January 27, 2016 Military Aviation News
01/27/2016
A cornerstone of Russia’s national air defense is temporarily down after the Defense Ministry on Monday grounded all of Moscow’s 120 or so serving MiG-31 interceptors pending an investigation into the loss of a MiG-31 in the skies of Siberia earlier that day. The Russian Defense Ministry announced Monday afternoon that a MiG-31 went down over the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. The plane’s pilots ejected safely and the crash did not cause any damage on the ground.
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01/27/2016
On January 15, four A-29 attack planes touched down at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan. For a project beset by seemingly never-ending delays and military-industrial rivalries, the event was a major milestone.
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01/27/2016
After confronting serious technical and economic difficulties, Russia has dramatically cut back its air force program to field its first radar-evading “stealth” fighter jet. By delaying large-scale acquisition of the Sukhoi T-50 fighter, the Kremlin is tacitly acknowledging a truth that the U.S. military learned decades ago — and that China might also learn in coming years: developing stealth fighters is hard.
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01/27/2016
Germany's military is overstretched and underfunded as its troops are engaged in anti-jihadist missions from Syria and Afghanistan to Mali while also aiding refugees at home, the defense commissioner said Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse. Plagued by a series of defense equipment failures, the military is "at a crossroads" and has reached "the limit of its capacity for interventions," said Hans-Peter Bartels.
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01/27/2016
As of early 2016 the U.S. Air Force struggle to retire all its A-10 ground attack aircraft is over. For the moment at least. The air force now says that the war against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and the threat from Russia caused this change of mind. The real reason is that the A-10 has long been the most effective and popular ground attack aircraft and that Congress agreed with these troops rather than the air force generals.
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01/27/2016
Australia will never achieve regional air superiority with the new Lockheed F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter and should instead look to the US F-22 Raptor, a former RAAF officer says. Retired Wing Commander Chris Mills said the F-35 was never designed to achieve air superiority and was outclassed by advanced new Russian aircraft entering service in regional air forces.
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01/27/2016
A very special F-22 belonging to the 27th Fighter Squadron from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia visited the 411th Fighter Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base, California in June and November of 2015 as part of the Signature Management Program, which is aimed to maintain its stealth characteristics.
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01/27/2016
The Nigeria Air Force headquarters says it has reconfigured two demilitarized Alpha Jets acquired without weapons delivery capability for counter-insurgency operations in the north east. A statement on Tuesday by Air Force spokesman Group Captain Ayodele Famuyiwa said the two aircrafts are among the four Alpha Jets bought from the United States in 2015.
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01/27/2016
The Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) program will soon train C-17 aircrews at Boeing’s [NYSE: BA] C-17 International Training Centre (ITC) in the United Kingdom under a new $8 million contract. SAC is comprised of ten NATO countries and two NATO Partnership for Peace countries. The program will begin training its multinational aircrews early this year. Prior to this contract, the SAC program sent aircrews to the United States for training.
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