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Aviation History
1994
1994 - 0056.PDF
HEADLINES S Korea probes Lockheed deal China replaces aviation chief Civil Aviation Authority of China chief Jiang Zhu- ping was replaced in late De cember, after a year in which serious questions were posed over the safety of air travel in China, following a spate of crashes and hijackings. Jiang, who has been demoted to deputy director, is replaced by Chen Guang-yi. Chen is a veteran member of the Com munist Party's ruling central committee, serving most re cently as party chief in Fujian Province. He is a specialist in electric motors and apparently has no experience in aviation. While no official explanation has been given for Jiang's sud den demotion, it is rumoured that he has been made the scapegoat for the large number of airliner crashes and hijack ings over the past 18 months. Four fatal crashes killed 69 people in 1993, while ten air craft have been hijacked to Taiwan since April 1993. The previous year was the worst in Chinese civil-aviation history, with 295 people killed in four accidents during the last five months of 1992. D Rafale tests resume Dassault will resume car rier-borne testing of the maritime version of its Rafale multi-role fighter on 23 Janu ary. The tests, aboard the car rier Foch, will last until 5 March and will involve both prototypes in up to 55 flights. In 1993, Dassault completed a "100% successful" campaign of ground-based catapult flight tests on the single-seat Rafale M at the US Navy base at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The air craft were operated at a take-off weight of more than 18t, about 3t below the maximum. The two prototype Rafale Ms have had over 360 flights, most carried out at Lakehurst. The Foch tests, the first to include flights with external stores, will establish if more tests in the USA are necessary. The French Navy has or dered 86 Rafale Ms. Delivery of the first is due in May 1997.D South Korea's defence minis try is investigating the com mission which was paid by Lockheed to Daewoo in Janu ary 1992, following the $790 million sale of eight P-3C Orion maritime-patrol aircraft to the country's navy. Former South Korean de fence minister Choi Se-chang and Daewoo managing director Kim Sung-ki are among seven people banned from leaving the country while the ministry in vestigates five contracts awarded under the Yulgok arms-procurement programme. The ministry is investigating allegations that Daewoo had a secret agreement with Lock heed to receive a $29.75 mil lion commission for acting as a marketing consultant on the P-3 programme. The official commission specified in the contract was $4 million. Both Daewoo and Lockheed deny that there was any secret Two Ukrainian Tupolev Tu-22M Backfire strategic bombers were flown on a demonstration tour to Iran in the second half of 1993 as part of Ukraine's bid to sell the aircraft in the region. Western intelligence indi cates that, although Iran ap pears interested in the type, which has an unrefuelled combat radius of up to 2,200km (l,200nm), no fund ing is available for a purchase. Israeli intelligence reported in 1992 that Russia had of- agreement. The Korean com pany says that South Korea's Board of Audit and Inspection reviewed the P-3 project in 1993 and concluded that Daewoo received the legal fee of $4 million and that "...there were no irregular contracts" with Lockheed. Lockheed says that the com mission paid was the amount legally allowed by South Korea at the time the P-3 contract was signed. The commission to be paid to Daewoo was out lined in the contract signed by South Korea's Government, the company says. Also under investigation are the Korean Naval Tactical Data System contract which was awarded to Litton Korea and Hankuk Trading; Rockwell In ternational's contract to up grade South Korea's McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantoms; and warship-refit and military- construction projects. fered Iran 12 Tu-22Ms, but Youly Kashtanov, deputy gen eral-director at Tupolev, de nied in 1993 that any Backfires had been, or would be, supplied to Iran. The aircraft on offer appear to be former Soviet aircraft inherited by Ukraine after the dissolution of the USSR. With Backfire logistical support being based in Russia, it is unlikely that any Ukrainian bid to market the aircraft would be made without some Russian involvement. • Daewoo says it welcomes the investigation, which is the lat est in a series involving South Korea's recent arms purchases, and which have resulted in the arrest of two former defence ministers, as well as several defence-ministry officials and military officers. • Leak blamed for Observer loss NASA believes a ruptured fuel line is most likely to have caused the loss of the Mars Observer spacecraft on 21 August, only three days before it was to enter orbit around Mars after an 11-month trip from Earth. Dr Timothy Coffey, head of the independent board investi gating the spacecraft's disap pearance, concedes that there is no conclusive explanation for the loss of contact. "There was no hard evidence to investi gate," he says. NASA controllers failed to re store contact with the space craft after sending commands to pressurise the spacecraft's pro pulsion system ready for the orbit-insertion burn. "The pressurisation sequence somehow triggered a single malfunction in the spacecraft, either hardware or software, that very rapidly became cata strophic," resulting in a loss of power, explosion or rapid, uncontrollable, spin, the board's report concludes. Coffey says that the most probable cause was "a massive rupture of the pressurisation system". The report suggests that liquid nitrogen-textroxide may have leaked and con densed where it could mix with the spacecraft's monomethyl- hydrazine propellent, igniting spontaneously and melting the pressurisation-system plumbing. NASA plans further attempts to contact the spacecraft. Its manufacturer, Martin Marietta, has received $17 million of a $21.3 million orbital-perform ance fee. NASA says that it will review the payment. • Can Iran find the money to buy Ukraine's Backfires? Ukraine shows off Backfires in Iran 6 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 12 - 18 January, 1994
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