ST.PETESBURG, August 8 (AVN) - The Aircraft Equipment state-owned enterprise, Tikhomirov R&D instrument engineering institute and Thales company of France signed an agreement on joint work on the Cadet aircraft system aimed at detecting, capturing and homing of targets as well as on missiles elimination, a spokesman for the enterprise said on Wednesday.
The Cadet system will enable to use Russian missiles on practically every modern fighter including the Mirage ones of France, the spokesman told the Military News Agency.
The work on the system production will be completed two years later. The first stage envisages the planning, development and production of samples as well as surface bench integration and training. The second stage features the mounting of the system on a plane and flight tests of its demonstration variant. At first the system will be mounted on the MIG-29 Fulcrum plane which is also used in several NATO countries. In future the Mirage-2000 planes will be equipped with the system as well.
According to the spokesman, the system includes RS-400 radar which is the latest development of the French company and radio electronic device with phased array produced by the Tikhomirov institute. The R&D and research-and-testing works of the project will be financed by the Thales company.
The Russian enterprise was established in November 1998 by the Russian government regulation and officially registered in April 2000. The enterprise includes over 50 economic companies as well as 30 enterprises which develop and produce avionics and on-board equipment for planes, helicopters, missile systems and spacecraft. Currently enterprise has 10 artificial persons and its orders volume estimates at almost USD1bn.
The Thales company of France is the new ones which features nine European aircraft instrument engineering companies.