Originally Posted by wings&wheels
Originally Posted by edyvw
I have several friends who fly CL415 in Croatian Air Force.
CAF was considering Beriev as addition to 6 of theirs CL415. Croatian CL415 are workhorses, constantly flying in summer scooping water in Adriatic and fighting forest firs in Croatia and Bosnia. For the size of the country, their fire fighting capabilities are truly impressive.
However, they found Beriev useless. Too expensive to maintain (plus political aspect of it), too fast, not very good for geography of Croatia and generally Balkans and Mediterranean. Russia had some stationed in Serbia as part of an attempt to establish military presence in Serbia under disguise of helping Serbia fight forest fires. It proved useless there too.
thanks for the additional perspective edyvw...always interesting to hear a 'local' view.
Interesting concept, and probably works better for Russian purposes. I know that several European countries considered them but fell through after invasion of Crimea.
One thing that boggls my mind is why Bombardier stopped making CL415.