Military Aviation News Archive
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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05/30/2016
U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of yesterday’s strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
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05/30/2016
The Latvian National Armed Forces (NBS) said on Sunday that they had registered four aircraft of Russia's Aerospace Forces in the airspace near the borders of the Baltic nation.
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05/30/2016
A next-generation military space plane which can launch satellites into orbit every day is a step closer. The US military plans to build a reusable space plane which can fly cheaply and quickly into space to deposit vital defence satellites. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is now welcoming design proposals for the revolutionary vessel.
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05/30/2016
As the drug smugglers' go-fast boat streaked across the blue Caribbean Sea in March, carrying more than a thousand pounds of cocaine toward its U.S. destination, they were completely unaware they were being observed from above. Suddenly, they felt a presence and looked up. Coming at them, low and fast, was the unmistakeable silhouette of one of the nastiest weapons in the Air Force arsenal — a B-1B Lancer, the backbone of America's long-range bomber force.
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05/30/2016
The Air Force is beginning to work on how fast, lethal, durable and capable a new “A-10”-like aircraft would need to be in order to provide U.S. military ground troops with effective close-air support for decades to come.
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05/30/2016
Prospective types of jets and helicopters will be tested by the Russian Chkalov State Flight Tests Center at the Chauda range in Crimea, Col. Gen. Viktor Bondarev, the Russian Aerospace Forces commander, said Sunday. "It is the first time we have got such a range and it is very good that the State Flight Tests Center’s pilots will work here. Tests of new aircraft will be held here," Bondarev told reporters.
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