Recycled castoffs could be warplanes of tomorrow
Recycled castoffs could be warplanes of tomorrow
By Bradley Burston
TEL AVIV (Reuter): Don't be in too much of a hurry to throw out that 1950s-era jet fighter gathering dust in the back yard. It just might be the warplane of the future.
In an era of bargain-basement defense budgets and skyrocketing fighter development costs, air forces worldwide are taking a second look at second-line planes, hoping to retrofit or "recycle" them with 21st century technology.
While advanced new jets such as the Eurofighter have grabbed headlines, analysts and executives have pointed to retrofitting as one of the industry's few bright spots for the decade.
An official of France's Dassault Aviation said earlier this year that outside the former Soviet bloc 6,000 fighters will need to be replaced in the next 15 years, but defense budgets will cover orders for only 4,000 new jets.
Retrofit firms hope to take up much of the slack, in particular for Asian, eastern European and Latin American clients.
"For a fraction of the cost of new planes, the life of an existing fighter can be extended by eight or even 12 years," said Doron Suslik of Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), an early entry in the growing race to retrofit.
Combat aircraft builders have been in a tailspin since the end of the Cold War turned defense spending, once the sacred cow of national budgets, into a sitting duck for cuts.
The upgrades range from several hundred thousand dollars to several million dollars a plane, still a considerable savings at a time when all-new fighters go for up to $100 million each.
"In no way can the refitted fighters compete with state-of-the-art aircraft, but military and economic realities have changed," said an Israeli air force pilot who has flown a number of upgraded fighters.
In the current world climate, advanced, flown-by-computer jets may be pricing themselves out of the market, he said.
State-owned IAI and a local competitor, privately held Elbit, are battling to sell cash-strapped eastern European countries upgrades of the MiG-21, which first took to the skies of the then-Soviet Union in the late 1950s.
IAI also offers upgrades for the venerable Vietnam-era U.S. F- 4 Phantom and F-5, as well as just-outdated F-15 models.
Available options range from ultra-sophisticated electronic warfare systems to the homespun step of raising a cockpit seat.
"In years of studying the performance of enemy Arab MiGs in dogfights, we noticed the pilot simply sat too low to be able to see us well," the pilot said.
"Just by raising the pilot's seat the aircraft is vastly more competitive."
The move toward upgrading represents a sharp departure from Cold War days, when many countries staked their prestige -- and high-flying budgets -- on warplane ventures of their own.
In recent years ambitious efforts to build new planes have found it difficult getting off the ground.
-- The four-nation Eurofighter, plagued by spiraling costs and political wrangling, finally took off on a maiden test flight last month after production snafus and computer "bugs" caused a two-year delay.
-- Last year Sweden's new JAS 39 Gripen fighter was grounded by the spectacular crash of a prototype at a Stockholm air show.
-- Production delays, budget cuts and a sharp drop in projected demand have also dogged the U.S. F-22 superfighter, the premier warplane on the boards for the turn of the century.
IAI's own stab at a new fighter, the Lavi, was scrapped as too expensive in the 1980s. But Suslik said parts developed for the Lavi were integral to many upgrades.
The relative reliability of veteran planes may give them an added sales edge over the high-strung complexity of new jets.
"Some new planes may turn out to be more vulnerable to their own onboard software than to any enemy in combat," said the pilot, glancing at the fleet of 50-year-old C-47 military transports the air force still operates from a base next to IAI's central Israel plant.
Analysts have said world air forces are betting that the retrofits can tide them over for about 10 years, when wear and tear is likely to make replacement unavoidable.
"The Eurofighter and its competitors were designed to counter a Soviet threat that no longer exists," the pilot said. "For the '90s it's too much bang for much too many bucks."