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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 3584.PDF
FLIGHT International, 29 September 1979 1047 Denmark recently refurbished her F-100 fleet OF the 71 different aircraft types listed in this census, only 25 are currently in production. Twenty-eight are super sonic types, 29 are subsonic jets and 14 are piston-engined If the breakdown is carried out for production types only, the widespread adoption of supersonic fighters by even the smallest air arms shows up clearly. Supersonic jets outnumber subsonic types by two to one. By counting up the number of nations which operate each type of aircraft it is possible to draw up a list of the top ten "best sellers." The term should not be taken too literally since some arms exports take the form of military aid or even gifts. Political factors often dictate the nationality of the supplier, so the market is hardly a free one. Two surprises are immediately apparent. Types such as the F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom, which at first sight might be thought to be automatic candidates for such a list, fail to make the grade, being pipped at the winning post by a 1950-vintage piston-engined design. Top scorer just has to be the MiG-21, which is now operated by 30 export customers. The vintage MiG-17 takes second place with 28 customers, closely followed by the F-5 series which has clocked up 26 export sales. Dassault-Breguet has sold Mirage III/5/50 series fighters to 19 export customers, while the Hunter, MiG-19 and 11-28 have all been adopted by 14 air forces. The F-86 and Su-7 are in service with 13 operators, while 12 air arms still fly the Grumman S-2 Tracker. By counting all Hawker, Avro, BAC and Hawker Sid- deley customers as operating BAe types, and similarly lumping together the products of individual companies which now form other large aircraft companies such as Dassault-Breguet, McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell Inter national, it is possible to split the market among the largest suppliers. The sales record of the Mikoyan types can only be described as dazzling, with 36 operators flying MiG fighters Dassault-Breguet takes second place with 28 operators, followed by Lockheed with 27. The remainder of the field is BAe and Northrop with 26 each, Bockwell (23), McDonnell Douglas (19), Sukhoi (15), Grumman (14) and Aermacchi (II). A more useful exercise might be to consider only pro duction types. The order then runs: Mikoyan (30), Das sault-Breguet (29), Northrop (26), BAe and Aermacchi (11 each), Lockheed (8), Sukhoi (6), General Dynamics (5) and McDonnell Douglas (3). Before the metal-bashers who have turned out 5,000 Phantoms send one or two J79-powered ambassadors over to level the Flight offices with 1,0001b bombs, it must be admitted that such simple tabulations are of limited use. Had the F-4 still been in production, McDonnell Douglas would have appeared alongside BAe and Aermacchi with 11 export operators. Total numbers of aircraft exported or total value would again produce different results. The top five by numbers are the MiG-2L (2,500 + ), F-5 (1,450), F-104 (1,440), MiG-17 (c.1,250) and F-4 (1,140). One thing is clear from the Despite its age, the Grumman Tracker is operated by 12 air arms— more than the number who fly the F-4 or F-104 examples above. The market is dominated by products of the Mikoyan and Dassault-Breguet design teams. The sheer number of operators who fly Mikoyan types strongly suggests that working in the Goods Out department for Mikoyan spares might be the quickest way to a nervous breakdown on record. Faced by the gamut of languages spoken by its clients, it is little wonder that the Soviet Union has standardised on English markings on its export weapons. The prospect of a Soviet technical author consulting a dictionary to find the Vietnamese for "monopulse radar" while his col leagues try to find the Spanish for "compressor inlet," Arabic for "No Sir" and the Malagasy for "Danger— Ejection Seat" is just too unrealistic. Despite the spread for advanced weaponry, a substan tial number of air forces deploy only one or two combat types. In some cases the "teeth" element of such forces is simply a handful of armed jet trainers or piston-engined fighters. A study of 30 such operators drawn from our World's Air Forces issue shows that the MiG-21 is the most common type even for such nominal forces. An OV-10 Bronco of the USAF continued on page 1048 >•
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