As
a follow-up to the Research and Development Seminar held in Kaduna
recently and in line with the Chief of Air Staff (CAS) vision to
‘reposition the Nigerian Air Force into a highly professional and
disciplined force through capacity building initiatives for effective,
efficient and timely employment of air power in response to Nigeria’s
national security imperatives,’ the Nigerian Air Force has intensified
research and development efforts to produce locally-made spares and
other related equipment in a bid to address the challenges associated
with spares procurement from third party countries.
The
CAS, Air Marshal SB Abubakar, in a bold move towards achieving this
objective set up both research and implementation committees comprising 3
professors and NAF officers in partnership with 28 indigenous
universities. The committees which only recently submitted a combined
interim report were grouped into nondestructive testing team, security
monitoring system and autopilot cassette team.
Air
Marshal Abubakar who expressed optimism while receiving the interim
report stated that the NAF was at the verge of breaking even at
producing locally made spares for maintenance of its aircraft. According
to him, the research outcomes of the committees will save the country
enormous resources in hard currency and the time lag experienced in
purchasing spare and military hardware from other countries. He urged
the committees to intensify their efforts and pledged to provide the
much needed support and enabling environment for them to succeed.
Furthermore, the Air Chief used the occasion to also introduced
inter-command Research and Development competition amongst all NAF
Units.
Earlier, while presenting the interim
report, the leader of the team, Air Vice Marshal Kayode Beckley stated
that various experiments were currently on-going at different NAF units
with the overall aim of using local content to address the issue of
maintenance and procurement of spares.
In view
of the above, you are please requested to air/publish this information
in your mass medium for the awareness of the general public. Thank you
for your usual support and cooperation.
Air Commodore Dele Alonge
NAF Director of Public Relations and Information
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