Military Aviation News Archive
11/29/2013
"The Air Chief flew Su-30 with his son, Squadron Leader Omar Browne, also a Su-30 pilot posted to 20 Squadron there, in what would be recorded as the last sortie in the Air Chief's log book," an IAF release said here. During Browne's tenure, his son got several opportunities to display his flying skills in different exercises including the Exercise Ironfist in Jaisalmer earlier this year.
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11/29/2013
Russia will begin the full-scale R&D work on its future strategic bomber in 2014, a senior aircraft-manufacturing industry official said Thursday. The project, known as PAK-DA (an acronym meaning “future long-range aircraft”), has been in the works for several years but was given the formal go-ahead by the Russian leadership last year.
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11/29/2013
Three new regiments equipped with S-400 Triumf air defense missile systems will be put in service with the Russian armed forces next year, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. “Two S-400 regiments were presented to the Russian military this year. Another three [regiments] should be put in service in 2014,” Putin said at a meeting on the development of Russia’s aerospace defenses.
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11/28/2013
China acknowledged Wednesday it let two American B-52 bombers fly unhindered through its newly declared air defense zone in the East China Sea despite its earlier threat to take defensive measures against unidentified foreign aircraft. The U.S. flights, which tested the Chinese zone for the first time since it was declared over the weekend, raised questions about Beijing's determination to enforce its requirement that foreign aircraft identify themselves and accept Chinese instructions.
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11/28/2013
Caroline Kennedy, the new U.S. ambassador to Japan, criticized China's establishing an air defense zone that included disputed islands in the East China Sea. In her first speech as ambassador, Kennedy said Wednesday Beijing's unilateral decision raised tensions while voicing support for Japan's efforts to ramp up its security measures, such as establishing a national security council, The Japan Times reported.
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11/28/2013
The Air Force is eliminating selective reenlistment bonuses for 46 career fields and cutting retraining opportunities for hundreds of airmen in over-manned specialties as the service prepares to trim the force by as many as 25,000 airmen over the next several years.
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11/28/2013
The Department of Defense offered several contracts aggregating $263.4 million yesterday. Of the contenders was The Boeing Company ( BA ) which clinched two back-to-back contracts totaling $26.9 million. The larger contract worth $18.1 million went to Bell-Boeing Joint Project Office, a collaborative venture between Textron Inc. and Boeing. This involves providing continued logistics services to the different versions of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft operated by the U.S.
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11/28/2013
The U.S. ranks as the leading supplier of defense aircraft for Asia-Pacific partners and allies, according to an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of data provided by Avascent Analytics. The U.S. will have sold about $79.2 billion worth of defense aircraft and related equipment, including both development and production costs, between fiscal 2009-2023 to Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the analysis shows.
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11/28/2013
Air force chief Air Marshal Geoff Brown said he was disappointed with decisions by Port Stephens Council to provide exemptions to its planning rules for some developments near RAAF Williamtown, north of Newcastle. He said new developments were inside the contours on the Australian Noise Exposure Forecast (ANEF) map that were deemed unsuitable by the relevant Australian Standards.
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11/28/2013
The military's still investigating the cause of an unmanned drone crash into Lake Ontario two weeks ago, but has determined it's safe to put the aircraft back in the air over Central and Northern New York. The New York Air National Guard announced today that it started training with the drones again on Tuesday.
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11/28/2013
The countdown timer reaches zero and me and fourteen other team mates take off in two large groups, boosting our engines to gain altitude. I level out my old Soviet I-5 biplane, used extensively during the 1930s, and scan the horizon for the enemy. It doesn’t take long before the two sides reach each other and I spot a wing of hostiles ahead but several hundred metres below. I angle down and line up a target, waiting to get within firing range before unloading the old pair of 7.62mm guns.
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11/28/2013
Tucson has a long association with aviation, so it’s fitting that the city has one of the finest air museums in the world. The Pima Air and Space Museum, opened in 1976, is truly a local treasure. The 80-acre facility has about 300 military and civilian aircraft. Many are stored indoors in hangar space the size of four football fields.
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11/28/2013
Russian air defense forces have taken delivery of six Pantsir-S short-range air defense systems to be used by a new missile regiment formed to protect the skies over Moscow, military officials said Wednesday. The Pantsir-S battalion is set to form part of a third S-400 air defense missile regiment deployed near the Russian capital.
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11/27/2013
The US has flown two B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea in defiance of new Chinese air defence rules, officials say. China set up its "air defence identification zone" on Saturday insisting that aircraft obey its rules or face "emergency defensive measures".
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11/27/2013
Operating similar Russian-origin Su-30 combat aircraft, Air Forces of India and Malaysia today discussed ways of further enhancing their cooperation during the meeting between their chiefs here. "Malaysian air chief General Tan Sri Dato Sri Rodzali bin Daud, who is on a four-day visit, called on IAF Chief NAK Browne here at the Air Headquarters where a wide range of bilateral issues related to the ongoing defence cooperation were discussed," an IAF release said.
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11/27/2013
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have already superseded patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and are rendering gunships obsolete. But until they engage enemies in the air, it’s premature to speak about the end of manned platforms, according to a former Israel Air Force commander.
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11/27/2013
China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning set sail Tuesday en route for sea trials in the South China Sea for training purposes, in a critical step to strengthen its combat capability. The aircraft carrier left its home port in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province, the Xinhua News Agency reported. It was escorted by two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and Shijiazhuang, as well as two missile frigates, the Yantai and Weifang.
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11/27/2013
Ten days after it was commissioned into the Indian Navy at the North Russian shipyard of Sevmash at Severodvinsk, INS Vikramaditya left the yard’s pier, setting course for its homeport at Karwar in Karnataka on Tuesday.
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11/27/2013
As Canada moves to modernize its military, it plans to enter the new world of unmanned aircraft but still has not decided whether its fleet of drones should be weaponized, Gen. Tom Lawson, chief of the defence staff, says. In a speech Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he indicated military leaders see no moral difference in the source of firepower, whether it comes from a rifle or a drone.
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11/27/2013
More than 60 combat jets from Israel, the U.S., Greece and Italy participate in drill in the skies over southern Israel • U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro: We face the same threats in the Middle East and it is crucial that we operate together.
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11/27/2013
The world's militaries this year will spend an estimated $1.84 trillion on everything from boots to battleships, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That's approximately $700 billion more than the entire African continent's gross domestic product.
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11/27/2013
Russian and North American military officials have held a first planning meeting for next year’s joint anti-terrorism drills involving the Russian, US and Canadian air forces, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. The Vigilant Eagle 2014 drills will take place in August and will practice coordination between the Russian armed forces and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in the event of a terrorist attack on a passenger airliner.
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11/27/2013
Russian defense officials denied Tuesday that they plan to deploy strategic bombers at an air base in Kyrgyzstan, addressing speculation over what military analysts had seen as an effort by Moscow to project its geopolitical influence across the region. Some media outlets had speculated that a Russian air base in Kant, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) outside the capital Bishkek, could be used as a forward airfield for refueling and emergency maintenance of Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers.
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11/26/2013
China on Friday announced a provocative new air defense zone in the East China Sea that covers Japanese islands. Over the past three years, China and Japan have been inching toward armed conflict over the Senkaku Islands, which Japan has claimed as its territory since 1895 and China has claimed since 1970.
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11/26/2013
This isn’t the Thanksgiving-week commentary I wanted to write. I wanted to compose an essay about how fortunate we Americans are. But with the clock ticking down to a mid-December deadline for negotiators to find a solution to the government’s fiscal impasse, a troubling pattern is emerging in the behavior of congressional leaders that I can’t ignore.
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