Dr Mahathir and his MIG’s
Mahathir has spoken! Let see whether Najib will react. Tun M actually gave a hint on what is happening in the Air Force. Upon reading the article, as usual I started to SMS to some of my friends in service as well as those that had retired.
2. The main issue of contention by the Air Force is that the hardly used, low mileage MIGS should be sold off and replaced with American made assets because it is too expensive to maintain. The 18 MIGS were bought in 1994 and delivered to us in batches from 1996. The deal shocked the Americans as they did not think that we would ever buy Russian made products. There was some backroom international politics that followed the.
3. To pacify the US and some of our politically connected local agents, we bought 8 units F-18A and it was delivered in 1997. The whole thing cost Malaysian government RM3.6 billion. The agents for the F18A were shocked on the amount of commission paid to the agents of the MIGS. I was told that the actual cost of the parts for the MIGS is actually dirt cheap but there is “10 Mafia’s” in between KL and Russia that made the cost sky high. That is nothing new actually as there is plentiful of Mafia in all government related businesses.
4. Mahathir in his blog talked about the “source code” which is a controlled by the USA. My source confirms that Mahathir was telling the truth that we cannot fire those missiles without the source code. In fact when we bought the missiles for the F-18A, despite having paid for them it has to be kept in the US for a few years before we can bring it home.
