What happens to military aircraft if a regime falls out of favour? The truth is they usually possess the level of skill and creativity to reverse engineer and provide for themselves.
Necessity is almost always the beginning of such development, with shortages of Western technology and replacement parts.
Military aircraft parts reverse engineering Rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing technology began more than 20 years ago in 1986.
It allows the creation of a low-cost part directly from a CAD file in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on the part's complexity.
This is sometimes known as additive fabrication.
In the military aerospace market, the method has attracted interest because of its potential for part cost savings and the ability to create new copies of legacy parts from either the original CAD information or reverse engineering data.
But military spares also require high-temperature performance.
Higher speeds and higher engine performance drive higher material specs and in a lot of areas on the aircraft the materials that lend themselves to this process are not always adequate.
Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Iran looked to the international milaero spares markets for military aircraft spare parts or other relevant equipment to maintain their Western aircraft fleet.
Their aircraft industries also appeared to have been moderately successful in reverse engineering, converting a number of older jet fighters.
Charges have been successfully brought against those illegally exporting components for fighter jets and S-65 Sikorsky military assault helicopters.
Despite the current boost in government military spending, military aircraft in service are largely older than their pilots, with no plans to build new bombers for the next 10 years.
Aging aircraft require ever-increasing amounts of expensive maintenance, repairs and replacement parts.
U.
S.
military budget alone has allocated twenty-five percent for spare parts and military ground support systems.