4 - Sunday, August 17, 1986 - North Shore News Bob Hunter | Win THE “AIRFAIR” part of Airport, has been, to my Weorld’s Fair so far. Of the competing precision- flying teams, the Blue Anvels from the good old U.S.A. were the ones who dazzled me most, | still hardly believe what T saw. It is quite amazing-enough to see six jaselindike jet fighters streaking along, wing-to-wirg- tip, just a few feet above the runway, but when two of them zap directly toward each other, doing corkscrews, passing at blinding speed, again within mere feet, it Gakes the breath away, The most spectacular stunt of all, however, was when the small fleet broke up, heading off in six directions, only to loop around and streak back toward what seemed like an inevitable six- plane collision over the middle of the tarmac. I barely had time to duck the expected shrapnel before they all did virtually a 90-degree change of course from horizontal to ver- tical at the last possible second and tore off, in a diamond for- mation, barrel-roHing straight in- to the sky. I've been at the controls of a small jet aircraft once, so | know a litte bit of what it feels like to roll and loop. All T can say is that those guys at the Abbotsford show must have constitutions made of Teflon and nervous systems made of optic fibres. There was one other display at the Airfair that stood out like nothing [| have seen at Expo, that's for sure. It caught the eye, as well, of visiting Russian aviators who had brought in a Soviet Arctic surveillance craft to display at the fair. They immediately began taking pictures. The object of their —- and my — curiosity was the opposite of an aircraft, you see, It was, in fact, an autonomous three-man mobile missile system designed to take out low-flying aircraft, advanced tank f helicopters and armored vehicles alike, exactly the sort of thing Moslem insurgents in Afghanistan would give their lives for. The machine has a box-like armored body on treads with a 35 mm twin gun system that fires eight Jaser-guided missiles at Mach 3 for interception as much as five miles away. It has such state-of-the-art c+t- pabilities as forward looking in- fra-red scanners, dual-beam Rtadar, and electro-optical prox- J imity fuses on the warheads, whatever all that means. Even miore interesting than the } sight of an anti-aircraft weapon © strictly personal Expo, staged at Abbotsford mind, the best part of the at an air show was the fact that the system is to be built in Canada for deployment defen- ding NATO. airfields and brigades. and will also be sold worldwide, wherever there hap- pens to be a market. Hoturns out to he a unique package. Called ADATS, mean- ing Air Defence Antitank System, it was designed by the giant Swiss-based Oerlikon- Buhrle corporation, who won a fierce competition to supply the Canadian government: with the $650-million system, Oerlikon has put together a consortium of big outfits, in- cluding Spar Aerospace, General Motors of Canada, Litton Systems and CAE Electronics, to build ADATS in St. Jean-sur- Richelieu in Quebec, employing some 300 people, with the plan being to be in production by the end of this year, the system in place by autumn of 1987, { talked with Werner Oesch, a spokesman for Aerlikon Aerospace Inc., which is what the new Canadian company is called. A Swiss, Oesch serves, of course — the law requires it of all males — in the Swiss Army. He turned out to be a captain who, in the event of a war, would be in command of 300 men defending a pass somewhere in Switzerland against anybody and everybody. He has been given military leave to come to Canada to direct the setting-up of the ADATS system, Switverland’s policy of armed neutrality, le agreed, while ad- mirable, could never be applied io Canada, Based on the ‘Por- cupine Defence,”' ing up into a ball and sticking out your quills, it is utterly dependent on the geographic fact that Switzertand is a small mountain state, easily defended, Canada, with its vast, open terrain and small, concentrated population, could never hope to mount a credible territorial defence against @ superior force, and so we really have to remain part of an alliance, Ovsch observed. Thus, when we build missile- launchers for the defence of NATO, we actually defend Kamloops. It was a fine, intelligent con- versation. In all the Mary Pap- pins cultural stuff and trade ex- hibits at che Expo site itself, there is an element of utter make- believe, as if the political divi- sions of the world didn’t exist. 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