Dominate South Asia

The fire was quickly put out. When Muhammad ran over, he only smelled a special smell mixed with fuel in the air.

The ground crew had already run over and started to study the plan. The fighter plane was full of fuel when it took off. Now they need to pump out the fuel first, then remove the engine and replace it with a backup engine to resume the flight of the fighter plane.

Muhammad watched the ground crew begin to dismantle the aircraft in an orderly manner, and said to Colonel Grete: "Have such failures occurred in the Tomcat of your navy?"

"When the Tomcat was first equipped to our troops, the engine often broke down." Colonel Grete said: "But in recent years, the engine has stabilized, and the overhaul time has exceeded one thousand hours."

At this point, Colonel Grete suddenly realized: "The Tomcat fighters equipped by your country are used too frequently. Sometimes, they take off several times a day. Some fighters seem to be about to reach a thousand-hour repair interval?"

This TF30 engine is an early turbofan engine with unstable performance. Although it has been improved several times and its stability has been improved, under the high-intensity use of the Pakistan Air Force, the engine is quickly worn out.

Mhammad frowned immediately. Now, the war with the Soviets is about to start. If the engine has problems again and a large number of them break down under this situation, it will be completely over.

"Mr. John, your engine performance is unreliable, which seriously delayed our battle with the Soviets!" Seeing the representative of Grumman, John also hurried out of the office, and Muhammad immediately expressed serious protest to him.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant General Muhammad." John was sweating profusely: "This batch of fighters was ordered by Iran. They are early models. The engine does have some shortcomings. You can remove the faulty engine and airlift it back to Grumman. We will dismantle it for inspection and repair it again."

Early model! Looking at the fighter on the runway, the flight time is definitely not a thousand hours, and in Muhammad's memory, the last overhaul period of TF30 is 1,500 hours!

"You concealed this inside information, which caused our fleet to be grounded. Now, the air battle is about to begin. Our fighter planes will face large-scale air battles at any time. At this time, our Tomcat engines need to be overhauled!" Muhammad finally got angry and roared at John: "We have to remove the engines and ship them back to the United States for overhaul! Is this the solution our allies provide us?"

At this time, Muhammad was not only a lieutenant general and deputy chief of staff of the Air Force, but also said that he was about to become the deputy chief of staff of the Army and a core member of Zia-ul-Haq. John could not afford the anger of such a person.

In fact, Grumman had its own plans. The sale of this batch of aircraft was almost a bargain price. Although it was much higher than the purchase price of the US Navy, Grumman almost did not make any money. As a businessman, the president of Grumman was very shrewd. Since the selling price did not make money, he simply made money from the later maintenance!

Especially the engines of this batch of aircraft, theoretically one thousand hours, in fact, eight hundred hours need to be overhauled, otherwise, the failure rate will increase greatly, let Pakistan dismantle the engine and ship it back to the United States for overhaul, so that the overhaul of the engines of these eighty Tomcat fighters will make Grumman a lot of money.

However, what they didn't expect was that a failure occurred at this time! It was the eve of a large-scale air battle with the Soviets!

The United States fully supports Pakistan and equips the Pakistani Air Force with the most advanced missiles in its arsenal in order to completely defeat the Soviet Air Force and protect the new Afghan people's regime. At this time, Grumman must not drag Pakistan's feet!

What should be done? John looked at the angry Muhammad. Although this lieutenant general usually looks cheerful, once he gets angry, he is like a lion, with murderous intent. After all, the other party has experienced the test of blood and fire and crawled out of the pile of dead bodies on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

John blushed and asked Muhammad, "Then please propose a feasible plan, Mr. Lieutenant General, and we will definitely cooperate with Grumman."

"We have a J-6 overhaul plant in Pakistan. We need you to send technicians to this overhaul plant to overhaul the engines of our Tomcat fighters! It is much more convenient to do it in Pakistan than to go back to Grumman." Muhammad said.

J-6 overhaul plant? Those antiques? John couldn't help but look embarrassed.

When the West abandoned Pakistan, the Eastern countries welcomed Pakistan with sincere friendship and urgently exported hundreds of J-6 fighters to Pakistan to protect Pakistan's airspace. At the same time, in 1972, the Eastern countries exported a J-6 overhaul plant to Pakistan, allowing Pakistan to overhaul the J-6 in its own country.

However, that was aid from the 1970s. The level of Eastern countries at that time was the level of the West in the 1950s. The machine tools and other equipment were old. It was okay to repair a turbojet engine, but for repairing the advanced TF30 turbofan engine, those equipment were probably only a wrench or something that could be used, and even large equipment was not enough.

Now, after hearing what Mhamad said, John couldn't help but said: "Mr. Lieutenant General, the equipment there may not be able to meet our needs for overhauling the Tomcat's turbofan engine."

"Then update the equipment." Mhamad said: "In short, you need to organize it as soon as possible so that we can quickly repair the Tomcat's engine. We don't have many spare parts. Originally, if we encounter such an accident, All our fighter planes should be grounded and inspected before they can fly again. But now, our soldiers are risking their lives to continue flying our faulty fighter planes. Now, it is your turn to show your sincerity. The time has come.”

Update your device! John was even more surprised: "However, updating those equipment requires a large amount of funds. This fund should not be provided by our Grumman company."

There are still many loans that have not been repaid for those Tomcat fighters. To build another engine overhaul line will require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.

"I don't care about these." Mhammad said: "I just want my air force to restore its combat effectiveness as soon as possible. If the engine of the fighter plane fails when intercepting the Soviet plane, then our pilots will face life." The danger, who can bear the consequences?”

He didn't want to pay and wanted the equipment to be shipped by himself. Facing this shameless guy in front of him, John finally couldn't bear it anymore.

Before the words were spoken, I heard Mhamad say again: "We still have a batch of gold in the treasury. I can ask the president to use gold to settle the account with you."

gold! This is hard currency. Now, when the international gold price is rising, if you really need to use gold to settle the matter, you can still make a profit by transporting it back and storing it for a few months.

"Okay, I will immediately ask the head office for instructions." John said.

"As soon as possible, it must be fast. I hope to see your technicians tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow to start overhauling our engines. We must first overhaul the engines of fighter aircraft with more than 800 hours of flight time." "I hope the Soviets will give us this time," Mhammad said.

Watching John leave in a hurry, with Mhamad aside, old Arslan said to Mhamad: "Chief of Staff, this plan of yours is really great!"

"Our destiny cannot be in the hands of others. This is an excellent opportunity. If it is wasted, it will be gone." Mhammad said with a sigh.

The engine failure of this Tomcat fighter jet was entirely caused by the Peshawar base itself. When the Tomcat joined the Pakistan Air Force, Mhamad knew that the flaw of this fighter was the unreliability of the TF-30 engine. Therefore, Mhamad worked with Eastern countries to develop a new TF41 engine. At the same time, Mhammad also made great efforts to maintain these engines, and even invited Iranian personnel to help.

Apart from the Americans, Iran also owns this type of fighter jet. After the revolution in Iran, the United States terminated the continued output of Tomcat fighter jets. Then, the Iran-Iraq War broke out. The Iranian Tomcats were short of spare parts. Under such circumstances, they continued to take off and fight the Iraqi Air Force. In several years of war, Iranian ground crews have been able to maintain the Tomcat fighters normally, and they even began to make their own parts for the fighters to meet their needs.

For this kind of TF-30 engine, the Iranians have very rich maintenance experience, even surpassing their American counterparts. After all, the Americans have sufficient spare parts and can replace them if they break down, while the Iranians have to find ways to recycle waste, so , under this invisible pressure, they brought their intelligence to the extreme.

By exporting some spare parts for fighter jets to Iran, Mhamad made a fortune. Moreover, he also invited a group of experts from Iran to guide his own ground crew in maintaining fighter jets.

There is no problem for the engine to fly for hundreds more hours. Hamad just used this opportunity to get what he wanted most, the overhaul line of the engine!

Pakistan's J-6 overhaul plant has lagged behind. In the future, when new engines are successfully developed in Eastern countries, Pakistan will also need to have production capabilities, and the West will definitely restrict the export of these production equipment.

Now, before the war comes, due to the situation and the temptation of gold, it is not difficult to let Grumman operate and let Pratt \u0026 Whitney, the TF30 engine manufacturer, export an overhaul line. After all, the TF30 is already outdated, and this backward engine is about to be eliminated. It just happens to be exported for overhaul, and it can still make money. The other party should agree.