Military Aviation News Archive
11/02/2014
President Obama’s refusal to consider committing U.S. ground forces to the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, has revived a debate about the effectiveness of airpower that is as old as military aviation itself. The question involves the degree to which airpower alone can win wars. In response to the horrors of trench warfare in World War I, airpower theorists such as Italy’s Giulio Douhet and America’s Billy Mitchell conceived the idea of bombing targets in the enemy’s heartland.
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11/02/2014
China's mysterious fifth-generation J-31 stealth fighter jet, set to make its debut later this month, could form a lethal tandem with the country's existing J-15 carrier-based fighter aircraft, says a Chinese military expert. The J-31, also known as "Gyrfalcon," or Falcon Hawk by some military enthusiasts, is a twin-engine, mid-size fifth-generation jet fighter currently under development by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation.
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11/02/2014
The U.S. is concerned Chinese jets may engage in further risky intercepts of its military aircraft, even after starting talks aimed at avoiding such encounters, the new commander of U.S. air forces in the Pacific said. A Chinese fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft flying at more than 400 miles an hour near Hainan Island -- China’s gateway to the contested South China Sea -- on Aug. 19, an encounter that the Pentagon described as “unsafe and unprofessional.”
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11/02/2014
North Korea has deployed a new submarine, capable of carrying ballistic missiles, another step forward in the nuclear weapon development. Sources in the government of South Korea have said that the North “imported a Soviet-era Golf-class diesel submarine and modified it”, according to a Yonhap News report. Subs of this series are also known as ‘Project 629’. They are powered with a hybrid diesel-electric engine and are able to carry ballistic missiles and/or Scud missiless.
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11/01/2014
At 09:20 am (Moscow time), this silo-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Plesetsk in Arkhangelsk Oblast. A few minutes later, the dummy nuclear warhead hits its target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far eastern corner, the Ministry of Defense reports. The Ministry adds that the Topol-M missile has an “extremely high accuracy of target destruction.”
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11/01/2014
Argentina has expressed interest in buying 24 Gripen E fighters from Brazil, which has just inked a licensing deal with Sweden permitting the South American country to manufacture its own copies of Saab’s new single-engine fighter. “Our willingness to cooperate with Argentina, our neighbor and ally, is total,” Brazilian defense minister Celso Amorim said.
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11/01/2014
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has praised the deployment of South Korea’s FA-50 aircrafts on Thursday, while ordering the country’s military to remain at full readiness, Yonhap News Agency reported. “Now, our security situation is very grave”, Park said in a ceremony, marking the deployment of the fighter jets, as quoted by Yonhap News.
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11/01/2014
A second pair of CF-18 Hornet fighter jets returned Friday from a combat mission over Iraq with a full bomb payload because cloud cover had obscured Islamic State positions. For the same reason the first two Canadian combat aircraft – which launched from an airfield in Kuwait on Thursday along with a Canadian Aurora CP-140 spy plane and a CC-150 air-to-air refueling tanker – also did not drop their munitions during a six-hour mission over territory held by Islamic State.
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11/01/2014
Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby during a press briefing on Friday stated that Russian Air Force planes pose a risk to civil aviation. “Well, we certainly don't see this - these increased flights and activity as helpful to the security situation in Europe. Clearly, they - they pose the potential risk of escalation.
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11/01/2014
One pilot died and another one was seriously injured in the suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo crash on Friday in Mojave Desert, California, CNN reported. “One person died and another was seriously injured as a result of Friday's incident involving Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo,“ California Highway Patrol Officer Jesse Borne said, as quoted by CNN.
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10/31/2014
In a single 24-hour period this week, Russia dispatched 19 combat aircraft — including “Bear” strategic bombers — to probe North Atlantic Treaty Organization air defenses. It also test-launched a ballistic missile in the Barents Sea, north of Sweden, that hit a target in Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East.
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10/31/2014
The US Air Force's (USAF's) goal to make its new fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter combat aircraft operationally deployable in August 2016 has been imperilled by lawmakers' efforts to halt the service's plan to retire its Cold War-era Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt close air support (CAS) aircraft fleet, the Pentagon's F-35 programme manager said on 30 October.
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10/31/2014
Canadian warplanes have begun flying combat missions over Iraq although no bombs have yet been dropped. CF-18 fighters and Canada’s surveillance spy planes and a refuelling tanker have all flown sorties over Iraq starting Thursday, sources say. The fighters also flew a second combat mission Friday morning. Bad weather thwarted the CF-18s’s ability to launch air strikes Thursday as their laser-guided munitions were frustrated by the clouds.
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10/31/2014
This week, Russian aircraft have probed NATO defenses to a degree unseen since the Cold War. Fighter aircraft from eight NATO members were reportedly scrambled to intercept more than two dozen aircraft just on Tuesday and Wednesday. As the Wall Street Journal report details, the intercepts of Russian aircraft have occurred more than one hundred times this year, which is about three times the number of intercepts conducted last year.
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10/31/2014
UK today said the Europe-backed Eurofighter could hold negotiations with India for the supply 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) if the talks for the multi-billion dollar deal with French major Dassault Aviation do not make progress. Making it clear that his country respects the "position the Indian government has adopted", visiting UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said.
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10/31/2014
A US military expert believes North Korea has the ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads for its medium-range missiles, however Pyongyang does not appear to have technical capacity to conduct tests, Yonhap News Agency reported on Thursday. “My analysis is that North Korea could probably miniaturize a warhead that should fit for a Rodong missile,” director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Mark Fitzpatrick told Yonhap News.
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10/31/2014
Kabul has not asked for more Russian Mi-17 helicopters, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan Chris Belcher told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) has announced on Thursday that the deal between the United States and Russia for the Mi-17 helicopters was completed on October 29.
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10/30/2014
The “friendly fire” airstrike that killed five American soldiers in Afghanistan on June 9 is the first known case of a battlefield catastrophe that can be linked to automatic defense spending cuts that greatly curtailed prewar training. A review of the worst American fratricide in the long Afghanistan war also shows that the military’s official investigation faults a Green Beret commander.
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10/30/2014
Welcome back to history, mariners of the world! Your post-Cold War holiday from history is drawing to a close—if it hasn’t expired already. Last week’s imbroglio between the Swedish Navy and an apparent Russian submarine in the Stockholm archipelago was only the most recent reminder of certain verities about combat at sea.
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10/30/2014
Most political observers would agree that Barack Obama’s presidential election victory in 2008 was the product of an unprecedented alignment of factors, from his use of technology and social media, to the economy going into free fall under the Republican administration in autumn of that year.
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10/30/2014
Brazil's decision to buy the Swedish JAS-39E/F Gripen (or Gripen NG) has opened a tantalising possibility for India's defence ministry (MoD), which is frustrated after 33 months of negotiations with French company, Dassault on the proposed purchase of 126 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA).
On Monday, Swedish defence giant, Saab, which builds the Gripen, announced Brazil had signed a contract for 36 Gripen NG fighters for $5.475 billion.
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10/30/2014
The Air Force says the U.S. bombing campaign against Islamic extremists is exacerbating its shortage of plane-maintenance experts—a gap that is rekindling tensions with Congress about how to manage the nation’s combat aircraft. To keep U.S. planes flying over Syria and Iraq, Air Force officials said they have had to deploy hundreds of midlevel maintenance personnel to the overseas missions.
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10/30/2014
The French government believes that India is about to become the first customer for the Rafale fighter aircraft despite the long and hard bargaining over price and work-share arrangements. In three months from now, it will be three years since the Indian Air Force selected the Rafale from a field of six competitors to fulfil its requirement for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA).
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10/30/2014
As many as 12 Russian combat aircraft Su-27 and two combat training aircraft Su-27 will be deployed at the airfield in Bobruisk, BelTA learned from Russian Defense Minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu on 29 October. “Next year we will deploy 12 combat aircraft Su-27 and two training aircraft Su-27 in addition to a wing of four Mi-8 helicopters at the airfield in Bobruisk,” said Sergei Shoigu.
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10/30/2014
Sweden recognized a state of Palestine on Thursday, describing the decision as a crucial step it hopes will lead the way for others. "In the light of the international law analysis, we see no reason to delay this decision," Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said. She said the decision was made based on the fact that the state "met the criteria of international law."
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