Qi Yiming sometimes finds that even if he doesn't care about his own one-third of an acre, he doesn't have much time to find his little girlfriend to do after the New Year, today he goes to see the satellite launch, and tomorrow he crosses several provinces to see the factories invested by his enterprises, and because too many projects are related to him, he has to nod his head for affirmation when almost everything has a little effect.

Of course, some situations are not really decided by him, and it is polite to ask him to go at most, but it is definitely not good not to go, Qi Yiming still knows what to pay attention to when ushering in. Even so, some of the projects that you focus on should be prioritized.

Liao Province, Shen Fei's test flight site. Qi Yiming will definitely not miss this occasion today, because this is one of the projects he has worked the most - the localization and upgrading of the F-14 Tomcat.

After several months of continuous efforts, I don't know how many project leaders Xia Gaohong and Grumman's technical personnel are fighting openly and secretly behind the road, in short, what is now appearing in front of Qi Yiming are six new F-14 Tomcats that have been preliminarily modified.

Grumman engineer McCrove excitedly aligned and said: "We are going to call this new model the F-14CN, and the nickname will be 'Red Tomcat', what do you think?" ”

Qi Yiming smiled reservedly: "Sounds good. ”

"I think so too!"

Xia Gaohong followed up and said: "These six fighters are fighters that have been tested and finalized, and today we are mainly calling the technical equipment experts of the naval aviation to come over and do a combat qualification certification, if they think there is no problem, we will work at full speed to complete the transformation of the follow-up Tomcat." ”

McCrove also followed up: "After the transformation of the Chinese side is completed, then the second part of the contract will be the delivery of 30 F-14CN fighters of the same specification by our Grumman to the Chinese side, and some parts will of course need to be provided by the Chinese side." "In fact, in the main systems of the fighter, the biggest improvement is that the red Tomcat uses the WS-10A engine, which greatly enhances its power, cruising ability, combat radius and other tactical indicators. In addition, the new AWG-9(V)1, which is being improved with the participation of the Chinese side, also requires the provision of basic integrated circuits and other components by Chinese companies.

In addition, things such as friend or foe identifiers will be delivered to China and then assembled by Shen Fei.

Following Shen Fei to work on the upgrade plan made McRov and a group of other engineers also open their eyes, and if they returned to Grummen to work on similar projects again, it would definitely be easier and easier.

The U.S. military originally wanted to offer its pilots to come to China to assist in the test flight, but because of the comprehensive improvement of the glass cockpit, the U.S. pilots were no different from a rookie who had just started this model, so Qi Yiming still chose HNA's own pilots to do these jobs.

Today is obviously not the first time to test fly the F-14 here, so everyone's performance is somewhat light and relaxed, even a few argumentation experts who are holding a notebook and staring at the fighter plane everywhere to write and draw did not make Shen Fei and Grumman's engineers nervous.

Although the navy still attaches great importance to the project, there are many major events during this time, especially the issue of military reform, which makes all branches of the military anxious, so there are not enough people to visit, but it seems that Qi Yiming himself is the biggest role.

Xia Gaohong turned his head and explained to Qi Yiming: "The entire process of verification of combat qualifications may take a while, but in order to take care of your presence in person today, our subject today will be set as a weapon test, which has been successfully done twice before, and today is mainly to verify the simulated bomb of the fighter firing the immortal bird and the simulated bomb of our PL-12." ”

These simulated projectiles generally do not have a warhead, or they automatically stop exploding when they do not hit the target in a fast hit. Naturally, there was no shortage of PL-12 missiles, and the United States was very careful not to provide the first batch of live ammunition for the immortal birds, but sold Qi Yiming a batch of 20 simulated bombs for the immortal birds. The price of the Immortal Bird missile is also very expensive, the unit price is close to 500,000 US dollars, although the simulated bomb is slightly cheaper, Qi Yiming still feels like he has been slaughtered.

The two aircraft participating in the weapons test used completely different ways of hanging bombs, the first with six AIM-54 Immortal Bird missiles and two AIM-9 Sidewinder combat missiles. This is also a typical air combat layout of the US military, but fighters taking off on aircraft carriers cannot maintain such armament, because under this counterweight, Tomcats cannot take off on aircraft carriers at all. Fortunately, at this time it is a test of the ground runway, and for quite a long time, the F-14CN will not become a carrier-based aircraft.

The other uses the configuration of domestic weapons, six PL-12 medium-range missiles and two PL-8 combat missiles. Because the PL-12 is much smaller than the Immortal, not only can it be easily hung up, but it also causes much less flight resistance. It can also be seen from the above mount scheme that it is almost impossible for the F-14 to complete other tasks other than air combat in the PLA army, which will be a special surprise compared to the versatility of the PLA Air Force model.

When the tomcat is equipped with HNA, the latter mounting scheme will inevitably be more common. In Qi Yiming's own opinion, the AIM-54 Immortal Bird is very good, but the target attack capability of 150 kilometers away is dispensable, and the key attack capability of 40-120 kilometers, PL-12 can cover it, so it is not necessary to buy a large amount of AIM-54. The red Tomcat will still be dominated by domestic equipment.

The pilots of the two crews climbed into the cockpits, apparently doing a great deal of familiarization, maneuvering the planes through the checks like veterans of clinker, and then sliding into the runway.

Looking at the obvious symbol of the Bayi Red Star on the vertical tail of the plane, Qi Yiming couldn't help but be excited, although he didn't have a better choice than a tomcat, but it was still very gratifying to see that what he had put in finally came to fruition. The livery of the new fighter is still a typical HNA silver-gray livery, which is not much different from the original Panda only in terms of appearance, and the difference may be that the shape of the cockpit canopy is a little different, and the appearance of the engine vent has also changed slightly.

The two fighters rushed into the sky and frolicked in the clear blue sky like butterflies accompanying flowers. This is actually a semi-combat grappling demonstration, with the Tomcat in subsonic flight adjusting its variable sweep wing to a small sweep angle for better lift and low-altitude low-speed maneuverability.

Watching the two fighters suddenly climb in the air, suddenly dive rapidly, and suddenly make movements such as circling and rolling, even if these actions are relatively average to watch, and it is not the first time he has watched the flight of a tomcat, but it still makes Qi Yiming fascinated. Because these planes would become the PLA's vehicle, part of the Red Force, which had been an unrealistic fantasy of his military fandom, and finally came true in his hands, it was enough to make himself proud.

Then the two planes showed the role of the weapons they carried, except for one AIM-54 missed the target at a relatively long distance, the rest of the missiles were judged to hit, and what made Qi Yiming's heart happy and even a little impressed was that the performance of the AGW-9 (V)1 radar allocated to the F-14CN was simply a second kill of all the machine-sweeping radars in the active army. With a detection range of more than 200 kilometers for RCS=5 targets, it is not surprising that Iran would use it as an AWACS aircraft in the first place. Of course, considering that the terrain at sea is simpler than on land, the probability of radar detection is lower than that of radars such as APG-63/70, which is of course within the tolerable range.

Qi Yiming immediately made up his mind: "After the navy is officially equipped, take a Tomcat and send it to the empty finger part of the Dalinor base, dismantle it and let the base carry out reverse engineering, and we must give the AWG-9 to the copycat." "This method is naturally feasible, as long as the base has the technical skills and process details of the production, it can copy the equipment well, of course, there is no detailed information, there is only one physical product, it may be a little difficult, but Qi Yiming is convinced that this is not a big problem.

However, he himself is also a little worried about the effectiveness of this matter, because there is no doubt that he has a more powerful active phased array radar, and the AWG-9 is undoubtedly one of the highest levels of machine-swept radar, but he doesn't know where to go when he builds it, or it has become part of the technical reserve. Qi Yiming touched the back of his head, remembering the Leopard B, which was being tested and improved at a rapid pace, maybe he had developed the AWG-9 and assembled it on the Leopard B he used, which would have a good effect.

Xia Gaohong finished a batch of work in hand, and Qi Yiming explained: "The navy will officially start to equip new fighters as early as April, and our modification work is in full swing, and in September or later in the second half of the year, all seventy fighters will be refitted." Once the technique was finalized, we would send the Grummen the corresponding parts and ask them to start production of our second batch of 30 F-14s. ”

Zhou Yutong also interjected at the right time: "There is no problem with the first 100 fighters, but Grumman is still hesitant to give us a production license. ”

Qi Yiming's brows were furrowed so that he could kill a hairy crab in Yangcheng Lake, and said with some contempt: "Are they all profiteers who are not greedy enough, Serge?" There is no difference between Dassault and Bilworth. ”

Zhou Yutong said: "Another good news is that the South Korean side has initially asked us whether it can provide them with FC-1 Thunder fighters that have been modified by the United States. Although we have approved this project, it has been delayed because there is no buyer, and the subsystem contractor has not yet been determined. ”

Qi Yiming's eyes lit up, there is no doubt that Grumman wants to get a piece of the FC-1 international version, but what to do with it is Qi Yiming's matter, Grumman wants to blackmail himself, and Qi Yiming can also blackmail them in turn.