Armée Colombienne / Military Forces of Colombia / Fuerzas Militares de Colombia

Crash d'un KFIR

traduction a la hate:

2 pilotes isareliens se sont sauvè miraculeusement dans un accident a bord d'un kfir c-10 , cet accident s'est deroule durant des essais qu'effectue les pilotes sur l'un des 4 kfir que israel a l'intention de les vendre a la colombie.

http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/caribe/avion-kfir-se-salio-de-la-pista-y-termino-en-una-playa-de-cartagena-no-hubo-victimas-ni-heridos_5659807-1

Citation :

DATE:22/07/09
SOURCE:Flight International
PICTURES: Colombia loses newly upgraded Kfir fighter in runway overshoot
By Craig Hoyle

Two Israeli test pilots escaped injury when the upgraded Colombian air force Kfir fighter they were flying ran off the runway in Cartagena on 20 July.

Believed to be from an initial batch of ex-Israeli air force Kfirs that have been modernised for Colombia by Israel Aerospace Industries, aircraft FAC-3004 suffered major damage after crossing a road and coming to rest against large rocks.

The two-seat trainer's starboard wing was severed in the incident, with its airframe also suffering further substantial damage in a resulting fire.

IAI last month delivered Colombia's first batch of modernised Kfirs, which have received new avionics and electronic warfare equipment and Elta Systems EL/M-2032 fire control radars.

The Israeli company says it will upgrade 12 Kfirs already in service with the Colombian air force under a contract worth more than $150 million, "and supply additional jets". Local media reports suggest the deal covers a total of 24 aircraft.

Joli série FAMAS !

Citation :

US-Colombia deal could fuel arms purchases
Aug 27, 2009 7:59 PM EST
BARILOCHE, Argentina - Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has raised the stakes for Friday's meeting of South American presidents by threatening to break relations with Colombia over plans to give U.S. troops a 10-year lease on its bases.

Chavez says the U.S. has loosed "winds of war" on the continent - a position few diplomats share following tours by U.S. and Colombian officials seeking to calm fears of neighboring nations.

Even so, the bases deal has created uncertainty about regional stability and provided yet another justification for nations to spend big on their militaries.

Venezuela has poured about $4 billion into Russian weapons to counter the threat Chavez sees from the billions in U.S. military aid to Colombia. Ecuador is buying 24 Brazilian warplanes and six Israeli drones to keep a closer watch on its borders. Bolivia has opened a $100 million line of credit with Russia to buy weapons.

These purchases were in the works even before details of the bases deal were revealed last month by The Associated Press - and defense spending around the region is up sharply, mostly in the name of routine modernization.

The 12 South American nations spent about $51 billion last year on their militaries - up 30 percent from 2007, according to the Center for a New Majority, a Buenos Aires research group.

That's low compared to the rest of the world - U.S. spending alone is well into the hundreds of billions - but a steep burden for democracies in a relatively peaceful area that is struggling with growing poverty and economic crisis.

"None of this is good. The last thing the region needs is an arms race," said Markus Schultze-Kraft, a Bogota-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization.

He said the leaders should avoid telling one another: "You are arming yourself, that is why we must continue arming ourselves."

The Latin American Security and Defense Network, a Buenos Aires research group, says that Ecuador tops South American nations in relative defense spending, with 10.7 percent of its national budget.

That's even more than the 9.3 percent spent by Colombia, which has been battling a leftist rebel movement for decades. Venezuela spent 5.2 percent of its much larger, oil-fueled budget on defense last year.

Colombia won't budge on the bases deal, Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez says. "The negotiations have closed and only await the official signature." He said Colombia may even question other countries about their own deals and arms buildups.

President Alvaro Uribe is expected to make some reassurances to his fellow presidents at the Argentine winter resort of Bariloche. U.S. and Colombian officials have said the troops are there to fight drug traffickers and leftist rebels, and that the troops won't cross boundaries without permission.

But Latin American leaders and U.S. lawmakers who were not consulted about the pending deal want more explanations.

"Unfortunately this could lead to an escalation of an arms race in the region, and particularly with Venezuela, Ecuador and other countries compensating for what they perceive as an alteration of the balance of power," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Chavez - who has repeatedly denied supporting Colombia's FARC rebels - claims U.S. troops could use the bases to launch operations to unseat Latin American leaders like himself, and says Venezuela will buy Russian tanks to defend itself.

"You can establish 70,000 Yankee bases surrounding Venezuela, but you aren't going to beat the Bolivarian Revolution!" Chavez declared this week.

Moderate leftists also are suspicious of foreign militaries in Latin America. Memories are fresh of the U.S.-backed dictatorships that killed and tortured their own citizens. Chile's president, Michele Bachelet, is among the survivors.

The unresolved coup in Honduras - by a military with close U.S. ties and training - worries them as well.

Uribe's promises haven't eased these concerns, particularly since he sent his military more than a mile (kilometer) into Ecuadorean territory last year to kill a top rebel commander - and told Chavez and Correa that he'd do it again.

Correa said Colombia's argument that its deal with the U.S. is an internal matter doesn't stand, especially given his claimed right to stage pre-emptive strikes outside Colombia.

"What if later we put nuclear warheads in Ecuador, and declare them to be a matter of national sovereignty?" he told Peru's Radioprogramas while traveling to the summit. "It's absurd - these are things that endanger the whole region."

Various countries have proposed solutions. Correa would put the bases under UNASUR supervision. Brazil and others want to see Colombia's reassurances guaranteed in writing. Bolivia's Evo Morales would like a continent-wide vote on the Colombia-US deal.

But the deal is done, and Uribe isn't coming to the meeting to negotiate, his foreign minister Jaime Bermudez said.

Several diplomats lamented that President Barack Obama won't be there to make the U.S. case, saying the deal seems out of place with Obama's promise at the Summit of the Americas to usher in a new era of cooperation and good faith.

Brazil, meanwhile, recently bought French submarines and helicopters and is poised to spend $2 billion for fighter jets to protect its offshore oil and Amazon resources, which many Brazilians fear could be targeted by unnamed foreign powers.

Silva will work at the summit to "reduce tensions that tend to be magnified by the rhetoric and polarization," his spokesman Marcelo Baumbauch said, and he has asked Obama to meet with the South American presidents, perhaps during September's U.N. General Assembly, "to overcome this unhelpful Cold War mentality."

Several analysts complained the bases deal was developed in secret, feeding fears and leading other countries to justify other weapons deals.

"If the United States doesn't want to sell to us, there's China or Russia," Morales said while celebrating the Russian credit line this month. He complained of waiting in vain for U.S. approval to buy six light-attack planes and said any president who invites foreign troops onto his territory is a "traitor" to Latin America.

About 1,500 protesters shared that theme Thursday in downtown Bariloche, far from the heavily guarded Llao Llao hotel, where the presidents will be able to meet in luxurious isolation. The iconic setting is an ideal place for settling differences. Or, there could be more talk of war.

source:ici

Citation :

Pact signed to expand US use of Colombia bases
By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 30, 6:45 pm ET
BOGOTA – In a private, low-key ceremony, the U.S. ambassador and three Colombian ministers on Friday signed a pact giving American personnel expanded access to military bases in this drug-producing country, a deal that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has called a threat to the region's security.

Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said the 10-year deal takes effect immediately and restricts U.S. military operations to Colombian territory — alluding to fears expressed by leftist leaders in the region that it would make Colombia a base for asserting U.S. power in South America.

Details of the pact, which aims to boost drug and counterinsurgency operations, were not immediately released. But Colombia said in a statement that it "respects the principles of equal sovereignty, territorial integrity and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states."

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that the accord "does not signal, anticipate or authorize an increase in the presence of U.S. military or civilian personnel in Colombia."

Officials have said it would expand U.S. access to seven Colombian bases while maintaining at 1,400 the cap on military personnel and contractors specified by U.S. law. Bermudez said that with the pact Colombia was seeking to improve its communications and intelligence capabilities, for which U.S. cooperation has already been a boon.

U.S. counter-drug flights that previously operated out of Manta, Ecuador, will now be based at the Palanquero base in the central Magdalena valley and Navy port calls will be more frequent.

"We are not bringing U.S. soldiers to Colombia for combat," Bermudez told reporters. "We're not going to see an unusual number of U.S. military personnel, nor U.S. planes in excess. What we're going to see is what we've always seen."

The top U.S. Defense Department official for Latin America, Frank Mora, told The Associated Press in August there would be no "U.S. offensive capacity" such as fighter jets from any of the bases. U.S. construction is, however, planned at Palanquero to expand facilities.

The State Department noted that "U.S. personnel presence has been in a gradual decline" in Colombia, a trend it said it expected to continue. U.S. law specifies that no more than 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 civilian contractors may be in country at any one time. Currently, there are 230 U.S. service personnel and 400 contractors in Colombia, Bermudez said.

President Chavez, who survived a 2002 coup attempt that he claims was U.S.-backed, has said Washington could use the bases agreement to destabilize the region.

South America's main power broker, President Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, however, dropped his initial objections after senior U.S. officials and Colombia's conservative president, Alvaro Uribe, made separate visits to explain it.

Uribe also assured regional leaders at an August summit that U.S. military operations would be restricted to Colombian territory, where a half-century-old leftist insurgency persists as well as violence related to drug trafficking.

Critics of the accord say it sends the wrong signal to Colombia's neighbors, especially given that the Andean nation remains the world's No. 1 cocaine producer despite receiving more than $4 billion in U.S. military aid since 2000.

"At a time when we should be pursuing every kind of diplomatic avenue to reduce tensions, this appears to be a military decision that may increase tension," said George Withers of the liberal U.S. think tank Washington Office on Latin America.

Under the pact, U.S. military personnel will continue to enjoy diplomatic immunity, exempting them from local criminal prosecution. Some Colombians objected to that, citing a case of two U.S. servicemen accused in 2007 of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. The two have since left the country.

Asked Friday about the case, the U.S. Embassy referred to a statement it issued in August saying there was currently "insufficient evidence to prosecute the two U.S. service members involved."

Increased U.S. military assistance has been key to the recent weakening of the country's main leftist rebel group. The U.S. military has offices at armed forces headquarters and advisers attached to army divisions.

Although there's no evidence of any direct correlation, the boost in aid and cooperation also has coincided with a sharp increase in extrajudicial killings by Colombia's military.
Source :: Yahoo News

Voici le nouveau véhicule léger de combat pour l'armée de terre colombienne.



En 2010 seront produites 50 unités et ils seront des véhicules "Made in Colombia".Quant à l'armament de ce engin,ils seront equipés avec:

- 1 Système antichar SPIKE.
- 1 Mitrailleuse de 12'7 mm.
- 1 Mitrailleuse de 7'62 mm.


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