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Aviation History
1992
1992 - 1260.PDF
DEFENCE US losers attack award of USAF Slingsby deal Two of the losing candi dates in the US Air Force's enhanced flight screener (EFS) contest are protesting against the award of the con tract to Northrop and UK company, Slingsby. Sabreliner, which offered a variant of the Agusta-designed SF.260, and Schweizer, which proposed a licence-built Saab MFI.17, want the decision to buy the Slingsby's T-67 Firefly overturned (Flight Interna tional, 6-12 May). Under the UK company's plan only air craft assembly would take place in the USA. Sabreliner is arguing that a provision in the original solicitation prohibits the serv ice from awarding the work outside the USA or Canada. Schweizer is also using that argument, but is claiming pri marily that the USAF did not follow its own technical selec tion criteria. According to Sabreliner, the request for proposals was af fected by a 1987 Federal Acquisition Regulation clause, designated 252.214-7001, ad dressing "domestic source restriction". The text of that Regulation reads: "This solicitation is re stricted to domestic sources...foreign sources, ex cept Canadian sources, are not eligible for award." In its protest, which is to be considered by the General Accounting Office, Sabreliner is relying partly on the prece dent of a 1990 Army case in which MTS Systems of the USA appealed successfully against an award to Hydraudyne of the Nether lands — even though in that case the domestic source clause had been included erroneously. John Dignan, Slingsby's marketing director says: "We had started work but have now had to slow everything down...its disrupting the start of the programme." D French disagree on Taiwan Mirage deal BY GILBERT SEDBON IN PARIS French defence minister Pi erre Joxe and foreign minis ter Roland Dumas have disa greed over Government approval of the proposed sale of 100 Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighters to Taiwan. Dumas is opposed to the deal as it may jeopardise Franco/Chinese relations. President Francois Mitterand will rule on whether to allow the export of the aircraft to Taipei. His decision is anxiously awaited — particularly after the failure of the Mirage 2000-5 to beat McDonnell Douglas' F-18 in recent competitions in Finland and Switzerland. Dassault has not sold a com bat aircraft overseas for more than four years. Taiwan wants the Mirage 2000-5 to replace its ageing Northrop F-5 fleet. The US has refused to allow Taiwan to buy the General Dynamics F-16. Taiwan, which has been hold ing secret talks with French officials for two years, has now expressed its readiness to buy a batch of 60 Mirage 2000-5s for cash and take an option for 40 additional aircraft in a deal worth more than $3 billion, including spare engines, replace ment parts and missiles. Taipei has also shown interest in Dassault's Atlantic ATL 2 anti-submarine-warfare aircraft and has sought foreign help to design and build an indigenous combat aircraft. Taiwan has indicated that it may speed up negotiations for a number of large civil contracts if the aircraft deal is approved. The French defence minister publicly came out in favour of the deal during a recent radio interview. Talks between French manu facturers and Taiwan officials have made such progress that Beijing has already attempted to block the deal by threatening not to go ahead with a large wheat purchase from France. Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen, in a strongly-worded statement, recently denounced military sales to Taipei and threatened harsh reprisals against France. Beijing, however, failed to react when the French Govern ment authorised the sale of Lafayette-class 3,200t frigates to Taiwan in 1991. The French Government describes that deal as being purely commercial. • Gripen set for Government go-ahead The Swedish ministry of de fence (MoD) and the JAS Industry Group (JASIG) have reached an outline agreement to produce a second batch of 110 Saab JAS39 Gripens and to de velop a two-seat variant of the multi-role fighter. The MoD's Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) and JASIG have also agreed to the procurement of various support systems and resolved all major issues remaining in the basic overall contract. JASIG — an industrial consor tium comprising Saab Aircraft, Volvo Flygmotor, Ericsson Radar Electronics and FFV Aero- tech — has orders for 30 Gripens so far. The outline agreement, to be approved by parliament by 3 June, is covered by the JAS budget of SKr48.5 billion ($8.2 billion), plus a cost increase allocation of SKr9.3 billion al ready approved by the Swedish air force. Subject to parliamen tary approval, FMV expects to place a firm order on 30 June for continued work on the Gripen. Four test aircraft are now flying and will be joined soon by a fifth, JAS39-101, the first production series aircraft being rebuilt as a test aircraft. The next five production aircraft, in final assembly at Saab's Linkop- ing factory, will be delivered to the Swedish air force next year. Three systems need more work. The British Aerospace electronics cooling system was inadequate and electronics over heating led to several precau tionary landings. The fuel system proved over-complex, suffering numerous spurious low-fuel or transfer warnings. Lastly, the auxiliary power unit (APU) demonstrated a short time between overhaul and is extremely noisy. Saab says that the fuel system problem has been solved partly by re-written software, which is being flight-tested. Similarly, the company says that a fix is being developed for the cooling prob lem and that APU troubles have yet to be resolved — the short time between overhauls being the hardest to redress. The com pany, while trying to cure the problem by re-designing the Mi cro turbo TGA 15 APU, is also looking at alternative APUs. • Gripen has exceeded speed, turn rate and rate-of-climb specifications 1 2 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 20-26 May, 1992
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