Military Aviation News Archive
12/26/2012
Even without $1.2 trillion in "sequestration" cuts that could begin Jan. 2, the enormous U.S. military budget – which has consistently made up almost half of the country’s annual discretionary spending – is entering a period of austerity unseen in more than a decade. Since late 2011, defense contractors big and small have been planning for the previously announced reduction in defense spending of $487 billion over 10 years. But they could lose an additional $492 billion under sequestration.
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12/26/2012
Is the U.S. getting ready to wage the Cold War again? If one believes the critics, that’s the aim behind a planned $10 billion modernization of the B61 nuclear bomb, the backbone of the Pentagon’s tactical nuclear arsenal. Actually, there are some other reasons for the upgrade: to reinforce global deterrence, to provide options against a range of future threats, and to make the U.S. stronger and safer. Achieving those goals is worth the money.
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12/26/2012
They were the Bravest of rescue operations overseas — a team of four FDNY firefighters flying into combat to tend to wounded troops in Afghanistan. The smoke-eaters of the 101st Rescue Squadron of the New York Air National Guard were deployed to more than 50 missions and saved nearly 100 lives between September and November while stationed at Camp Bastion in the southern part of the war-torn country.
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12/26/2012
The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014, concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul. The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms.
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12/26/2012
It was a historic day for India. For the first time a visiting Russian head of State was greeted by booing crowds rather than by the usual, choreographed cheers and waves. Vladimir Putin’s visit comes at a time when India-Russia relations are at their lowest ebb (except for perhaps in the mid-1960s when the Soviets threatened to sell tanks to Pakistan) and Putin had some hard-talking to do in his 18 hours in India.
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12/26/2012
A MiG-21 combat aircraft flown by a Syrian pilot who defected to Jordan in June was found to have been upgraded back in Syria to carry chemical weapons and to fly without a pilot, the Yisrael Hayom daily reported on Tuesday. According to the report, U.S. experts who examined the plane believe Russian engineers helped convert the plane and that Syria has more of them in its air force.
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12/26/2012
A military transport plane has crashed in southern Kazakhstan, killing all 27 people on board. News footage from the scene shows mangled fragments of the aircraft in a swirling blizzard. A crew of seven was on board, along with 20 military personnel. The twin-engined Antonov jet disappeared from radar screens at 7pm as it made its fourth attempt to land at Shymkent, the regional capital of South Kazakhstan.
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12/25/2012
The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014, concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul. The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms.
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12/25/2012
India plans to spend about $100 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade its largely Soviet-era military equipment, as Asia's third-largest economy looks to match its growing economic clout with military power. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, India, one of the world's largest arms importers, has shifted towards buying from the West as Russian products were plagued by delivery delays, maintenance problems and a lack of spare parts.
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12/25/2012
The launch of Astra, India’s air-to-air missile, for the third day on Monday from a static launcher on the ground at Chandipur, Odisha, proved to be a success. The flight-trials on December 21 and 22 from fixed launchers were equally successful. On Monday, Astra manoeuvred at 22g (gravitational force) and intercepted an electronic target with 6g. The three triumphs in a row have paved the way for its launch from an aircraft next year.
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12/25/2012
This year China stepped up its game as a military player with new fighter jets and an aircraft carrier, while also taking a more hawkish approach to political disputes with neighboring nations. China celebrated the successful flight of a the new Shenyang J-15 fighter aircraft - also called the Flying Shark - which was completely designed and manufactured in China and is equipped with domestically produced weapons and radar technology as well.
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12/25/2012
Five multi-role Su-34 bombers will be delivered for a second squadron of the Baltimore air base in Voronezh, southwest Russia, on Tuesday. “Today five Sukhoi Su-34 multi-role frontline bombers have flown from the Novosibirsk aircraft factory’s air field. The jets will make a non-stop flight from Novosibirsk to Voronezh, a distance of over 3,000 kilometers,” said Western Military District (WMD) spokesman Col. Andrei Bobrun.
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12/25/2012
NATO will continue chartering Antonov An-124 Ruslan heavy lift transport planes until at least December 31, 2014, Ukraine’s Antonov design bureau said on Monday. The Alliance has been using six An-124-100 planes, provided by Ukraine’s Antonov state company and Russia’s Volga-Dnepr group, to transport heavy equipment across the globe by air since 2006 under the SALIS (Strategic Airlift Interim Solution) program.
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12/25/2012
Russian aerobatic teams the Swifts and the Russian Knights will receive new Su-30SM and Su-35C fighter jets ahead of regular Russian Air Force units, the force’s commander Viktor Bondarev said on Monday. “When we wrap the preliminary troop tests of these two airplanes, they will be supplied [to the teams] on an advance basis,” Bondarev said at a press conference in the Moscow Region.
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12/25/2012
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev on Monday reiterated that Manas international airport, which currently hosts a US airbase, is to be a purely civilian facility after the US base closes. “There will not be a military component at Manas airport: That is my firm position,” he said. Atambayev announced plans in November last year to close the base by 2014, when the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is to be pulled out of Afghanistan.
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12/24/2012
The third in line to the throne has been serving as the gunner and navigator in an Apache attack helicopter for the Army Air Corps in Afghanistan since September. He is thought to have made his first “kill” a few weeks after arriving.
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12/24/2012
Is the Assad regime near the end of its road in Syria? The television network Al Jazeera is quoting Syrian opposition activists that are claiming that seven people were killed in the Homs area due to the dispersal of gas by the Syrian military. According to the reports, dozens were hurt from inhaling the gas in the Al Bidiya neighborhood in Homs, and suffered from nausea, muscular weakness, blurred vision and breathing difficulties.
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12/24/2012
Last year the large U.S. Air Force UAVs, (MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, and RQ-4 Global Hawk) had an accident rate of 3.8 per 100,000 hours. This accident rate is currently lower than that of the F-16, which is currently one of the safest manned fighter aircraft flying. Last year these air force UAVs had 13 "Class A" accidents (one causing over a two million dollars of loss).
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12/24/2012
Ahead of the visit of President Vladimir Putin, India and Russia have signed a deal for working together to develop the air-launched version of the 290-km-range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which would be fitted to the Su-30MKI combat aircraft of the IAF.
An agreement was signed between BrahMos Aerospace, Russian Rosoboron export and Sukhoi Design Bureau for developing the air-launched version of the missile here on
Friday, Defence Ministry officials said here.
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12/24/2012
The nomination of Senator John Kerry as the new U.S. secretary of state has been warmly received by China, but the state-run news media on the mainland has sharply attacked the passage of a new military spending bill that is awaiting President Obama’s signature.
Two amendments to the $633 billion bill have drawn particular scorn from Beijing, which has unleashed a series of scathing articles and editorials in the state-run news media.
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12/24/2012
Russian military advisers are manning some of Syria's more sophisticated air defences – something that would complicate any future US-led intervention, the Guardian has learned.
The advisers have been deployed with new surface-to-air systems and upgrades of old systems, which Moscow has supplied to the Assad regime since the Syrian revolution broke out 21 months ago.
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12/24/2012
Last week, the Harper government released a report by audit firm KPMG, which sought to ascertain how much it would cost to procure and operate a fleet of 65 F-35 fighter jets. KPMG calculated the total bill over 42 years, the warplane’s expected lifespan in Canadian service, to be $45.8-billion, which works out to an average annual expense of almost $1.1-billion.
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12/24/2012
Russia and India signed new weapons deals worth billions of dollars Monday as President Vladimir Putin sought to further boost ties with an old ally. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed cooperation between their countries as officials signed a $1.6 billion deal for India to purchase 42 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and a $1.3 billion contract for the delivery of 71 Mil Mi-17 military helicopters.
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12/24/2012
BAE Systems has bagged a £2.5bn military aircraft contract from Oman, securing jobs of its 6,000 employees which were jeopardised by the debacle of £25bn merger with European defence giant EADS. BAE Systems will manufacture Typhoon and Hawk military aircraft for Oman in a strategic effort to look out for other growing markets.
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12/23/2012
The launch of the Astra missile for the second day on Saturday from Chandipur, Odisha, was deadly in its accuracy. An air-to-air missile, it was launched from a fixed launcher on the ground and homed in on its target — Lakshya, a pilotless target aircraft (PTA) flying 15 km away. The warhead exploded within a metre of Lakshya, destroying it.On Friday also, the launch from the ground against an electronic target was successful.
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