Pakistan's Acquisition of T129 Combat Helicopters from Turkey

The acquisition of these helicopters (30 in number according to media reports), like the US-made AH-1Z Viper, is facing bottlenecks and is yet to materialize. Like Denel Rooivalk and Mi-35, T129 has been used in combat and selected by Armies having experience of counter-insurgency like Turkey and Philippines. The rotor hub of Mi-35, with classical articulations, is not ideal for sandy environment of desert terrain. A simplified rotor hub with less articulations, like that of Westland Lynx, are less prone to develop issues in sandy atmosphere. The T129 is said to employ T800 engines made by LHTEC, a consortium of Honeywell and Rolls-Royce. Geopolitical reasons of delays in acquisition may include the Engine upgrade for Indian Air Force Jaguar fleet. The Honeywell F125 engine was selected to replace the original Adour engine of Jaguar attack aircraft. This engine order, if finalised, is much more in numbers and finance than the Pakistani helicopter engine order with figures of 280 F125 engines mentioned in media reports. Honeywell already supplies engines for Pakistani K-8 trainer aircrafts and in theory there should be no objection on further enhancing the market of their engines. Some diplomatic maneuvering and dialogues may be needed to convince US authorities that Honeywell engines can be supplied both to India and Pakistan without having to choose one option of the two. The acquisition of utility helicopters having the same engine as the combat helicopter facilitates the logisitics of engine and its spare parts. Examples are AH-1 Cobra and Indian Light Combat Helicopter, both sharing engines with Utility helicopters. AH-1 has the same engine as the UH-1 Huey and HAL LCH has the same engine as the HAL Dhruv helicopter. The business of aviation engines has evolved over the time and they are increasingly being sold by Consortiums or joint ventures. Dealing with these consortia needs proper understanding, skills and knowledge. In these cases, one consortium is built or established for one engine. CFM international has Snecma (Now Safran) and Generak Electric of USA as partners, International Aero Engines (IAE) is made up of firms of Pratt and Whitney, Rolls-Royce, Japanese Aero Engines Corporation and MTU of Germany. In the combat aircraft domain, Eurojet provides engines for Eurofighter Typhoon and is made up of RR, MTU, FiatAvio and ITP of Spain. Panavia Tornado's engines were made by TurboUnion, comprising RR, MTU and FiatAvio as partners. The engines for Sukhoi Superjet-100 are made by PowerJet, a joint venture of Snecma of France and Saturn of Russia. Prior experience of defence contracts with Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has been that of Pakistan Air Force's upgrade of F-16 fighter fleet. Upgrade kits were purchased by Pakistan from USA and installation carried out in Turkey. One approach would be to purchase T-800 engines directly from Honeywell and fit them in helicopters in Turkey or in Pakistan.

Ballistic Missile Defence and Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8nH9YAHJv4

 

Long-Range Air to Air Missiles : Guidance, Radars and Datalink

Normally, the targets of long-range air to air missiles (LR AAM) were bigger aircrafts like AWACS, transport or aerial refuellers because of their bigger radar size and hence they can be tracked by AI radars of fighters at around 150 km range. Also LR AAM needed a big and powerful radar on the side of firing aircraft, implying that conventionally only big aircrafts could carry such heavy missiles.