[🇵🇰-Airforce] Mirage III and Mirage V of Pakistan Air Force

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Makeover​

The Mirage Rebuild Factory was established at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) in 1978, and in the years since has saved “billions” of dollars for Pakistan, according to Group Captain Muhammad Farooq, in charge of one of the maintenance hangars — though he said the exact figure was difficult to pin down.

The planes take some seven weeks to be overhauled and repainted, he said, adding that usually the MRF has the capacity for more than a dozen planes a year. Its calendar for the next decade or so is already booked up.

At least eight different Mirage variants, including the Mirage 5-EF, Mirage III-DP and Mirage-III Rose-I, were in one of the maintenance hangers when AFP visited.

Engineers and technicians were dismantling cockpit instrument panels and landing gear while undertaking a “non-destructive inspection”, essentially an X-ray to detect faults in the wings and airframe.

Dozens of engines awaiting overhaul were piled in one hangar. Even planes that had suffered accidents such as fires breaking out have been patched back together at the facility.

Pakistan has also been buying up discarded Mirages from other countries to bring through the facility, said retired Air Marshal Shahid Lateef.

The most important technological improvement, developed with the help of South Africa, is the ability to integrate air-to-air refuelling, Farooqi said.

The “identification of friend and foe” (IFF) system, which detects when a Mirage has been locked on to by the system of another plane, was also a key development, he said.

Grand dames​

But even with the improvements and cost-saving measures, the ageing planes are becoming more difficult to maintain.

“They have outlived their lives... after their overhauls (they) have become highly unreliable, we even met with lots of accidents,” Lateef said.

The best option to replace them would be the Rafale, as neighbour and arch-rival India — which has also flown and maintained Mirages for decades — is doing, signing a deal with Dassault in 2016.

The price tag is too much for Pakistan, however, retired Air Commodore Tariq Yazdani said.

Instead Pakistan plans to replace them with the JF-17 Thunder aircraft that it co-developed and co-produced with China, the original manufacturer.

Even as it becomes more urgent to phase them out, Mirages' status as the grand dames of Pakistani military aviation cannot be dismissed, Yazdani, who has logged 1,500 hours flying them, told AFP.

 

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It is a “very agile aircraft capable of penetrating deep into the enemy's territory without being detected by radar, which makes its sole mission — to drop bombs on the enemy's position — quite easy,” he said.

“It is an old aircraft,” said aviation writer Alan Warnes, author of two books on the PAF. “But Pakistani pilots have been flying this plane with the utmost accuracy and expertise.”

Technicians work on a Mirage aircraft during a full overhaul by PAF at Mirage Rebuild Factory in Kamra. —AFP

Technicians paint a Mirage aircraft after being serviced by at the Mirage Rebuild Factory in Kamra. —AFP

 

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: Pakistan Air Force Mirage fighter aircraft belongs to No. 22 'Ghazis' Squadron, returning to base after training sortie.

 

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