iscover
Ex RMF Mirages languish at Port Augusta in October 1990 awaiting shipping to a new life in Pakistan. Like many such aircraft they have now been upgraded and put into frontline service, an engineering/integration task that is rapidly becoming a major source of work for many of the remaining military airframe manufacturers. Other aircraft undergoing upgrading to extend their useful lives include Sepecat Jaguars, Northrop F -SE Tiger Ifs and McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawks while later generation types such as the Tornado, F-16, F-15 and Mirage 2000 will also receive similar attention in the years to come rather than be replaced by new types as they would have in years gone by.
Aircraft of the ADF — A21 MDC F/A-18 Hornet
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The Industry Consolidates
General Dynamics quit the warplane business in late 1992, reckoning its F-16 line was worth less than the $US1.5 billion that Lockheed had offered for the whole program. Northrop gobbled up Grumman at the beginning of April this year, fending off a bid from Martin Marietta. But a few weeks before, Northrop was itself regarded as a potential takeover target—a business worth more as a mere division of another group than as an independent going concern.
It still might be. Northrop has only a slim hope of having independent work next decade. In 1980 the US had eight companies building their own fixed wing combat aircraft: Fairchild (nee Republic), General Dynamics, Grumman, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop, Rockwell and Vought. Even then the writing was on the wall for Fairchild and Vought, and they bowed out later in the decade. With Grumman and General Dynamics becoming the first post Cold War casualties, the industry is now down to four. Rockwell and Northrop can only hope for further independent work, so we may yet be left with just Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas.
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