The Nigerian Air Force, NAF, has commenced the production of locally-made spares and other related equipment for its aircraft. NAF Director of Public Relations and Information, DOPRI, Air Commodore Dele Alonge, made the disclosure yesterday in a statement made available to journalists.

Alonge said the effort was in a bid to address the challenges associated with spares procurement from third party countries.

He said the Chief of Air Staff, CAS, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, in a bold move towards achieving this objective had set up both research and implementation committees comprising three professors and NAF officers in partnership with 28 indigenous universities.

Alonge added that the committees which only recently submitted a combined interim report were grouped into non-destructive testing team, security monitoring system and autopilot cassette team.

He said Air Marshal Abubakar expressed optimism while receiving the interim report that the NAF was at the verge of breaking even at producing locally made spares for maintenance of its aircraft.

According to the CAS, “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.”

Credit: NationalMirror