Military Aviation News Archive
07/10/2015
Frustrated by the persistent delays and design flaws that have dogged the Light Combat Aircraft, or LCA, programme, the government is seriously considering whether to hand over the project to build a new, improved version of the 'Tejas' indigenous fighter plane to the private sector for timebound and efficient execution.
Read More...
07/10/2015
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot wanted to put short-take-off and vertical-landing F-35Bs – made by American defense contractor Lockheed Martin – on the decks of the Navy's two 27,000-ton troop transport assault ships.
Read More...
07/09/2015
Iraqi F-16s and pilots will not be based out of Jordan, as reported by Iraqi media, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said. Abed Issawi, a Shiite member of Iraq's parliament, had told reporters that that the U.S. government was demanding that the Iraqi F-16s fly combat missions from Jordan, not Iraq, according to Rudaw, a Kurdish media outlet.
Read More...
07/09/2015
Russia is the biggest threat to US national security and America must boost its military presence throughout Europe even as Nato allies face budget challenges and scale back spending, Deborah James, US Air Force Secretary, said on Wednesday.
Read More...
07/09/2015
I read two articles with great interest – “First Tejas Mark II engine to arrive in September” and “From Tejas to AMCA” – on July 6, both by Ajai Shukla of the Business Standard. As a retired Colonel of Indian Army, Shukla speaks with a certainty that comes from experience and in these articles he rails against “self-appointed patriots who see no irony in their advocacy of expensive foreign weaponry”.
Read More...
07/09/2015
Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Textron Inc (TXT.N) have emerged as final contenders to buy United Technologies Corp's (UTX.N) Sikorsky Aircraft business, which could be valued at around $8 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. UTC is weighing offers from the two companies and may come to a decision by the end of the month, one of the people said.
Read More...
07/09/2015
First, from one point of view, it's getting harder to fly fighter jets because there are fewer around and the requirements to even climb in to one are remarkably high. I'm very glad I didn't have this kind of competition for so few slots. Let's move on to the other aspect.
Read More...
07/09/2015
A design for a large, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was unveiled at the seventh maritime and defense show (IMDS’2015) held last week in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Krylov State Research Center—a government-owned scientific institute specializing in marine technologies—showed a scale model of a “multipurpose aircraft carrier” that was comparable in size to the U.S. Navy Nimitz class. The Russian ministry of defense is funding Krylov’s work under Project Shtorm (Storm).
Read More...
07/09/2015
The Navy has decided to hold off sending its X-47B combat drones to an aviation museum. For now, the Northrop Grumman aircraft will be kept in flying condition pending high-level decisions on how to move forward. “The Navy is examining a range of potential follow-on activities involving the X-47B air vehicles,” Navy Capt. Beau Duarte, program manager for unmanned carrier aviation, told National Defense in a statement.
Read More...
07/09/2015
An Indian Air Force (IAF) recruitment advertisement has generated controversy - and ridicule - in domestic military circles for depicting a Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, an aircraft that it does not operate. The F/A-18 image, featuring in several Indian newspapers on 5 July, appeared alongside Sukhoi Su-30MKI and Dassault Mirage 2000H combat aircraft that are in IAF service and above the tagline 'Join the mission'.
Read More...
07/09/2015
According to the United States Defense Department’s latest report on China’s military build-up the “Middle Kingdom” will spend more than $10 billion on land and sea based unmanned aircraft. These will include fixed wing and rotary aircraft to conduct surveillance, attack and even air combat missions.
Read More...
07/08/2015
A recent report in a military affairs magazine has shed light on a recent meeting in the Chinese military where the need for a strategic aerial capability was made clear. China already has strategic bombers in its inventory but they will not meet the future military needs of the country.
Read More...
07/08/2015
The US Air Force has decided to team up with the Department of Defense to speed up the development of hypersonic aircraft and hopes to achieve its goal by 2023. Hypersonic refers to any aircraft that travels at five times the speed of sound, which is about 3,800mph and known as Mach 5. In order to achieve this, the plane needs to be lightened using Supersonic Combustion Ramjet Engines (Scramjet) technology.
Read More...
07/08/2015
Airmen assigned to the 41st Expeditionary Helicopter Maintenance Unit here constantly work maintaining HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters so that the combat rescue mission in Afghanistan can be a success if and when it is needed. The 41st EHMU is part of the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and is responsible for delivering airworthy helicopters to the expeditionary rescue squadron to complete its personnel recovery mission.
Read More...
07/08/2015
Support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to expand Japan’s military role has waned in recent months, and moving forward with a “collective self-defense” proposal could jeopardize his political influence, recent polls suggest. n a July 5 Yomiuri Shimbun poll, 80 percent said the government hadn’t properly explained the proposed changes that, among other things, would allow the Japanese military to legally defend U.S. forces in combat.
Read More...
07/08/2015
U.S. aircraft are coming back from most combat missions in Iraq without dropping any bombs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Martin Dempsey said Tuesday. "At a similar period in the Afghanistan conflict in 2012, the number of aircraft that returned with their ordnance because there were not targets available on the ground was 83 percent," Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It's 65 percent in Iraq right now."
Read More...
07/08/2015
The global fixed wing military aircraft market will go from earning revenues of $63.33 billion in 2014 to $72.77 billion in 2023 as the market grows due to procurement and modernisation programmes, according to a new report.
Read More...
07/08/2015
Two people in a small Cessna were killed after an F-16 fighter jet collided with the civilian plane in a "very rare" crash in South Carolina on Tuesday morning. The Cessna was destroyed and both people aboard were killed in the crash, National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson told USA TODAY.
Read More...
07/08/2015
The passage of the US-Jordan defense bill that will enhance cooperation between the two countries in fighting Islamic State terrorists shows Washington’s commitment to the Middle Eastern security, US Congressman and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce said in a statement.
Read More...
07/08/2015
The first of two strikes was carried out at noon Monday in Nangarhar province's Achin district, on the border with Pakistan, killing 12 militants, according the provincial governor's spokesman, Ahmad Zia Adulzai. A short time later, US officials acting on reports that indicated the fighters were moving to a new location conducted a second strike in the same district, leaving 37 militants dead.
Read More...
07/07/2015
A Russian military aircraft crashed Monday while taking off on a nighttime training flight and both pilots were killed, the Defense Ministry said. It was the fifth accident involving a Russian military aircraft in the past month, but the first with fatalities. The Su-24 bomber crashed while taking off from an airfield in the Khabarovsk region in Russia's Far East at 9:35 p.m. local time, the ministry said in a statement.
Read More...
07/07/2015
The U.S. military is placing orders worth nearly a billion dollars with Lockheed Martin Corp. to prepare for building 94 F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter combat jets. The order involves conventional and vertical takeoff and landing versions, as well as carrier versions.
Read More...
07/07/2015
When an ambulance rolled through Druze villages near the Israeli-Syrian border last month, it was met by an angry mob of stone-throwing protesters shouting that they’d been betrayed by Israel. Surrounding the emergency vehicle, they claimed that Israel’s government is giving medical treatment to Islamist fighters who are now threatening to kill their Druze brethren in Syria. The mob opened up the doors of the ambulance and dragged out the two patients inside, killing one of them.
Read More...
07/07/2015
Airbus Helicopters and India's Mahindra Defense have agreed to form a joint venture to produce helicopters in the country to meet local military needs. Airbus and Mahindra Defense, a subsidiary of the Mahindra Group, said the two companies will not enter discussions to finalize the joint venture which will act as the prime contractor for India's military helicopter tenders.
Read More...
07/07/2015
An Iraqi fighter jet accidentally dropped a bomb on a Baghdad residential neighborhood on Monday, killing seven people, government officials said. The Russian-made Sukhoi jet was returning from a mission against Islamic State targets in western Iraq at the time, Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan said. The bomb, which had failed to release from the aircraft earlier in the flight, detached as it flew over the neighborhood, he said.
Read More...