The Indonesian military is in dire need to replace its ageing Hawk Mk 53 trainer jet planes, procure new armaments and enhance its radar systems, local media reported here on Monday.
Indonesian Air Force Commander Air Marshall Imam Sufaat said that the budget proposal to procure new trainer jet planes had been submitted to the defense ministry along with the budget proposal to replace its ageing anti insurgency planes OV-10 Bronco.
"Proposals for OV-10 Bronco have been approved. Discussions on Hawk Mk 53 is underway at the moment," Imam was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying here. Those proposals were submitted to the defense ministry in 2008 and 2009.
Imam said that the air force is considering L-159B produced by the Czech Republic, Yak-130 from Russia, Italian-made Aermacchi M346, Chengdu
FTC-2000/JL-9 from China and B50 from South Korea to replace the Britain-based British Aerospace (BaE) plane maker Furthermore, the Indonesian air force chief also said that it would develop the Ground Control Interception (GCI) radar in the town of Biak and Early Warning (EW) radar systems in towns of Timika and Merauke in Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua that borders with Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Besides that, the air force also proposed to procure anti air attack batteries, reconnaissance planes and armaments for its fighter jets.
The air force has studied the radar, anti air attack batteries and fighter jet armaments it wanted to purchase from South Korea, Brazil, the
Czech Republic, France, the U.S., Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, Russia and China.