Interview with Commander of Serbian Air Force and Air Defence, Brigadier General Ranko Živak to Beta Agency. Commander of the Serbian Air Force and Air Defence, Brigadier General Ranko Živak, announced planned delivery of the first four domestically-produced school aircraft Lasta-95, from the Pancevo factory Utva, by the end of 2010.

In his interview to Beta Agency, Živak said that these would have been the first new aircraft to be introduced into SAF armaments ever since 1992, when the last Eagle and Supergaleb were assembled.

He said that two prototypes and 15 serially-produced Lasta-95's in total would come from Utva to SAF.

"According to the current project and the funds appropriated, it is planned that we receive four aircraft by the end of the year, six next year and five of them in 2012", General Živak said.

According to him this is very good aircraft for the initial training giving young pilots possibility to learn how to fly, and even to make some mistakes.

"It allows them to do all the acrobatics necessary to evaluate the skills and make selection of candidates, which was not the case with Utva 75, which is currently used for training," Živak said .

He added that the plan was to create conditions for training pilots for the most modern multi-purpose fourth generation combat aircraft introducing the new aircraft for training and modernizing and digitizing the Supergaleb G-4 jet fighter school aircraft .

Although the digitization of G-4 should already have started, Živak said that the lack of money and repair facilities slowed down the process of choosing from the foreign partners and modernization.

He added that therefore the possibility is being considered that the whole process is taken by a foreign company which would be selected to deliver a new multi-purpose combat aircraft in order to adapt G-4 to the capabilities and ergonomics of the new aircraft cockpit.

Živak also said that an expert team from the Ministry of Defence and the SAF have made initial contacts with the producers of Russian aircraft Sukhoi, Mig-29m2 and MiG-35, French Rafale, Swedish Gripen, the US F-16 and F-18, as well as Eurofighter, that the most of them responded and that very high-quality presentations of these aircraft have already been made.

The task of the team is to set out a comparative analysis of the aircraft features and to rank the candidates by the end of the year.

"This is the best we can do at this point. This will be followed by discussions on economic aspects, possibilities of a wider interstate economic cooperation and the modalities of supply, and not irrelevant is also the political level which sometimes might be crucial. It goes beyond our competence," General Živak said .

However, he could not say what would be the price of these aircraft, because it depends on a number of elements such as the quantity of ordered aircraft, purchased weapons, training, and whether some other economic interstate cooperation would be achieved.

Commander of the Serbian Air Force and Air Defence recalled that the Czech Republic and Hungary, according to unofficial sources, have been paying for the leasing of 14 Gripen aircraft in the period of ten years between 40 and 50 mil euros each.

The Russian models, according to him, are maybe somewhat more affordable, but the final decision will not be made only because of the nominal price, but depending on the estimated costs of operation and maintenance, mandatory maintenance and modernization needs.

Speaking about transferring six Supergaleb G-4 aircraft from Podgorica to Serbia, Živak said that the agreement is pending the ratification in the parliaments of the two states, while the discussions about possible takeover of Eagle aircraft from Banja Luka have not seen any progress.

Air Force Commander said that in 2009 Serbian pilots spent in the air about 30 hours on average, and this year it is expected that their flight be increased by approximately 20 per cent.

"This is a significant improvement given that a few years ago the training system was jeopardised as they flew only several hours. However, it is still far from what we would like to have, and that is at least 80 hours per year, which would allow maintaining of the training level and providing quality training for young pilots", Živak said .

According to him, the Serbian air force "loses" between five and ten aircraft and helicopters a year whose lifetime expires. Our efforts to compensate for the loss by accelerating the maintenance is often hampered due to lack of money and spare parts produced in the country and abroad.

Many factories producing the spare parts and subcontractors, meanwhile, have ceased to exist or been privatized, after which they changed their production programme and are no longer interested in producing small series of products for the needs of aviation.

Živak designated as a problem also insufficiently adapted capacities of the Aviation Institute "Moma Stanojlovic" to the real needs of the military, underlining the necessity of its internal restructuring.

This is necessary in order to strengthen the capacities for maintenance of purposeful aircraft such as G-4 or Gazelle helicopters, primarily on account of aircraft Utva 75, whose taking out of service is planned after receiving Lasta-95's.

General Živak added that currently it is not possible to use Mig-29 aircraft in the air defence system, because the flight training on this type has stopped due to failure of the only one two-seater that has been in service in SAF. After the contractor for the maintenance provides the necessary spare parts for the aircraft which is in warranty term, the training will continue, and after that their introduction in service is planned with more modern weapons.