February 29, 2016 Military Aviation News
02/29/2016
On the horn of Africa, as you may have read, the tiny nation of Djibouti, home to American, French, German, Italian, and Japanese military bases. Is about to welcome the Chinese as well.
Last November, China and Djibouti reached an agreement to set up a naval base in the Obock region in the north of the country, where an American outpost was evicted last August. The U.S. base that remains, called Camp Lemmonier, costs the United States $70 million a year in lease fees and development aid.
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02/29/2016
Despite the first major cease-fire of the Syrian civil war appearing to remain intact on its second day, airstrikes believed to have been conducted by Russian or Syrian aircraft have continued to hit targets in Aleppo, the Hama provinces and the Turkmen-populated region of Bayirbucak yesterday.
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02/29/2016
A welcome decision made back in 2008 to purchase U.S.-made Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) jets no longer appears very attractive in 2016 – and Israel is considering backtracking on it. So say Israeli government sources quoted by Middle East Newsline (MENL).
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02/29/2016
At the end of the third quarter of the 2015-16 financial year, 40 per cent (Rs.37,000 crore out of Rs.93,675 crore) of the capital budget of the armed forces remained unspent. As it will not be possible to spend all of the remaining funds in the January-March 2016 quarter, approximately Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 crore (15 to 20 per cent) may be returned unspent.
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02/29/2016
The Cold War was one such example, a vicious confrontation masquerading as a morally clear conflict. The ones to profit enormously from it were, as ever, those working in defence and beavering away on the next murderous device for the next lethal, preferably bogged down conflict. It produced false enemies in search of a fiction, leading to bloody proxy wars, long-ended engagements with lasting consequences, and trillions of dollars in waste.
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02/29/2016
Saudi Arabia's recent actions have caused a great deal of anxiety within its region. On 4 February, a military spokesman suggested that Saudi Arabia was ready to send troops ground troops to fight ISIS in Syria. A week later Saudi Arabia announced that it will send combat aircraft and soldiers to Turkey to participate in the US-led coalition against ISIS.
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02/29/2016
Delaying the purchase of five F-35 joint strike fighters was “an incredibly difficult decision,” but one the Air Force had to make due to budget constraints, a top general said Thursday.
“When we looked at readiness and our ability to win today’s fight, and then our ability to continue to procure F-35s at the current rate, we just ran out of money,” said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the head of Air Combat Command.
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02/29/2016
Compared to its two sister services (Indian Army and Indian Navy), the Indian Air Force, the world’s fifth largest, is not only the most capital intensive but also the most dependent on foreign supplies. Whether it is fighter planes or transport fleets or mid-air refuellers or trainers or helicopters, the IAF buys everything from foreign vendors. Our indigenously produced fighter aircraft, Tejas (LCA) is yet to get Final Operational Clearance to be inducted inducted into the IAF.
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02/29/2016
Russia's ongoing airborne campaign in Syria wouldn’t have been such a game changer without the help of some of the country’s most sophisticated weapons.
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