Colombian Air Force To Replace Ageing Kfir | LCA-Tejas In Colombia Aircraft Procurement Deal #ColombianAirForce
#LCATejas
#IsraelAircraftKfir
Colombia, a country largely situated in the north of South America, with land and territories in North America is in progress of procuring aircrafts to replace its ageing Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir. Currently this aircrafts are operated by Colombian Air Force and Srilanka alone. Replacing around 20 Israeli Kfir fighter jets, which Colombian Air Force bought three decades ago, could cost more than US$1 billion.
The Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir is an Israeli-built all-weather multirole combat aircraft based on the French Dassault Mirage 5. This aircraft is equipped with Israeli avionics and an Israeli-built version of the General Electric J79 turbojet engine. The Kfir is a semi-indigenous Israeli fighter development designed to fulfill Israeli Air Force requirement for a ground strike fighter. The Kfir became the ultimate development of the French Dassault Mirage 5 fighter line with airframe changes to differentiate the new aircraft form her French-based origins.
Coming to the contenders for the procurement offer of Columbia, the good thing is that India's LCA-Tejas has been choosen as one of the contenders in this deal. The other contenders are Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon from United States, SAAB from Sweden is offering its 12 single seat Gripen E and 3 dual seat Gripen F, other contender is Eurofighter Typhoon manufactured by a consortium of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.
In addition to the above list, Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) is offering Colombia an upgraded variant of the Kfir combat aircraft it currently flies, dubbed the Kfir Next-Generation (NG). The Kfir NG could be based on remanufactured Colombian Air Force airframes, surplus Israeli Air Force airframes, or could even be new-build depending on the requirements. Melamed declined to put a timeline on the Colombian offer.
The Israeli Aerospace Industries is very confident that Colombia would go for the Kfir NG rather than any other aircrafts. The reason is that Colombia already has the infrastructure, training, simulators, and even ammunition for the aircraft so why would they want to spend two billion dollars on another aircraft.
The Kfir NG adds a more powerful General Electric (GE) F414 engine which already powers the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Saab Gripen E/F) in place of the outdated GE J79. Other changes are an enhanced active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar; improvements to the datalinks; and upgraded avionics. Another feature that is still in development is a redesigned aft-fuselage that will increase the aircraft fuel capacity.
At this point we are not sure about Colombia's decision so we need to wait and see which aircraft manufacturer gets the deal.
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