MiG-27s turn night eagles
By BIDANDA M CHENGAPPA
DH News Service, BANGALORE:The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) MiG-27 fighter aircraft will now have night attack capability after an avionics upgrade, besides superior navigation systems and an improved targetting accuracy, thanks to the success of a Bangalore- based avionics unit of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
For the first time, such a full-fledged avionics upgrade has been indigenously undertaken by a two dozen strong team, according to air force sources.
The work comprised systems design and integration that adhered to the two-year project schedule —minus time overruns normally associated with the DRDO.
DRDO bagged the contract which might have gone either to the Russians or Israelis and spent only Rs 20-22 crore. Apart from lower initial costs that foreign vendors offer for such projects, the catch lies in higher life cycle costs subsequently. Foreign vendors have a ‘captive’ client whose weapon system uses foreign equipment/systems manufactured in their countries and hence gives them an upper hand in price negotiations.
The avionics upgrade involves interfacing new Israeli systems like forward looking infra- red, headup display, video recording system and digital map generator.
Besides, French equipment that includes inertial navigation system aided by global positioning systems, multi-function display and laser ranger marked target seeker with older Russian systems like auto pilot, crash data recorder and armament control system.
Significantly the re-usability of software and hardware that drives the core avionics computer is a spin-off. For instance, this core avionics computer has partially been used in the Jaguar aircraft and subsequently proposed for the MiG- 29. The MiG-27 avionics project itself was a spin-off from the Sukhoi- 30 MKI avionics upgrade.
This drastically reduces the manhours on research and development and money saved for future avionics upgrade and can be done at a fraction of the cost.
The upgraded MiG-27 enhances the IAF’s operational capability and successfully engage targets with ease. The ‘circular error of probability’ in firing/bombing is reduced due to better weapon aiming computations and increased navigational accuracy. Considering that the IAF has six MiG-27 fighter aircraft squadrons this avionics upgrade is a ‘force multiplier’ in airpower terms.
For air force commanders, superior avionics means that only five MiG-27 aircraft would undertake an offensive mission rather than 10 aircraft due to higher chances of success.
The MiG-27 also undertakes photo reconnaissance missions.
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March 19, 2004 at 12:57 pm