Military Aviation News Archive
09/25/2014
The U.S. and two Arab allies took aim Wednesday at a key source of financing for Islamic State militants, bombing 12 of the oil refineries controlled by the terrorist group in Syria, the military said. Black market oil contributes up to $2 million a day to the militant group, and the attacks targeted the small-scale refineries in remote sections of eastern Syria in an effort to choke off its funding.
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09/25/2014
South Korea formally announced on Wednesday that it would buy 40 F-35A fighter jets from the American defense contractor Lockheed Martin in a deal that includes transfers of technology for the development of the country’s own advanced fighter jet. South Korea picked Lockheed Martin’s F-35A as the sole choice for its air force’s new fighter jet in November and has since been negotiating the terms of the deal.
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09/25/2014
The Dutch government has decided to send six F-16 fighter jets to Iraq to help the US-led international coalition in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher said Wednesday. "The Netherlands will make six F-16s available for the first phase of the campaign, for one year," Asscher said as quoted by Agence France-Presse.
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09/25/2014
The use of fifth generation US stealth F-22 Raptor fighters against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization in Syria could be explained by the United States’ fear of Syrian air defense forces, military experts told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
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09/25/2014
Royal Australian Air Force fighter jets and personnel have arrived to the United Arab Emirates to take part in operations against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization, Australian Associated Press reported Wednesday. "There are 400 Royal Australian Air Force officers, eight Super Hornets, a Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft, and a Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft in the contingent.
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09/24/2014
Prime Minister David Cameron supports airstrikes targeting Islamic State in Syria by the U.S. and five Middle Eastern allies and will discuss how the U.K. might contribute to efforts against the militant group in the coming days, the British government said Tuesday. "The PM will be holding talks at the United Nations in New York over the next two days on what more the U.K. and others can do to contribute to international efforts to tackle the threat we all face from ISIL [Islamic State]," the st
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09/24/2014
Lawmakers have rejected the Pentagon's request to shift as much as $1.5 billion in war spending to buy eight new Lockheed Martin F-35 jets and 21 additional Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters. The Defense Department asked for the additional jets and helicopters in a Sept. 8 request for permission to shift, or reprogram, about $2 billion in its war operations budget, partly to pay for expanded operations against Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria.
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09/24/2014
Supporters of the A-10 “Warthog” fighter say the Pentagon should halt plans to scrap the jet, saying it is needed in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The Pentagon has pushed for years to retire the A-10, which provides close air support for troops on the ground in battle, anticipating the need for more advanced aircraft in future ground wars.
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09/24/2014
At least a dozen Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships are carrying out flights in Azerbaijan in the second joint Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises conducted so far this year. The F-16 fighter jets, C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft and Super Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters reportedly arrived in Azerbaijan on Thursday to take part in what the Defense Ministry in Baku called “large-scale” exercises of its ground forces that ended on Saturday.
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09/24/2014
The F-22 Raptor, one of the most expensive fighters in the world, undertook and successfully completed a combat mission for the first time ever Monday in Syria. The next generation Raptor, which has a total program price tag north of $79 billion, had sat out two wars and at least one previous smaller conflict since going operational in late 2005 before being called on to hit a single target in Syria Monday: an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) "command and control building."
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09/24/2014
Russia is very secretive with data on their military budget. But during a recent speech the commander of the Russian Air Force let slip some interesting bits. He said that the aircraft the air force was now buying (Su-30s, Su-35s, Su-34s) cost over a “billion rubles” ($28 million) each. That was known to be an understatement and it ignored the fact that the three aircraft, although all derived from the older Su-27, are each quite different.
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09/24/2014
Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet that entered its airspace over the Golan Heights, the first such strike in nearly 29 years amid heightened fighting between the regime and rebels for control along the sensitive border. The intercept is the latest sign of instability along the Golan Heights frontier stemming from the Syrian civil war, although former Israeli air force officers said they believed that the Syrian jet crossed into Israeli-controlled airspace by accident.
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09/24/2014
The United States used F-22 fighter jets - fifth-generation aircraft - to make airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria on Tuesday, Gen. William Mayville, Joint Staff director of operations, said at a Pentagon briefing. “This strike was the first time the F-22 was used in a combat role. The flight of the F-22s delivered GPS-guided munitions - precision munitions targeting only the right side of the building,” Mayville said.
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09/24/2014
The United States has carried out airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria with the aid of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Fox News reported Tuesday, citing an anonymous source. According to Fox News, the airstrikes targeted about 20 IS facilities, including training sites and arms depots. The United States reportedly used B-1 bombers, F-16 and F-18 fighters, MQ-1 Predator drones and Tomahawk missiles fired from the USS Arleigh Burke destroyer.
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09/24/2014
On 23 September the US with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched 14 strikes against IS in Syria, hitting a number of targets, including Raqqa, a stronghold in eastern Syria captured by the group in 2013. Separately, US forces also carried out eight strikes against a network of al-Qaeda veterans named Khorasan who had established a safe haven west of Aleppo and were plotting imminent attacks against the West.
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09/23/2014
Spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby said fighter and bomber jets and Tomahawk missiles were used in the attack. The strikes were expected as part of President Barack Obama's pledge to "degrade and destroy" IS, which has taken huge swathes of Syria and Iraq. The US has already undertaken 190 air strikes in Iraq since August.
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09/23/2014
The Pentagon is deploying 300 airmen and 12 A-10 combat jets to the Middle East in early October, according to the Indiana Air National Guard. The six-month deployment from the 122nd Fighter Wing is not specifically part of President Obama’s fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but the airmen and jets could provide air support to troops battling ISIS on the ground.
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09/23/2014
For a while, it seemed that the threat from ISIS was limited to sparsely populated desert regions in the Middle East. Through brutal tactics and persecution of minorities, the Sunni extremist group brought slaughter and chaos to large areas of Syria and Iraq. But its merciless efforts to establish its version of an Islamic caliphate unsettled the wider region, prompting U.S. airstrikes aimed at stemming its advance.
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09/23/2014
Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi opposes the deployment of foreign ground forces in Iraq as part of efforts to combat jihadists, his office said on Monday. During a meeting with Australian Defense Minister David Johnston in Baghdad, Abadi reaffirmed his "rejection of any ground intervention in Iraq," a statement said.
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09/23/2014
SIX weeks of US air strikes against the Islamic State have had little effect in containing the jihadists’ advances, with a string of towns and bases falling to the black flag. Caught between the rock of jihadists and the hard-place of Turkey, which has long struggled to suppress its ethnic Kurd population, tens of thousands of Kurds are streaming across the border to escape the advancing Islamic State (IS).
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09/23/2014
Rescue swimmer Ryan Benaglio was a spectacular ambassador for the Navy’s MH-60 Seahawk helicopter Saturday. He told visitors how much hydraulic fluid flows through its pipes, showed them how the hoist works and even lifted toddlers into the rescue basket for photos. But as excited as the 27-year-old was about his aircraft, he was pretty frank with visitors attending the North Island Naval Air Station open house.
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09/23/2014
Over this past weekend, Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that is headquartered in Lebanon, reportedly used drones to bomb a building used by the al Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, along Lebanon's border with Syria. The armed drones, combined with fire from Hezbollah ground troops, killed 23 Nusra Front militants and wounded some 10 others, according to a report by an Iranian news agency.
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09/23/2014
The F-35's long-term costs may “not be affordable” and appear to be substantially higher than those of the existing combat aircraft fleets that the Joint Strike Fighter will replace, the Government Acocuntability Office says in a draft report. “The annual F-35 operating and support costs are estimated to be considerably higher than the combined annual costs of several legacy aircraft,” the draft says.
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09/23/2014
Half of the helicopters in the German Navy are not cleared to fly, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports citing a document produced by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defense. The report comes as a response after Navy helicopter flights were suspended when the crew aboard the Luebeck frigate discovered a 20-centimeter crack in the tale of a Sea Lynx Mk88A helicopter, according to the document. Similar defects were later found on other helicopters of that type.
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09/23/2014
Several African countries are interested in the Russian combat training aircraft Yak-130, Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport's delegation head Yury Demchenko told journalists following the Africa Aerospace and Defense 2014 exhibition. "Preliminary analysis of the interest in the Russian MIC [military-industrial complex] on the part of the countries of the region showed a very strong tendency of readiness to buy Russian helicopters and aviation equipment.
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