Arms race: Greece & Turkey
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As far as i knowwe have 10 year plans, however the last decade has shown that even the skeleton of that plan is very fragile due to economic and political reasons.
En example is the TF-2000 AAW frigate. The project is shelved due to economical and political reasons.
Another issue is, in Turkish armament projects an estimated budget is allocated before the project starts, which in return may affect the yearly allocated def budget for the next years.
Turkey spends like ~3bn$ per year for new purchases and like ~7bn$ for support,payments of started projects,salaries of officers and spendings for the conscripts. The figures are rough not exact amounts..
En example is the TF-2000 AAW frigate. The project is shelved due to economical and political reasons.
Another issue is, in Turkish armament projects an estimated budget is allocated before the project starts, which in return may affect the yearly allocated def budget for the next years.
Turkey spends like ~3bn$ per year for new purchases and like ~7bn$ for support,payments of started projects,salaries of officers and spendings for the conscripts. The figures are rough not exact amounts..
Thanks for your info beleg. it looks like a year of turkish armament is equal to the greek empae 2006-2010..my point is that because of this turkey will increase the gap to her side and maybe Greece to the next empae if economy allows must direct more money to her defence as it happened after the imia incident 1996..Greece spends now about 2.75% of GDP about 5.5 billion euros most of them payments of previous projects and logistics..as i have written at a previous post the 30 f16s blk 52+ was maybe the first and the last big project between the years 2003-2009. the empae 1996-2000 was a trully gigantic programme targetting mostly to bring air balance over aegean..it looks like too many projects will merge into the 2011-2015 empae targetting the same time to air and naval balance..guess that the programmes wont be fulfilled in numbers and projects as originally planned cause in Greece Generals do not influence that much the political arena as in Turkeybeleg said:
You are missing a crucial point. You should rather focus on the allocated yearly budget of the defence ministry for our countries and compare it to the population or GDP to have an insight.
The defense budget is always related with the size of the GDP , population and political ambitions of a nation. Compare Turkey with EU giants UK , France & Germany which have similar powers and history, we dont spend anything. The last few years Greece enjoyed silence form Turkish side due to economical reasons and started alot of projects and of course this has now caused a slow down on your side.
Mind you most of our expenditure goes to feeding the mostly conscript army
(750.000 + soldiers to be every year)
The defense budget is always related with the size of the GDP , population and political ambitions of a nation. Compare Turkey with EU giants UK , France & Germany which have similar powers and history, we dont spend anything. The last few years Greece enjoyed silence form Turkish side due to economical reasons and started alot of projects and of course this has now caused a slow down on your side.
Mind you most of our expenditure goes to feeding the mostly conscript army
(750.000 + soldiers to be every year)
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Greece ending the 80s' had a 210.000 troops (army, airforce,navy)..nowadays cause of the demographic factor and that from a 18 months of service and few more to the other to branches has ben reduced to 12 months service. this means a significant reduce in numbers i think it is around 140.000 or maybe less not sure.beleg said:You are missing a crucial point. You should rather focus on the allocated yearly budget of the defence ministry for our countries and compare it to the population or GDP to have an insight.
The defense budget is always related with the size of the GDP , population and political ambitions of a nation. Compare Turkey with EU giants UK , France & Germany which have similar powers and history, we dont spend anything. The last few years Greece enjoyed silence form Turkish side due to economical reasons and started alot of projects and of course this has now caused a slow down on your side.
Mind you most of our expenditure goes to feeding the mostly conscript army
By cutting by one third the figures it means that expenditures for logistics feeding is reduced and quality of servicemen rises. I guess that also Turkey is planning to cut down numbers and to hire troops in order to have a semi-professional army like Greece. Smaller in numbers but more professional.You are right that Turkey had in 2000-2001 very hard problems with its economy (almost a crack down -10% of Gdp in a year) and had to slow down defence budget because of loans terms to the International Monetary Fund..In the 90s the whole decade Turkey had ongoing a really huge armament plan and Turkey enjoed a kind of silence from Greek side (mostly the first half of the decade) cause greek economy entered the 90s in a trully mess. The turkish airforce mostly was the factor that was concerning the defence. Greek fleet had in the 92' a fleet of 40 F16+40Mirage 2000 and Turkish fleet 120 f16s. The assembly line continud to supply the turkish airforce F16S in a rate of almost a squadron in a year basis. In 92 the greek goverment ordered 40f16s blk 50 and the turkish response was 40+40 f16s blk 50. When the aegean crisis in 96' erupt the haf had 75 third generation aircraft and the tuaf about 150-160. In 97' started deliveries of the order of 92. The meantime the assembly line continued to produce f16 for tuaf. The aim was 240 ac until 1999 (cause of loses then the fleet tottaling to almost 220 f16s) In 99' greece made her move to reduce the gap in quantity and quality ordering 60 F16 BLK 52+ and 15 Mirage 2000-5 and an upgrade to 10 older Mirage 2000 to -5 standard. In 2004 ended the deliveries of the f16s and until the end of the current year the Mirages issue will be resolved and will be operational to their squadrons. The last order 2005 for more 30 f16s blk 52 to fill in the gap cause of withdrawal of about 60 a7+f4 until 2010. As you see there are about 5 to ten years that armament of one country or the other that expenditure is rising to high and then about 3-5 years of silence in order to give a balance and breaths to economy. Cheers
Hi guys
this is my first post in Defence.talk. Most of you look familiar :heart , not so strange I suppose.
An update on Greece's new fighter.
the Minister OD in a radio interview stated that the present government's intentions include the participation in the Eurofighter consortium. ALso he stated that the decision on the new fighter might come before the next parliamentary elections in 2008. Projected military investment wil reach 26 bn Euros in the next decade at 11.36 bn for 2006-2010 and almost 16 bn for 2011-2015. 19 bn of those will go to cure obligations sustained from previous procurements. Also that 26% of the rest budget ( around 2bn will go to upgrades and not for new systems). Source "imerisia" (daily news paper).
Note that Greece's military budget was burdened by the decision of the current governement to count military ascuisition spending concurrently with contract signing and not when the actual delivery takes place as did previous governments and many other European countries. This decision was overthrown however by a decision of the EU that military spending ought to be counted in the budget of the year of delivery of the actual system, a decision probably dictaded by bigger spenders like France and Holland which follow a similar tactic.
Fantasma, the thing is that spending is already late due to the deficit restrains from the EU. Even near-term acquisitions will be sustained by long-term finance (loans) meaning that payments are put off for the future. We will probably see major decisions curing urgent needs like the NH90, Helios Meko upgrades and sat comms as well as the beginning of major naval programms (frigates) which in any case take long to result in contract signing and even longer to provide actual active units.
cheers
George
this is my first post in Defence.talk. Most of you look familiar :heart , not so strange I suppose.
An update on Greece's new fighter.
the Minister OD in a radio interview stated that the present government's intentions include the participation in the Eurofighter consortium. ALso he stated that the decision on the new fighter might come before the next parliamentary elections in 2008. Projected military investment wil reach 26 bn Euros in the next decade at 11.36 bn for 2006-2010 and almost 16 bn for 2011-2015. 19 bn of those will go to cure obligations sustained from previous procurements. Also that 26% of the rest budget ( around 2bn will go to upgrades and not for new systems). Source "imerisia" (daily news paper).
Note that Greece's military budget was burdened by the decision of the current governement to count military ascuisition spending concurrently with contract signing and not when the actual delivery takes place as did previous governments and many other European countries. This decision was overthrown however by a decision of the EU that military spending ought to be counted in the budget of the year of delivery of the actual system, a decision probably dictaded by bigger spenders like France and Holland which follow a similar tactic.
Fantasma, the thing is that spending is already late due to the deficit restrains from the EU. Even near-term acquisitions will be sustained by long-term finance (loans) meaning that payments are put off for the future. We will probably see major decisions curing urgent needs like the NH90, Helios Meko upgrades and sat comms as well as the beginning of major naval programms (frigates) which in any case take long to result in contract signing and even longer to provide actual active units.
cheers
George
After the KYSEA meeting the EMPAE 2006-2010 was approved at a 11.4 bn budget out of which 8.5 concerning payments of previous projects and 2.9 bn for new acquisitions. To the next EMPAE 2011-2015 budget is estimated to 15.5 bn out of which 1.1 are payments and the rest for new procurements. As the MOD suggested and was accepted by the KYSEA meeting the new generation fighter aircraft was postponed for even later the 2009 to the next EMPAE 2011-2015 (source "in.gr"). This means that the budget that was supposed to be directed for about 30-40 airframes 3.2 bn will be added to the programme of the 2011-2015 which is estimated to 4.75 bn euros??? Lets see if any other details will be released on the matter or about the other projects.
Top priority programms are the precurement of 20 new helos (NH90?) the initiation of the frigate (2+2+2) programm and the training aircraft. 600 mil Euros for upgrades will include funds for the Meko2000H upgrade and funds for F16 weapons and pods. Yesterday 33 APIS II EW systems were ordered for the 2009 F16's for 96 mil $. Since both the new ship building and the frigate upgrades as well as the training aircraft as well as the new fighter are programms which will run for a long time and well into 2010, we will probably see decisions earlier since funding will be put off according to the tactic I described in my previous post. I believe the first new procurement which will be launched and largely paid during 2007-2010 will be the wheeled APC's followed by the NH90's as well as other Army projects which are long overdue (howitzerss) or urgent (wheeled and tracked APCs, Army vehicles).
Greece has issued needs for about 400 wheeled APC's for the future. There is a record in the current EMPAE for 84 WhAPC underlined as urgent together with the helos. Theese APC's are intendend for peace keeping missions. ELVO has offered Steyer's Pandur some years ago but apart of that there have been no other developments. I will not be surprised if this need is finally translated in armored car procurement (VBL) rather than in APC's. (By the way, the new fighter procurement was originally stated as urgent too)
Cheers
Cheers
I know this is off topic, but are there any secret plans by Greece to capture Constantinople, and the northwest and west coasts of Turkey in order to form a buffer zone if war breaks out between the 2 countries, if only temporarily, similar to what Israel did in the Six Day War, or are Greek plans purely defensive in nature? Apologies to the Turks here, but I still have the habit of calling Istanbul Constantinople.bozz said:
OK my apologies, but anyway, what do you think is the likelyhood of such a plan, I think it would make sense on paper, although it will be extremely risky to carry out since that means that the Greeks will be conducting operations in enemy soil, where people are sure too fight very hard for each square inch of land.beleg said:
Apart from what Beleg so accurately said:ren0312 said:
This would create the exact opposite of a buffer zone. Firstly, the current land border runs through countryside (fairly sparsely populated, for the most part - wheat fields & grazing land), & most of it is neatly marked by a river. There is, in effect, a buffer zone already. Capturing the west coast would increase the land border, & Istanbul has a larger population than Greece. An occupied "buffer zone" containing millions of hostile people, much of which is less defensible than the previous border, is of limited military value, to say the least. That's without even considering the military feasibility of such a plan, which I'd not rate exactly high. More like almost zero.
It is not my claim. This data is given from the Greek Goverment Institutions such as the Greek Finance Ministry which is presenting it and asks for the budget to be approved and voted. Every November the Greek Parliament votes and approves the annual budget of the next year and this is the persentage of the current year.ren0312 said:
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