Steve Trimble As defense budgets globally tighten, IAI is positioning the Kfir NG as an affordable alternative to new fourth-generation jets.
Steve Trimble
A Colombian Air Force Kfir C10 lands at Nellis AFB, Nevada, in 2018. The aircraft remains a candidate for a reengining upgrade program offered by IAI.
Despite being retired by its domestic air force more than 20 years ago, the market for upgrading and regenerating Israel Aerospace Industries Kfir fighters is still showing flickers of life.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) now hopes post-COVID budget constraints will push cash-strapped governments away from buying new fighters and instead toward investing in a proposed reengined and supercruising version of the nearly 50-year-old derivative of the Dassault Mirage 5.
Sri Lanka, which has only one of its air force’s 15 Kfirs remaining in service, became the first country to move forward with new upgrades. IAI will nurse five Sri Lankan Kfirs through a refurbishment and upgrade program under a $50 million contract announced on June 30.
IAI will replace the avionics and provision the Sri Lankan Kfirs for a package of future upgrades identified as the C12 configuration, which would include subsidiary Elta Systems EL/M-2052 active, electronically scanned array radar, a targeting pod and a helmet-mounted display and cueing system.
In short, the upgrade package improves the 1960s-era vintage to a fourth-generation fighter standard, albeit powered by a third-generation fighter jet engine. The original GE Aviation J79, featuring 18,750 lb. of thrust with the afterburner engaged, gave the Kfir 36% more propulsive force than the Snecma Atar in the original Mirage 5.
IAI also has proposed a reengining of the aircraft type, which is branded as the Kfir Next-Generation (NG) aircraft. The concept calls for installing the 22,000-lb.-thrust GE F414 turbofan, which generates 17% more thrust in a form factor about 26% shorter than the J79.
The additional thrust gives the Kfir the power to supercruise, a performance characteristic normally associated with fifth-generation fighters. The F414’s improved fuel efficiency and shorter length, which provides additional space for fuel tanks, dramatically extend the Kfir’s range.
The trade-off to the improved performance is a significant modification effort. To accommodate the dimensions of the F414, which include a wider fan diameter than the J79, IAI must replace the aft fuselage of the Kfir with a newly designed and built section.
Finding customers for the Kfir NG may still be challenging. Indeed, IAI reportedly first proposed the Kfir 2000 configuration for export customers with new avionics and a GE F404 engine in the early 1990s, but found no takers.
Colombia, the largest Kfir operator, seems to be the most attractive candidate to the next-generation variant. But fighter modernization is not on the government’s priority list. Colombian Finance Minister Jose Manuel Restrepo said in early May that the recovery cost of the COVID-19 pandemic has eliminated planned spending on a Kfir replacement.
“There is no money for this issue because at this time the important thing is to address the issue of the pandemic,” Restrepo told the RCN Radio network on May 4.
The Kfir NG proposal has already faced stiff competition. In 2019, France reportedly offered Colombia used Rafales and Mirage 2000s—the latter being a distant cousin to the Kfir design. Colombia still received more proposals for the Eurofighter Typhoon, Lockheed Martin F-16V and the Saab Gripen.
Although the competition is steep and Colombia’s fiscal resources are scant, IAI officials contend that the situation only makes the Kfir NG offer more attractive. The Kfir C10 fleet operated by the Colombian Air Force already possesses the sensors and avionics carried by most fourth-generation fighters. Add in the new engine, including the modification costs, and the aircraft can still be delivered for one-third the price of a new fourth-generation fighter, says Ran Braier, IAI’s conversion and upgrades business development director.
“Could we afford to buy a new fleet of airplanes for almost $2 billion? It looks impossible,” Braier says.
He declines to clarify whether IAI has proposed to reengine Colombia’s existing fleet or refurbish Kfirs from the former Israeli Air Force fleet, which is now mothballed in the Negev Desert. Israel keeps the quantity of the mothballed Kfir fleet a mystery, making the available inventory difficult to estimate. In any event, IAI’s feedstock for the Kfir NG may not be limited to the Israeli model.
According to Braier, IAI also could apply the Kfir NG configuration to the Mirage 5 and Mirage III, opening up potentially hundreds of aircraft to the feedstock supply.
