When it comes to things like air superiority,
if you don't have to think about it,
you're probably winning.
The ground pounders in the Armed Forces of the United States
have it pretty good in that regard.
They can be reasonably sure
that if they're going into a combat situation,
death will likely not be coming from above.
But what happens to ground troops who send in
forces without really thinking about an air force?
If air power isn't a priority,
going to war in the 21st century is a terrible idea.
We're not here to make fun of countries who
don't have an air force,
especially if they aren't going around rattling sabers
all the time.
The reason a country's air force makes the list
is because they're patched together with bubble gum
and wishes and expected to fight a war
with awful training, no funding,
and little regard from the government for the lives
of the people expected to keep their terrible
air forces flying.
These are the 10 worst Air Forces in the world in 2018.
Number 10: Canada.
It's still hard to see such a stalwart U.S. ally
make the list, but here we are.
In our last rundown of the world's airborne worst,
we specifically mentioned how terrible
the state of Canada's Ch-124 Sea King fleet was.
Just to get them airborne required something
like 100 hours apiece.
Replacing them was just as laborious,
it took more than 20 years of political wrangling
to get to a point where they could
first fly its replacement,
the Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone.
But the helicopter fun doesn't stop there.
The bulk of the Royal Canadian Air Force's
helicopter fleet is flying the Bell CH-146 Griffon,
a bird known to cause constant, debilitating neck pain
in most of the pilots who fly it.
Canada never learned from its own cautionary tale.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushed
the F/A-18 Super Hornet for Canada's next-gen Strike Fighter
to replace the aging CF-18s ordered by his father
in the 1970s while the rest of its Western Allies
are upgrading to the F-35.
You can do better, Canada.
You can do better.
Number nine, China
Yeah, I know most of you called bulls*** immediately,
but hear me out.
For all its talk, China isn't currently capable
of global reach, and isn't expected to be until 2030.
It has a relatively small number of early warning
aircraft and aerial tankers.
Most of its aerial fleet are licenses or rip-offs
of other, better fighting systems.
And the vaunted Chinese Chengdu J-20 fighter was rushed
into production with a less-than-adequate engine,
which negates any stealth capabilities it
has and weakens its performance as a fifth-gen fighter.
More than that, when was the last time China did
anything with its air force other than attempt
to intimidate weaker neighbors in the South China Sea?
It wasn't a real factor in the Chinese wars
with India and Vietnam, but where it was a factor;
the Korean War, the Taiwan Strait Crisis,
and the U.S. Vietnam War, a lack of any air
combat doctrine and investment in air power
led to heavy losses and big lessons for the PLAAF?
It wasn't until after the Gulf War of 1991
that Chinese leaders decided to really give air power
another shot, both in terms of technology and investment,
but China still has a long way to go.
Number eight, Greece
There are a lot of training accidents
in the Hellenic Air Force.
After a Greek Mirage 2000 crashed into the Aegean Sea
in April 2018, a look back at the incidents
reported to Greek officials found
125 people died in 81 crashes between 1990 and 2018.
Two of those were Greek fighter pilots,
trying to intercept Turkish jets.
Since the Greek government debt crisis,
the Greek military has to be incredibly cautious
with the money it spends.
Every time a Greek fighter has to scramble
to intercept a Turkish fighter in their airspace,
it bleeds Greece of Euros better spent elsewhere.
That might be why Turkey does it
more than a thousand times every year.
And there's nothing the Greeks can do about it,
except go up and meet them.
With antiquated equipment,
due to the steep budget cuts demanded by Greece's creditors.
Turkey will soon be flying F-35s like most
NATO allies, while Greece, also a NATO ally,
but Turkey doesn't care, will be "intercepting them"
with F-16s at best, and maybe an F-4 Phantom at worst.
Number seven, Iran. The F-14s flown by Iran these days
were first introduced under President Richard Nixon.
Don't get me wrong, Iran's air force should
be given props for keeping the aging fleet airborne.
Iran's F-14s were purchased by the Shah of Iran
and when he was overthrown, the U.S.
wasn't exactly keen on providing spare parts
to the Islamic Republic.
They were able to kick ass against
Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force in the Iran-Iraq War,
but that was then and this is now.
Those things are held together with duct tape
and wishes by now, with only seven operational
Iranian Air Force F-14s.
The Islamic Republic now has to use homegrown technology
to replace certain avionics systems
and weapons on its aging aircraft,
even going to far as to claim an old American F-5F
was an Iranian-built
fourth-gen fighter in 2018
because it had a lot of Iranian-built components.
In fact, Iran is just using F-5s as a blueprint
to Frankenstein "new fighters" from its old garbage,
most of which is leftover from the Shah
or was captured from the Iraqis.
Even the IRIAF's ejection seats can't save its pilots.
Number six, Ukraine.
Ukraine has a definite Russia problem.
Not content to simply let his divorce with Ukraine happen,
Russia's Vladimir Putin is out to give
Ukraine headaches wherever possible and Ukraine
can do little about it.
Its airplanes even go down without enemy help,
as seen in the 2018 Su-27 crash in Western Ukraine
that killed a California Air National Guard pilot.
In fact, other Su-27s have crashed,
including one at an air show that killed 83 people.
The National Interest said these crashes are either
a result of poor maintenance,
poor training, and/or daredevil flying.
The truth is probably a combination of the three.
To top it all off, Ukraine's air force is so old
it was mostly handed down from the Soviet Union
after the fall of Communism in the East.
The old airframes are no match for the advanced
surface-to-air missile being fired at them
from the separatists.
When Russia captured 45 planes
from Ukraine's Su-29 fleet in annexing Crimea,
they probably did Ukraine a huge favor.
Number five, Pakistan.
On any global list of sh**-talkers,
Pakistan has historically rated very high,
especially toward its longtime arch-nemesis, India.
After fighting four pitched wars against India
and losing all of them,
prioritizing air power would seem to be the way
forward if Pakistan was still going to rattle
their saber every so often.
RAND Corporation studies still declare
that the Indian Air Force would have air supremacy
in any war against Pakistan.
Only very recently has Pakistan decided it would
be best to upgrade their fighter aircraft.
So in a joint venture with China,
they created a bargain basement version of the F-16,
the JF-17 Thunder, which now makes up the bulk of the PAF.
To give you an idea of how ineffective the Thunder is,
China doesn't even fly it.
Neither does anyone else.
The aircraft is dangerous to fly at lower speeds,
it can't fly as fast as older Pakistani airframes,
and certainly not as fast as India's fighters,
and it can't use similar avionics and some munitions
as its other fighters,
which was one of the missions in creating the fighter
in the first place.
If all they wanted to do was replace their old fleet,
then mission accomplished.
If they wanted to beat India in an air war,
well, it doesn't look good,
but it remains to be tested.
Number four, Mexico.
Mexico has been fighting a war against
the cartels for over a decade now,
and all it got them was an increase in violence
that made them the Syria of North America.
In all that time, not only did the Mexican government
decide not to invest in its air forces,
it actively allowed all of its fighter aircraft to retire.
Mexico has zero fighters.
While fighter aircraft aren't necessary as a deterrent
for aggressive neighbors,
the cartels the country is actively fighting
regularly uses aircraft to violate Mexican airspace
and move illegal substances that fund the ongoing fight
against the Mexican government and rival cartels.
The aircraft the FAM does fly cannot fly high or fast enough
to intercept aircraft used by drug smugglers
and their leadership.
The Mexican Air Force has gone full Afghanistan
with its fleet, focusing on drones,
light attack aircraft, and troop transports.
This is particularly bothersome to its northern neighbors,
especially the United States, who considers the defense
of the hemisphere a multilateral issue.
But ultimately it's also just proving to be ineffective.
Number three, Saudi Arabia.
In a prolonged conflict,
a good Air Force positions its resources
so that it has positive control over that battlespace.
When Saudi Arabia fights a prolonged war,
not so much.
Welcome to 2018, where the Saudi-lead coalition
against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen is getting ready
to begin another year of abject failure.
Not only has the Saudi coalition turned Yemen
into an ongoing humanitarian crisis,
no amount of foreign training is making
the situation any better.
The U.S. Congress may soon vote over whether or not
American participation in the conflict can continue
after the Saudis used an American-made bomb
to hit a school bus of civilian children
in Yemen, killing 40.
That's not even the first incident of indiscriminate
killing of civilians.
In October 2016, Saudi warplanes hit a civilian funeral
in an attack that killed 155 Yemenis.
The problem with the Royal Saudi Air Force
isn't that their planes are antiquated,
the problem is their choice of "military targets."
Get your sh** together, Saudi Arabia.
Number two.
Of course North Korea is going to be at the bottom
of this list.
Kim Jong-Un's air force is still relatively
similar to the one used by his grandfather, Kim Il-Sung,
and the Chinese People's Liberation Army
against UN forces in the last full-scale war
fought on the Korean Peninsula in 1953.
As a result, the North Korean Air Force
is widely acknowledged as the least threatening arm
of the North Korean military.
I imagine that the purpose of the North Korean Air Force
is to take the brunt of any initial counterattack from U.S.
and allied air forces in the event of a war.
Sure, it's a large air force,
but it won't last long in a war.
Despite their government's consistent threats.
Number one, Syria.
It's a really good thing the Syrians are being
backed up in the air by Russians because if they didn't,
the Syrian Civil War would last a lot
longer than it already has.
Almost every other power present in the region
violates Syrian sovereignty on an almost daily basis.
Israel, Turkey, and even Denmark have entered
Syrian airspace, with Israel and Turkey both scoring
air-to-air kills against Syrian Sukhoi fighters old enough
to have fought against the U.S. in Vietnam.
It's also not great to be an airman in the Syrian Air Force.
Besides getting shot down by everyone,
including a U.S. F/A-18 Super Hornet, Syrian fighter pilots
face advanced surface-to-air missiles
their airframes are not prepared to evade.
They accidentally veer into neighboring countries,
even getting shot down in Israeli airspace,
and were the first target of the U.S. retaliatory strike
for the Syrian military's use of chemical weapons.
Within 16 months of the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War,
a Syrian Air Force pilot flew his MiG-21 to Jordan,
where he defected.
The only surprise is that there aren't more like him.
So that's our list.
Leave us a comment and let us know which country
you would add to it.
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