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Pictures are courtesy of Usman Shabir
Pakistan airforce has purchased a total of 4 Il-78P Midas tanker aircraft have from the Ukraine. These aircrafts are equipped with Soviet-designed UPAZs pods and refueling kits on Mirage-III Rose-I is of South African origin. In first stage PAF has announced that 30 Mirage-III Rose-I will be upgraded with in-flight refuelling probes and this too is being done at PAC kamra.
The Il-78s will give the PAF its first airborne refueling capability. They will help train Pakistani crews in mid-air refueling techniques, and once operational will be used to refuel the Mirage-III, eventually JF-17 Thunder and Fc-20.
8 comments:
Who did the upgrade?.... Israel? Turkey? Local aerospace industry?
This is an ominous sign for India. Air-Air refueling tankers will obviously be purchased soon. Any info on what tankers are potentially being considered by the PAF? (KC-135 series, A330 MRTT etc.)
For their F-16s PAF is interested in old USAF KC-135 but so far USA has not agreed to the PAF’s request. A330 MRTT is considered as expensive aircraft, so PAF is more interested in getting few used A310s and convert them into A310 MRTT in future ( provided funding is made available by the GoP).
platensimycin @ August 6, 2009 7:25 AM
Upgrades are being done by the Pakistan aeronautical complex i.e. PAC
vishal August 6, 2009 8:25 AM
PAF has purchased four IL-78MP AAR tankers from Ukraine.
The ROSE upgrades were done by SAGEM of France, not PAC.
Anonymous @ August 6, 2009 8:39 PM
No, Rose-1 ('Retrofit of Strike Element')was performed at PAC Kamra on Ex-RAAF Mirage-III and Sagem only performed Rose-II upgrade on the old Mirage-V purchased from France as PAC was operating at its full capacity and PAF didn’t wanted to wait
In 1991, PAF purchased 50 Australian Mirage IIIEA/DAs. Forty-five aircraft purchased from RAAF were eventually recovered at PAC Kamra, there were seven dual-seat models that were allotted to No. 5 Squadron. Out of the forty-two single-seat Mirages, thirty-two with ROSE configuration were allotted to No. 7 and CCS Squadrons. Four aircraft belonging to Photo Reconnaissance category and an additional aircraft were recovered and allotted to the No. 5 Squadron. One aircraft crashed prior to ROSE modification and the remaining five aircraft were found beyond recovery and were reduced to spares.
During a visit to France in 1995, the project team was pleasantly surprised to learn that forty Mirage Vs and about forty Mirage IIIs of the French Air Force were available for sale at quite a reasonable price. The French Mirage V suited the PAF requirement because of its longer range and additional payload.
In Project ROSE-II, the PAF was already acquiring thirty-six Mirages upgraded by SAGEM through their inertial navigation and system integration departments. In August 1995, SAGEM combined their upgrade skills with the potential sales opportunity, and proposed to the PAF a package deal of forty Mirages at a quoted cost of $150 million.PAF negotiated a further reduction in costs so that they actually fell into its feasibility regime. Through numerous discussions, SAGEM came up with a revised proposal of $124 million in November 1995. According to this proposal, the package was to consist of thirty-four Mirage Vs and six dual-seat Mirage IIIs, making a total of forty fully overhauled aircraft. Out of the forty aircraft, twenty Mirage Vs would be mordanized to the ROSE-II standards (ROSE-II modification is the same as ROSE-I, except the Griffo-M radar is replaced by FLIR). The engines installed on the aircraft would have a minimum life of four years and 300 hours.On 27 December 1995, the PAF gave the go ahead, and the contract for the forty Mirages was signed on 1 February 1996 for a total amount of 118 million. Thus the programme suffered delays during most of 1997 and 1998. However, the company managed to get the first batch ready by September 1998, when PAF pilots ferried across eight Mirages on 22 September 1998. A second batch of eight was recieved in 1999 while the third batch of eight came to Pakistan on 22 June 2000. The deliveries of the rest were supposed to be completed by the end of the year 2000.
In first stage PAF has announced that 30 Mirage-III Rose-I will be upgraded with in-flight refuelling probes and this too is being done at PAC kamra
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