Italians presented the M-346FA lightweight fighter
The M-346 was designed as a training aircraft, but thanks to a successful design it will now be produced in a modification of a light fighter. The M-346FA will debut at the Paris Air Show, but on 18 on June 2017, Leonardo held a press conference, during which it demonstrated its new creation.
The company Leonardo declares that the M-346FA can be used as an aircraft for training combat pilots aviationas well as a light fighter or reconnaissance aircraft. The new aircraft is equipped with a multi-mode Grifo radar, electronic warfare system, reconnaissance module, as well as seven points for installing air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons with a total weight of up to 2 tons (five points were originally planned to be equipped, but more were added later two on the wingtips). The developers call the M-346FA the ideal solution for countries that need low-cost combat aircraft with low operating costs.
The M-346 training aircraft was designed by the Russian JSC Pilot Design Bureau im. A. S. Yakovlev, together with the Italian company L'Alenia Aermacchi. Due to disagreements between the partners, the development of the model ceased at the final stage, and each of the companies received documentation of the basic version of the future aircraft (glider). After that, both companies released their own models: M-346 (L'Alenia Aermacchi) and Yak-130 (Yakovlev Design Bureau).
The first flight of the M-346 took place on July 15 2004 of the year, and its mass production began in the year 2010. Today, the machine is used to train pilots in Italy, Singapore, Israel and Poland. The length of the M-346 is 11,5 m, the wingspan is 9,7 m. The mass of the empty aircraft is 4,6 t, the maximum take-off weight is 9,5 t. The crew of the M-1060 consists of two people.
- flightglobal.com
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