Page 75 - HeliOps Frontline Issue 26

HELIOPS FRONTLINE / ISSUE 26 / 2019 75

Divers are hooked onto the
so-called rigrope below a Puma
Naval to train for insertion
and extraction in maritime
operations. The curvature in the
rope clearly shows the forward
speed of the Puma Naval.

22 frigates and the corvettes. The Romanian government halted
its naval modernization plans again in January of this year, due to
legal and administrative delays.

The IAR 330

Romania has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) since the end of March 2004. The country
has come a long way in this regard, having been the first country
to join the Partnership for Peace (PfP) in January 1994. From 1955
until 1989 Romania was a member of the Warsaw Pact military
alliance - NATO’s communist counterpart during the Cold War.
Despite this fact, the country chose not to depend on the USSR
for providing helicopter capacity. Therefore, Industria Aeronautică
Română – better known as IAR Brașov – built Western helicopters
under license for the Forțele Aeriene Române (the Romanian Air
Force) for many decades. As early as the summer of 1974, the
company purchased the SA 330 license from the French state-
owned aerospace manufacturer Aérospatiale. In the autumn that