Military Aviation News Archive
10/16/2013
The U.S. decision to award Israel's Elbit Systems the contract to co-produce the flight helmet for Lockheed Martin's advanced F-35 stealth fighter illustrates the close links between the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors. Israel's buying 20 of the fifth-generation jets and eventually wants as many as 75. State-owned Israel Military Industries is already manufacturing components for the F-35.
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10/16/2013
The US Navy conducted float tests of the USS Gerald R. Ford on 11 October and its sea trials are likely to begin in 2016, reports say. "USS Ford is bound to pose a huge impact on the existing Chinese naval equipment," Chen Hu, executive editor of a Chinese military magazine, told the Wen Wei Po, adding that the "Chinese aircraft carrier technology is currently 30 years behind that of the US".
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10/15/2013
The Pentagon has spent the last two decades plowing hundreds of millions of tax dollars into military bases in Italy, turning the country into an increasingly important center for U.S. military power. Especially since the start of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has been shifting its European center of gravity south from Germany, where the overwhelming majority of U.S. forces in the region have been stationed since the end of World War II.
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10/15/2013
Israel has completed what officials termed a long-range air combat exercise that included air refueling, an element vital in any attack on Iran. The Israel Defense Forces said several squadrons of U.S.-origin fighter-jets participated in an exercise over Greece and its islands in the Mediterranean.
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10/15/2013
Four times in the past five years, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found that Boeing Co. (BA:US) collected excessive or unjustified payments on U.S. defense contracts.
In the latest of four audits since 2008, the watchdog office said the Chicago-based company charged the U.S. Army for new helicopter parts while installing used ones “Boeing significantly overstated estimates” of new components needed for CH-47F Chinook helicopters and “primarily installed used parts instead”.
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10/15/2013
"MOJO 1 is engaged, Bullseye 323/24," said Lt. Col. Christopher 'Moto' Davis, 325th Training Support Squadron Adversary Air Operations officer. He had just merged at more than 400 knots bringing him beak to beak with an F-22 Raptor. "MOJO 1, PRESS!" his wingman said over the fight frequency. Colonel Davis puts his 1960's T-38 Talon in a full afterburner, maximum G-defensive turn to try to survive mere seconds more against the world's most advanced fighter jet.
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10/15/2013
Norway’s 2014 budget is $7.2 billion, up from $7.06 billion the previous year. The 2014 budget also will be the last major executive financial action by Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s socialist administration, which has been in power since 2005.
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10/15/2013
The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world's conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions.
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10/15/2013
A Russian military delegation about to visit Brazil will offer joint development of a fifth-generation combat aircraft “of the type” of its own most newest fighter to Brazilian defense officials, a member of the delegation told RIA Novosti Monday.
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10/15/2013
A group of US and Swedish military inspectors is set to fly over Russia and Belarus starting from Monday under the international Open Skies Treaty, a Russian Defense Ministry official said. “Within the framework of the international Open Skies Treaty, US and Swedish inspectors flying a Boeing OC-135B observation aircraft will perform surveillance flights above the territories of Russia and Belarus in the period between October 14 and 19,” said Sergei Ryzhkov, head of the ministry’s National Nucl
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10/14/2013
The US decision to suspend delivery of tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to Egypt is more of a symbolic slap than a punishing wound to the military-backed government for its slog toward a return to democratic rule. Egypt has the tanks and aircraft it would need to fight a conventional war, and spare parts from US manufacturers will still be delivered.
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10/14/2013
The Russian answer to the American F-22, the “5th generation” T-50 (or PAK-FA), is in big trouble. Several key components are facing serious development problems. The key item in trouble is the new engine, which is still stuck in development. Russia always had problems building competitive engines. In the past, to get the power needed, they built engines that lasted only a fraction as long as Western engines.
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10/14/2013
China will continue to develop attack helicopters to build on the success of the WZ-10 and WZ-19 unveiled last year, said Du Wenlong, a military analyst from Beijing, in a interview with the People's Daily Online, the official website of the state-run People's Daily.
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10/14/2013
Last year, the IAF purchased 75 PC-7 Mark II trainers for 557 million Swiss Francs (Rs 3,725 crore). Pilatus has delivered at least 15 of those trainers. When the purchase of 75 trainers from the global market was approved in 2009, it was decided that HAL would simultaneously design and build 106 trainers. But, in July, as reported first by Business Standard (July 29, 'Indian Air Force at war with Hindustan Aeronautics; wants to import, not build, a trainer') the IAF chief wrote to Antony.
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10/14/2013
Seoul and Washington have agreed to reset the timing of the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) next year after reviewing North Korean threat and the South Korean forces capabilities to deal with it, the defense ministry here said Monday.
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10/13/2013
Airbus Military, the multinational consortium that builds the A400M, will soon deliver the first airlifter to the Turkish military, consortium and Turkish officials said. The first Turkish A400M will operate at an air base in Kayseri in central Turkey. “The first aircraft for the Turkish military will be delivered in the coming weeks,” Tom Enders, CEO of EADS, Airbus’ parent company, said at a Sept. 30 ceremony here for the delivery of the first A400M for the French Air Force.
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10/13/2013
According to information first published by the Dayton Daily News, a dozen transport planes valued at approximately $50 million a pop are going from the assembly line to the graveyard. That's on top of the $567 million the Air Force has spent on the Italian-made C-27J aircraft since 2007. Sequestration is being cited as the reason for the planes not being used.
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10/13/2013
Sailors from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 25 helped rescue four people whose plane went missing on a flight from Tinian to Saipan of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Oct. 6.
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10/13/2013
The Air Force is telling Congress that the double whammy of sequestration budget cuts and the partial government shutdown “endangers the safety of our airmen” and “unnecessarily adds risks” to everyday missions. In a memo to Capitol Hill Friday night, Air Force headquarters at the Pentagon said it has been forced to “take extraordinary actions” to make do with less money.
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10/13/2013
The Syrian government’s shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and launchers could imperil civil aviation if they fall into the hands of terrorist groups, according to an independent report examining the global proliferation of portable missiles.
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10/12/2013
A combination of budget cuts and escalating compensation costs will reduce the U.S. military’s fighting forces by at least 50 percent by 2021 and threaten national security, according to a report released Friday. The report by the Bipartisan Policy Center also said that the nearly $1 trillion in defense funding reductions over the next decade, known as the sequester, would cripple the readiness and modernization of military forces.
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10/12/2013
Chemring Group Plc, a U.K. supplier of countermeasures for combat jets, fell the most in 16 years after saying global political turmoil, currency shifts and production snags will reduce earnings this year and next. Chemring plunged 23 percent, the biggest drop since April 1997, to 220 pence, the lowest price since November. The stock has fallen 4.2 percent this year, reversing gains that reached as high as 40 percent in July.
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10/12/2013
President Obama’s decision to reduce but not terminate military aid to Egypt is a measured attempt to protect American interests in a tumultuous region while affirming the president’s support for democracy. One message is that the relationship between the two countries remains crucial to regional stability.
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10/12/2013
Two Cuban fighter jets seized from a North Korean ship in July were in perfect condition to operate and the 15 plane engines that were found along with them were relatively new and could be used as replacements, a Panamanian official said Friday. The comments by Belsio Gonzalez, director of Panama's National Aeronautics and Ocean Administration, appear to contradict the explanation of the cargo given by Cuban authorities.
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10/12/2013
During a testy video conference in June, President Barack Obama drew a line in the sand for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If there was no agreement by Oct. 31 on the terms for keeping a residual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Obama warned him, the United States would withdraw all of its troops at the end of 2014.
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