April 02, 2015 Military Aviation News
04/02/2015
China has released pictures of an unnamed “new-type of bomber”, along with an announcement that it has carried out its first military drills in the airspace above the Western Pacific Ocean. According to a statement on the Chinese Ministry of Defence website, the drills took place over the Bashi Canal, which is between a Taiwanese island and a Philippines island.
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04/02/2015
Saudi Arabia and its allies plan an ambitious ground offensive on multiple fronts in Yemen. It may be inevitable if they want to defeat Iranian-backed Shiite rebels but it also carries enormous risks, from the inhospitable, mountainous terrain and a possible guerrilla war to al-Qaida militants waiting in the wings.
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04/02/2015
Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose engines are produced by Pratt & Whitney, recently held a glitzy reception in the atrium of the Rayburn House Office Building, complete with a buffet and the chance to “fly” the F-35 in a cockpit simulator, to press home a point – don’t cut funding for the program. The F-35 faces a host of challenges. A recent Pentagon report detailed significant technical and design issues, including engine problems and serious computer glitches.
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04/02/2015
The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated weapons systems ever developed, a sleek and stealthy fighter jet years in the making that is often called a flying computer because of its more than 8 million lines of code. The Joint Strike Fighter comes in three versions, including one that is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier and another that lands vertically, as if it were a helicopter.
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04/02/2015
This time, when the terrorist insurgency is defeated in Iraq, Washington needs to keep American forces on the ground to sustain the victory, former war planners say. The former military officers talk of a robust presence that would extend beyond mere advisers to include standby combat troops and air power.
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04/02/2015
Ahead of the April 2 anniversary of the invasion of the Falkland Islands, tensions between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the islands are predictably on the rise again. For the next several years, the United Kingdom's capability to respond to potential threats to the Falklands will be limited by the lack of deployable aircraft carriers.
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04/02/2015
The programme for India and Russia to jointly develop a Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), long touted as the flagship of a time-tested defence relationship, has run into a stone wall. Documents available with Business Standard indicate India's defence ministry is cold-shouldering Russian requests to continue the negotiations on a "R&D Draft Contract", which will govern the partnership to develop a futuristic, fifth-generation fighter.
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