Navy Bids Farewell to Spectacular Sea Harrier Jump Jets After 33 Years.
NEW DELHI: They were always a sight to behold, a force to reckon
with. Fighters landing vertically, akin to helicopters, with
ear-splitting roars on a moving airfield despite being fixed-wing. It
left even the usually phlegmatic Manmohan Singh slightly nonplussed
during the "PM's day at sea" in 2006. Similar was the case of other
politicians, before and after him, like A B Vajpayee and L K Advani.
But the old must give way to the new. Ahead of the 56-year-old aircraft
carrier INS Viraat's retirement later this year, the Navy has bid adieu
to its eyeball-grabbing Sea Harrier "jump jets" after 33 years of yeomen
service.
The force, after all, now has its first supersonic fighters in 30
MiG-29Ks - out of the 45 contracted from Russia for over $2 billion -
for INS Vikramaditya and the under-construction indigenous carrier INS
Vikrant.
Navy inducted 30 of the British-origin Sea Harriers from 1983 onwards,
but only 11 "air frames" are left now due to old age, lack of spares and
cannibalisation as well as accidents over the years. "They have flown
their last. The six Sea Harriers on board INS Viraat, which has returned
to Mumbai from her final operational journey to the International Fleet
Review last month, disembarked from the carrier on March 6," said an
officer.
The 11 Sea Harriers are now been mothballed at naval air station INS
Hansa in Goa before being distributed as museum pieces to different
establishments. "Their pilots are going for career advancement courses
or MiG-29K conversion training," he said.
Interestingly, Sea Harriers were part of INAS 300 (Indian naval air
squadron 300) nicknamed the 'White Tigers'. And much like the feline
genetic oddity, a Sea Harrier stood apart, capable as it was of VTOL
(vertical take-off and landing) operations.
"Harriers were certainly unconventional in their vertical landing, even
though they usually took-off from the angled ski-jump on INS Viraat.
With time, their production was stopped in the UK. The British Royal
Navy also retired its Sea Harriers in 2006," said another officer.
The White Tigers squadron will now hibernate till it's re-commissioned
with MiG-29Ks for INS Vikrant, which is slated to be ready by 2018-19.
Incidentally, INS Vikramaditya's MiG-29K squadron INAS 303 is christened
'Black Panthers'.
Though the Sea Harriers had an operational speed of 640 knots or 1,186
kmph, with a range of around 800 nautical miles, they fell short of
exceeding the speed of sound at Mach 1 or 1,235 kmph. They did undergo a
"limited upgrade" some years ago, including being fitted with Israeli
Elta EL/M-2032 multi-mode fire control radars and 'Derby' beyond visual
range air-to-air missiles, but have outlived their utility. "MiG-29Ks
give us a four-fold capability jump over Sea Harriers," an officer said.
Reference : http://www.indiandefensenews.in/
0 comments:
Post a Comment