Military Aviation News Archive
06/02/2016
As China spends billions to upgrade and reorganize the People's Liberation Army, the deficiencies in competing Asia-Pacific militaries are coming into focus. And even some of China's much heralded military advances are drawing attention for their shortcomings. Here is a snapshot of some of Asia's less illustrious military kit.
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06/02/2016
The use of the MIG-29N fighter aircraft will be reduced following increasing operating expenses, said Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) chief, Tan Sri Roslan Saad. He said apart from that, the capabilities of the fighter aircraft were also getting more limited as the aircraft have been in service for 21 years since they were first used in 1995.
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06/02/2016
Lockheed Martin has been awarded a 5-year, single award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with a ceiling value of $424 million by the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center – Weapons Division (NAWC-WD) to support the Aircrew Electronic Warfare Tactical Training Range (AEWTTR) program in Ridgecrest, Calif. The company will provide tactical training products and services for Navy pilot training through development of threat radar emitter simulators.
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06/02/2016
The Pentagon announced that L-3 Communications had been awarded almost a $2 billion US Air Force contract to guarantee the supply of airframes for the next generation of air refueling tankers.
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06/02/2016
Russian airstrikes have severely damaged oil facilities controlled by the terrorist group Daesh, also known as IS/Islamic State, in Syria's al-Hasakah Province, according to the Russian military.
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06/02/2016
The experience of weapons, hardware, and aviation utilized in Syria is being used to train servicemen, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday.
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06/01/2016
Three months after the first prototype was unveiled on February 2, the home-grown Hindustan Turbo Trainer-40 (HTT-40), a basic trainer aircraft, took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday and completed a basic flight of about 25 minutes without glitches.
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06/01/2016
The first Boeing P-8A Poseidon multi-mission aircraft (MMA) destined for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) made its first flight last week. The event illustrates Australia’s effort to enhance its maritime domain awareness and security against a backdrop of the rise of China and India.
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06/01/2016
Four nations will join this summer’s Rim of the Pacific drills in Hawaii, increasing the number of countries participating in the world’s largest international maritime exercise to 27. Brazil, Denmark, Germany and Italy will take part for the first time in the biennial RIMPAC, which is slated to begin June 30 and end Aug. 4, the Navy said Tuesday. China, which joined the exercise in 2014, will also participate.
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06/01/2016
In 2013, two OV-10 aircraft participated in an experimental flight and were deployed to Iraq in order to combat mission operatives against ISIS. The aircraft—which debuted in the 1960s—successfully completed a total of 120 combat sorties in a two-and-a-half month period, leaving naysayers to speculate if this legacy aircraft would be more profitable and suitable for the war against one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world.
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06/01/2016
Global defense contractors are circling for business in Asia, with countries from Australia to Vietnam upgrading and adding everything from submarines to fighter jets as China expands its military reach.
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06/01/2016
The JF-17 multi-role combat aircraft is capable enough to meet Pakistan's defence requirements, a top Pakistani minister said on Tuesday. Federal Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer said Pakistan had a fleet of the state-of-the-art JF-17 Thunder aircraft which carried all specifications of any advanced fighter jet.
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06/01/2016
The Israeli air force's chief flight test engineer wants an early as possible delivery of its Lockheed Martin F-35 test asset, to expedite the process of adapting locally-produced weapon systems to the aircraft.
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06/01/2016
Israel's air force has been briefed on the status of the US Air Force's in-development Boeing KC-46A tanker, and has an immediate request for at least two examples. A recently-announced delay to the USAF programme is one reason behind the Israeli air force pushing for a decision, a source in the country indicates. "An early decision will expedite the delivery," the source adds.
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06/01/2016
Figures released by the UK government show 43 air strikes have been carried out in Syria by the Royal Air Force under its Operation Shader since offensive activities were extended into the country in December: only a fraction of the total since the campaign began over Iraq in September 2014.
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06/01/2016
The second most populated country on the planet looks to make strides away from dependence on Western arms manufacturers in an unprecedented change to national policy. In a bid to upgrade rocket weapon systems for its fleet of helicopters, India announced that it will break from its state-run Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which holds a monopoly on the country’s defense contracting needs, to procure munitions from private Indian manufacturers.
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05/31/2016
On May 19, The Straits Times published an article written by Xu Bu, China's Ambassador to Asean, that criticises US involvement in the South China Sea ( "US 'rebalancing' is fishing in S. China Sea's troubled waters"). Ambassador Xu accused the United States of being the "driving force" behind increased tensions in the region, but his rhetoric is based on faulty assumptions and misinterpretations of the facts and the law.
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05/31/2016
Local ground forces backed by U.S.-led military aircraft launched an operation Monday to storm the ISIS stronghold of Fallujah, officials told NBC News. The advance marks the latest in a series of attempts to dislodge ISIS militants who have controlled Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, for more than two years. An Iraqi military spokesman said an operation to retake the center of the city began at 5 a.m. Monday local time (10 p.m. Sunday ET).
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05/31/2016
The Bulgarian Cabinet last week approved defense projects worth well more than a billion euro to acquire new jet fighters and two new naval patrol vessels. The Bulgarian Parliament’s committees on defence and on budget and finance has approved the military shopping list, also including armoured vehicles, at the end of March, The Sofia Globe reported.
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05/31/2016
Russia has delivered the first two Mi-28NE attack helicopters to Algeria, out of an order for 42 of the aircraft. Photos posted by defence blog Secret Difa3 show two Mi-28NEs in Algerian colours being unloaded from what is apparently an Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft in Algeria on 26 May. Algerian Mi-28s have been seen flying in Russia for several months now ahead of deliveries.
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05/31/2016
It is, in many ways, a surreal conflict, one where some combatants can get a latte after the battle. For that reason, it can be easy for Americans to forget we’re even fighting a war. Though our airmen and women fly hundreds of missions a day, it’s not uncommon for the conflict to go unmentioned on the news for weeks.
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05/31/2016
Fighter aircraft avionics have come so far, so fast that it’s hard to realize that only a century ago, the first U.S. Army Air Corps was doing battle over northern France in open cockpits equipped with shockingly rudimentary controls. Today, fighters like Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor are so fully-equipped with advanced head-up display technologies that one wonders whether neuro-activated flight controls are just around the next cloud.
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05/31/2016
If the U.S. Air Force’s biggest problem is that it is so good at its job that some Americans have come to question its relevance, stealth appears to be suffering a similar fate within the Air Force. In his recent series of articles for War on the Rocks, which challenge the utility of stealth technology for future generations of aircraft, Col. Mike “Starbaby” Pietrucha offers a number of thought-provoking ideas that deserve further discussion.
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05/31/2016
The Indian Air Force now has one more advanced landing ground in the country's strategically important northeast, with plans to modernize ten more airfields in the east. India had operationalized one more upgraded Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh in the country's northeast. Mechuka will be capable of landing larger aircraft like C-130J aircraft.
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05/31/2016
Member of the Democratic Majlis of Syria and of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PDS), Ahmet Arac, spoke to Sputnik about how the Turkish Army is preparing to invade Syria.Amid violent clashes between militants of Daesh and troops of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the town of Azaz in northern Aleppo district, reports are surfacing suggesting that the Turkish Army units have been seen located in the district of Azaz.
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