunctional AN/APG-67 radar, an inertial navigation system with correction based on data from the NAVSTAR space radio navigation system, a communications system, onboard computers of flight control systems and weapons, as well as electronic warfare equipment.
The armament of the combat version of the A-50 aircraft includes a 20-mm three-barreled aircraft cannon. The suspended weapons are located on seven hardpoints: one ventral, four underwing and two at the wing tips. It is planned to place the following set of weapons on the nodes:
- AIM-9 air-to-air guided missiles;
- AGM-65 air-to-ground guided missiles;
- guided and unguided aerial bombs and clusters.
The total weight of weapons on suspension is up to 3 kg.
Here I would like to stop and ask: is this serious? Is this the Golden Eagle? In the image and likeness of the “Fighting Falcon” F-16?
This is the Golden Sparrow. Full similarity and analogue of our Yak-130 and their Aermacchi M-346. A combat training aircraft capable of playing, in case of emergency, the role of a light fighter or a very light attack aircraft.
And this is where the Poles decided to fight ours? It's actually kind of insulting.
Of course, they worked more carefully on the combat modification, which they called FA-50: they equipped it with a Link 16 standard communication system, an EL/M-2032 radar (not an AFAR), an additional radar radiation warning system, and added night vision devices. The mass of the combat load was increased to 4 kg. Raytheon and Northrop Grumman said they could adapt the active phased array radars found on the F-500 Fighting Falcon to the FA-50.
Funny? Yes.
Let's not even talk about the Su-35. This is too much.
Su-30SM2. AL-41F1S engines from the Su-35S with thrust vector control. Modernized radar, part of the avionics is unified with the Su-35S avionics. The range of weapons used has been expanded. In general, EVERYTHING that can be hung on an airplane is in it.
The speed is 500 km/h higher. The combat radius is 500 km larger. The ceiling is 3 meters higher.
Armament... if in tons, then 6 tons more. Well, 12 suspension points versus 7.
It’s hard to imagine that the Golden Sparrow can actually compete with the Su-30. Well, except maybe the heroism and courage of the Polish pilots, somehow nothing else comes to mind.
“The T-50 aircraft has gained great popularity among pilots, and according to a number of parameters, it is considered by experts as one of the best combat training aircraft in the world. The T-50 aircraft entered service with the Republic of Korea Air Force in 2005, and by the beginning of 2011, more than 60 aircraft had been received.”
Yes, we can be happy for those who will study on this plane. Perhaps this is so, and the T-50 is truly an excellent combat trainer.
You know, I want to dive into history, 90 years ago. In our country, in service with the Red Army Air Force, there was simply an excellent training aircraft, the U-2, which gave the way to the skies for millions of pilots. An excellent training aircraft. And when the war came, the U-2 became the Po-2, a night bomber.
It was not because of a good life that 3-4 bombs of 100 kg each were hung on a small airplane and it quietly dragged them towards the enemy at a speed of 120 km/h. And due to the low speed, he dropped them very accurately.
But has the Po-2 become a full-fledged combat aircraft? Yes and no. It caused such damage that not every normal bomber could. But a meeting with any enemy fighter usually ended sadly.
So the “Golden Eaglet” looks the same against the background of the Su-30 and, even more so, the Su-35.
It’s difficult to say what the Polish Ministry of Defense was thinking about, but they organized a quality madhouse. Okay, five types of tanks (to the three listed above you can add our T-72M and their PT-91 “Twardi”, which is different from ours), four types of self-propelled guns (South Korean, again, Polish, Czech, Soviet), five types of MLRS ( Korean, American, Polish, Czech, Soviet) and so on, so now we also need aircraft “in assortment”. So that technical brain cancer affects all branches of the Polish armed forces.
In general, it would be worth looking at how things are going with the neighbors. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have created simply a masterpiece hodgepodge of what they received from all over Europe, from old Soviet to old American equipment. And how this hodgepodge is gradually migrating back to Europe, because in Ukraine they simply don’t know how to repair it. How centers are created in the Baltic states, Romania, how excellent German self-propelled guns go to Germany...
No, it is clear that sooner or later the Koreans will train the required number of engineers and technicians, the pilots will learn to fly (well, it’s not the Koreans who will fly the planes back to them for modernization), and so on. But this is not a question even tomorrow.
But even if maintenance and training issues are resolved, the issue of efficiency still remains. If war with Russia is on the Poles' agenda, what can two light fighter regiments do? Especially when you consider that Russia has similar aircraft in combat units, and in general, what kind of knightly nonsense is this? The Poles should be well aware that they will not pull the MiG-29 out of storage for the sake of their use of Korean miracle aircraft.
The fact that the Su-30 and Su-35 (especially) will shoot the FA-50 from long distances is understandable. Radars see further, missiles fly further, electronic warfare is also clearly more powerful. Speed and altitude are also on the side of Russian cars; we are silent about maneuverability, because the variable thrust vector is a strong bonus. This is short, there may be more nuances, but what is there is more than enough to understand that the Poles were clearly in a hurry.
If you hurry, as you know, you will make people laugh. But for some reason the Polish electorate is not amused: enormous amounts of money have been spent, and the benefit from them is more than doubtful. Relations with Russia are not getting better, but the combat effectiveness of the Polish army is somehow not growing. Especially the combat effectiveness of the Air Force.
Maybe it really is useful to imprison ministers from time to time? It is clear that the “Golden Chicken” is clearly not up to par with “Drying”. He'll definitely choke.
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