New OOB for Finland... (OBSOLETE THREAD)

[Warhero]

Zipuli, why you didn't added Hornets into this year (2006) too? Am I understood something wrong? I mean that if I want to use aircraft, I must choose only Hawk fighters? You say "Now the Hornets perform only anti-fighter-duties". Ok, I understand it but why they are still not available in your OOB at this moment too (I just checked this)... Is it really so that Finnish airforce's main fighter is still Hawk, not Hornet???

Anyway, your OOB is otherwise very good done!

Warhero

[Thexder]

Warhero said:
Zipuli, why you didn't added Hornets into this year (2006) too? Am I understood something wrong? I mean that if I want to use aircraft, I must choose only Hawk fighters? You say "Now the Hornets perform only anti-fighter-duties". Ok, I understand it but why they are still not available in your OOB at this moment too (I just checked this)... Is it really so that Finnish airforce's main fighter is still Hawk, not Hornet???

Warhero

If I've understood correctly, the Hornets don't have any weapons with which to shoot the ground targets. Like Zipuli said, they are only used to fight the enemy air forces, not ground objectives. And the game, of course, doesn't simulate the dog fights high above the infantry. If I remember correctly, there has been some talk of purchasing air-to-ground weapons to the Hornets as well. But it hasn't got approval yet (I'm not sure whether this is because political or fiscal reasons - or both).

Cheers,
Jukka

[Zipuli]

Yes, as Thexder says Finland has no A-G weapons for Hornets, nor A-G training for Hornet pilots... Only a few Hawks are used for war-time dutied anymore, and I am quite confident that they wouldn't attack ground targets either, but I gave them rockets for I've seen some photos of Finn Hawks with rocket pods under wings... Not sure if they were only for tests or..???

The reason Finnish Hornets are called F-18, not F/A-18 is that they were bought only for air-supremacy (sort of ) duties and all air-to-ground stuff was left out. BUT now that the politicians decided to remove AP (anti-personel) land mines from use before 2016 something was needed to replace them. How would you replace AP land mines? Finland's decision was to buy MLRS rocket launchers and later to arm some of the Hornets with "glide-bombs" (sort of "smart" cruise-missile-meets-iron-bomb-thing).

I'm not into politics, but it does sound a bit weird, doesn't it?

Zip

[pdoktar]

Politicians decide, everybody else whines.. Knowing that the Hornet deal became quite expensive it can be said that Buying the whole package at the first time might´ve been somewhat cost-efficient.

Interesting enough, finns decided against SP-artillery, but are now buying MLRS, knowing the quality of Tampella and Vammas´ guns, it is unbelivable that their products couldn´t be integrated to, say, AS90.

And now they´re buying MLR$...

[pdoktar]

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Check out tanknet armor scientific forum, topic some autocannon penetration numbers. There´s a lot of other stuff too for the interested one in various topics.

[Warhero]

Thanks about make it clear Zipuli. It's bit weird that Finland still have not "proper" air support for ground forces... Maybe after joining NATO in future?

[Thexder]

Warhero said:
Thanks about make it clear Zipuli. It's bit weird that Finland still have not "proper" air support for ground forces... Maybe after joining NATO in future?

I can't brag about knowing that much about Finnish army (served 4½ out of 6 months in MP company and hvy mortar company before changing to civil service) but I think it's logical in some way. One has to bear in mind that Finland only about 60 (Zipuli might know the exact number) Hornets againts hundrets of fighters our "most probable" enemy has. So in many ways it would be counterproductive to use this valuable asset for ground targets as Finland has - proportionally - stronger ground forces than air forces.

This is also linked to the failed attempt from military to acquire gunships. Maybe they thought that they would first take care of the air defense and then buy gunships to strenghten the defense against ground targets (ah, it would've been neat to use Apache's while playing with Finland). But all this is just my own speculation. I know there's many Finns in this forum that knows better.

As for NATO, I don't see Finland joining any time soon, at least not before 2010. But the truth is that the Finnish army is already compatible with NATO-standarts and when I was there many officers were certain that Finland would join. Well, that was four years ago and now we re-elected a president who is very much against NATO and the public is against joining with about 60% opposing and 25% for it.

Cheers,
Jukka