By Trefor Moss
If Indonesia is serious about modernising its outmoded military and producing a Minimum Essential Force by 2025, it can ill afford to turn down bargains, rare as they are in the bank breaking business of military procurement. So when Indonesia’s House of Representatives announced that it was thinking about declining an offer of 30 second-hand F-16s being offloaded as excess defence articles by the United States, it seemed that Jakarta was in danger of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Though the government also announced last month that it plans to spend $11 billion on new kit by 2014 – an impressive amount historically by Indonesian standards – the military’s long and urgent of list requirements will see that money quickly burned through.
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