April 30, 2016 Military Aviation News
04/30/2016
A specter is haunting Asia—the specter of full Chinese domination in the South China Sea. Latest reports suggest that China could soon move ahead with building military facilities on the Scarborough Shoal, a contested land feature it has occupied since 2012. This would allow China, according to a Mainland source, to “further perfect” its aerial superiority across the contested waters.
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04/30/2016
The U.S. Air Force awarded Raytheon a $90 million first-lot production contract for the next-generation Multi-Spectral Targeting System. The AN/DAS-4, the latest variant of the MTS family of sensors, incorporates greater fire control and target location accuracy technology delivering more accurate coordinates for higher precision weapon engagements.
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04/30/2016
On 22 April, Japan’s X-2 prototype stealth fighter carried out its maiden flight. Under development by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), since 2009, at the request of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the X-2 (formerly ATD-X) is at present a small-scale demonstrator. It will test different technologies (propulsion, stealth and avionics) which could be embedded within fifteen years on future Japanese fighters. To date, the development costs of the programme stand at around 320 million euros.
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04/30/2016
A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey descended on Edwards to link up with a Marine F-35B Joint Strike Fighter April 28. Both aircraft are assigned to Marine Operational Test & Evaluation Squadron 22 (VMX-22) out of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona. VMX-22 has a detachment here where Marines are testing and evaluating their version of the JSF, which is the short take-off and vertical landing variant.
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04/30/2016
Although the experimental X-2 will never be an operational fighter, it is the most visible part of a broad Japanese industrial effort, fully backed by the government, to develop technologies necessary for advanced fighters, such as stealth, thrust vectoring control, sensors and advanced engines.
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04/30/2016
The professionalism displayed by China's navy in some of the world's most contested seas is masking an underlying challenge to the existing order in the East China Sea and South China Sea that must be resisted, according to a report by an Australian security think tank. "Beijing's newly acquired taste for maritime 'rules of the road' is lowering the risk of accidental conflict," wrote Ashley Townshend and Rory Medcalf in a report published Friday.
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04/30/2016
China has denied a US request for an aircraft carrier group led by USS John C. Stennis to make a port visit to Hong Kong, the US State Department said on Friday, confirming earlier media reports. Pentagon spokesman, Commander Bill Urban, said another US warship, the USS Blue Ridge, was currently in Hong Kong on a stop-over and the US expected that to continue.
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04/30/2016
Chronic maintenance problems with the aging F-18 Hornet are hobbling the Marines, leaving them with less than 60 percent of the strike fighters they need to conduct training and operations, the Marine deputy commandant for aviation testified recently as reported at Breaking Defense. Units deployed overseas are fully equipped, as they need to be, but this removes capability from training and non-deployed units even though squadron size has been lessened.
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04/30/2016
With tensions rising in the Baltic Sea following an incident involving two Russian fighters and the USS Donald Cook, US officials claim that an Su-27 has performed another “unsafe” flyby of an American surveillance aircraft in the region. Two US defense officials claim that a Russian jet performed a "barrel roll" within 100 ft. of a US Air Force RC-135 spy plane, according to the Telegraph.
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04/30/2016
US President Barack Obama’s administration plans to abandon the plan to subsidize the $700 million deal to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, a senior US State Department official said Friday.
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