Quick, which national air force killed 35 fighter pilots and yet never technically scored a single “victory”? The answer is the Albanian Air Force, which lost 35 of its own fliers in accidents but never fired a shot in anger. You can give that answer only a little while longer, though, according to a Reuters dispatch from Tirana. The Balkan nation, ruled for decades by the Stalinist/Maoist maniac Enver Hoxha, is scrapping its entire fleet of Soviet-designed MiGs, many of which date to the 1950s. (Hoxha died in 1985) The danged things are just getting too expensive to keep up and fuel, and too dangerous to fly. The armed forces chief, Gen. Pellumb Qazimi, told Reuters, “If anyone wants to buy them, they are welcome.” He added that some interested Western buyers “wanted to turn them into bars.” At one point, Albania’s air arm boasted 125 MiG-15s, MiG-17s, and MiG-19s.
A record investment in research and development by the Department of the Air Force will help the United States win the long-term technology race with China, even while shrinking the fleet size before a possible mid-decade Taiwan contingency, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said May 17. “With the Air Force,…