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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 2901.PDF
India and the Mirage 2000 INDIA has not yet taken a decision on buying the Dassault Mirage 2000 according to an Indian Government report. The question of Mirage 2000 having any effect on the production of Jaguar does not arise, says the re port. But an Indian military mission is due to visit Paris next month and Dassault is confident that the sale of 150 aircraft will go ahead. The French have been trying to sell the aircraft to India for two years but the elec tion of President Mitterand has lent fresh impetus to the negotiations. Mitterrand wants to improve economic co-operation between India and France and Mrs Ghandi, India's Prime Min ister, is to visit France in November to this end. The Mirage 2000 sale would involve a degree of technology transfer to India with Hindustan Aeronautics assembling 45 aircraft from French kits, and building 65 aircraft. The first 40 would be delivered complete from Dassault. The first Vought A-7P Corsair II for the Portuguese Air Force on its maiden flight. Portugal will re ceive 20 A-7Ps which are remanufactured and modernised from early model A-7s North Koreans shoot at SR-71 NORTH Korea fired an unknown type of surface-to-air missile at a United States Air Force Lockheed SR-71 off the North Korean east coast on August 26. The North Koreans have complained repeatedly about SR-71 reconnaissance flights which, says the Pentagon, take place in international airspace. The SR-71 crew saw a fastmoving vapour trail which ended in an explo sion some miles below them. The SR- 71 s are based at Beale AFB in Cali fornia but are known to operate worldwide; last week an SR-71 diver ted into Bodo airbase, Norway, after suffering engine trouble over the Barents Sea. USAF shoot down balloon TACTICAL Air Command fighters shot down a USAF look-down radar balloon which broke free from its 12,000ft tether at Cudjoe Key, Florida. The Seek Skyhook balloon, known as Fat Albert, was carrying a Westinghouse Pocket Veto radar worth some $3-5 million. The rogue settled in the Gulf of Mexico after a day in the air and the US Coast Guard attempted to catch it. But Albert had other ideas and took off again, drifting toward Cuba. To avoid presenting Castro's regime with a fairly advanced look-down radar, the balloon was intercepted at 23,000ft by two Phantoms and shot down. The USAF says that the balloon was used as an air-defence radar gap-filler after a Cuban Air Force MiG defected to Miami and a Cuban airliner arrived unannounced at New Orleans some years ago. Reshape for Royal Air Force deployment (continued) in the amount of British Aerospace Hawks to be wired for these missiles. The Hawks will be used in the point defence role with up to 72 aircraft eventually declared to Nato. Flight understands that about 95-100 aircraft will be converted to allow the Nato- declared figure to be maintained. The first Hawk/Sidewinder trials have taken place and were successful. Of the 60 McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier GR.5s, most will go to Ger many. The present Harrier force of two squadrons (3 and 4) at Gutersloh will trade their Harrier GR.3s for GR.5s in 1986, maintaining the current unit strength but increasing the total warload/radius strength. The with drawn GR.3s may be updated to give an overall all-marque Harrier strength increase in the long term. The main UK Harrier base will continue to be Wittering which will have a handful of GR.5s for conversion training. There are no plans for TAV-8B/Har rier T.6 as the new model is easy to convert to from the standard AV-8A/ FLIGHT International, 5 September 1981 GR.3. Organisations such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment and MoD(PE) will also take one or two Harrier GR.5s for trials and testing; the re mainder will serve as an in-built attri tion batch, although the accident rate is expected to be lower, pilots being higher up the V/Stol operations learn ing curve. The presence of a small Harrier/Puma force in Belize will continue as long as the Government has such a requirement. The Chinooks and Pumas will supply the Harriers in the field. Now that the Harrier replacement search has been completed, the RAF is concentrating on the Jaguar replace ment. One option available was to up date the existing design but the amount of stretch needed to make the Jaguar viable in Europe into the 21st century is limited and a new AST410 design is being projected. This could be in collaboration with West Ger many which is looking for an F-4 re placement in roughly the same time- scale or with Sweden, whose JAS pro ject shows interesting possibilities, although the RAF may prefer a Stovl solution. Buying off-the-shelf American is not under consideration, Flight un derstands, as this could lead to a total capitulation to the US aerospace in dustry. To go it alone would be nice but to share the costs, one must be prepared to share the problems and Europe is the place to do this. Even with the money available, the RAF would be cagey about buying Ameri can. Although if the BAe Hawk wins the US Navy VTX-TS competition, the two-way street could become a little less one-way than at present and the F-18 could solve both the RAF Jaguar and F-4 replacement problems if the Stovl requirement is dropped. Look ing further ahead to a VC10, Victor, Nimrod MR replacement, this will almost certainly originate in Europe with the Airbus Industrie TA11 four- engined widebody emerging as a con tender for maritime patrol, tanker/ transport and, eventually, AEW and the BAe 146 as a shorter range transport/tanker airframe. 707
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