Military aircraft market: who, why, when? As the commercial transport market remains depressed, aircraft manufacturers are looking urgently for growth in the military sector to maintain sales volumes and profit margins. However, current military operations will in the short-term boost spending on guided missiles and bombs, rather than on aircraft replacements.

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Military aircraft market: who, why, when? As the commercial transport market remains depressed, aircraft manufacturers are looking urgently for growth in the military sector to maintain sales volumes and profit margins. However, current military operations will in the short-term boost spending on guided missiles and bombs, rather than on aircraft replacements.

In the longer term the outlook for new military aircraft sales is much brighter, as 21st Century needs trigger booming sales in long-range transports, tankers, and both combat and multi-role helicopters, and as US-led technological developments such as stealth fighters and sensor platforms result in new types of operational requirements being generated by medium-and even small-size air forces.

Why do air forces buy new aircraft? Sometimes a purchase is made primarily to eliminate a shortfall in the officers' pension fund, anything up to 25 per cent being creamed off the top of the contract value. However, for the purposes of this discussion, it is assumed that most of the spending associated with military aircraft procurement is performed by the major air forces, which use their funds to replace obsolescent assets and to exploit the operational advances made possible by the latest technologies, allowing them to respond to developing needs. Smaller air forces should rationally watch what their larger counterparts are doing, and follow suit to the best of their ability, if necessary forming regional groupings in such fields as aircrew training, transports and tankers.

Developing Needs

Each of what might be termed the 'post-WW conflicts' has significantly changed the face of warfare. Korea introduced combat between jet fighters for control of the air, the small-scale employment of air-to-surface guided weapons and the use of helicopters to evacuate casualties from the battlefront. France's coin (counter-insurgency) operations in Algeria saw the first use of turbine-engined helicopters armed with cannon and wire-guided, joystick-controlled missiles.

Vietnam brought coin operations into the jungle, the use of air-to-air guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, SA-2s and man-portable SA-7s, large-scale in-flight refuelling for fighters and bombers, the employment of helicopters to deploy and extract army combat units, the development of tandem-seat dedicated attack helicopters, gunship conversions of fixed-wing transports and the use of long-range surveillance UAVs and AEW&C aircraft.

The Falklands conflict of 1982 demonstrated the effectiveness of air-launched anti-ship guided weapons, and witnessed the first operations by Stovl fighters from aircraft carriers and their usage of a short airstrip. In that same year, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon saw sensor-equipped tactical drones playing a significant role for the first time. Soviet coin operations in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980s showed the need for helicopters to be armed with large-calibre guns to out-range ground fire (as the US Army had discovered in Grenada in 1983), and for dedicated close support aircraft with extensive armour plating and u...

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