Military Aviation News Archive
12/20/2012
Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to conclude deals on the sale of fighter jets and aircraft engines to India next week which could be worth more than $7.5 billion, defence industry sources said on Wednesday. Putin, who visits India on Monday, has his sights set on selling 42 Sukhoi SU-30MKI fighters and on the long-term supply of 970 warplane engines, one of the sources said.
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12/20/2012
Bulgaria wants to choose a supplier of at least eight fighter jets by March in a long-delayed deal estimated at about 700 million levs ($473 million), defence minister Anyo Angelov said on Wednesday. The European Union's poorest state, which joined NATO in 2004 and is a staunch backer of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, needs to bring its ageing Russian-made aircraft up to the standards of the military alliance.
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12/20/2012
The roar of F-16 fighter jets streaking across the sky over Des Moines on training missions will soon be silenced. Under a budget deal set for approval this week, the Iowa National Guard's 132nd Fighter Wing will lose the jets. The decision comes after months of wrangling between Iowa's congressional delegation and the Air Force.
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12/20/2012
The Russian Defense Ministry and the Irkut aircraft maker have signed a contract on the delivery of an additional 30 Su-30SM multirole fighter jets to the Russian Air Force by 2016.
The first contract between the Defense Ministry and Irkut for the delivery of 30 Su-30SMs was signed in March. The Russian Air Force received the first two Su-30SM aircraft on November 22.
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12/19/2012
House and Senate negotiators agreed on U.S. defense legislation authorizing about $640.7 billion in the current fiscal year for the Pentagon and related programs at agencies such as the Energy Department. The annual authorization legislation calls for added economic sanctions on Iran, while giving President Barack Obama more time to implement them, lawmakers told reporters yesterday at the Capitol. The administration had said it was too soon to add to the sanctions already in place.
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12/19/2012
Airbus believes it can get a lift from a plane that has been dragging it down. The European aerospace company has spent five years trying to fix engineering problems with its A400M Atlas military transport aircraft, which is roughly four years behind schedule, billions of euros over budget and has become a symbol of the company's troubles in the defense industry.
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12/19/2012
Army scientists and engineers are developing a next generation surveillance aircraft, an ‘intelligence collection, processing, and targeting support system.’ EMARSS will ‘provide persistent multi-intelligence capability to detect, locate, classify/identify, and track surface targets with a high degree of timeliness and accuracy.’
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12/19/2012
Originally scheduled for a December 18, 2012 launch on Xbox Live, Ace Combat Assault Horizon has now officially been postponed until sometime in January 2013.
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12/19/2012
In a sharp rebuff to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), the ministry of defence ( MoD) has rejected the public sector aerospace company’s proposal to build basic trainer aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF). This comes after the MoD discovered that HAL-built trainers would cost twice as much as proven aircraft procured from the international market.
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12/19/2012
Induction of Brahmos Air version and C-17 Aircraft would form part of the major expansion in the Indian Air Force during next year, Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne said today The first C-17 Globemaster Aircraft would reach India and the Air Force by June next and would be mainly utilised for strategic lifting and transport ofBSE 0.51 % goods and troops, besides humanitarian relief works, Browne told reporters at Sulur Aircraft Station.
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12/19/2012
A final report into the crash of a Canadian battlefield helicopter outside of Kandahar city in the summer of 2010 has concluded that CH-47 Chinook helicopters need “crash-worthy seating” and restraints for passengers. The helicopter, which was on a routine supply mission and had just departed a nearby base, was reportedly shot down by Taliban ground fire.
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12/19/2012
United States Defense Leon Panetta has stated plans are in motion to deploy the F-35 stealth fighter jet to military bases in Japan. This would be the first overseas deployment of the aircraft, and they are scheduled to be sent to the U.S. Air Force base in Iwakuni by the year 2017. Panetta says the jets will be an important enhancement to the U.S.’s security presence in the Asia-Pacific.
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12/19/2012
Rockwell Collins has received an $18 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop the Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) for military aircraft. The waveform development is aimed at providing warfighters with a higher throughput networking capability to meet the demands to evolving mission requirements, the company said.
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12/19/2012
Belarus and Russia have signed a contract for the delivery of four Yak-130 Mitten jet trainers/light attack aircraft to Belarus in 2015, the Russian aircraft maker said on Tuesday.
The agreement was signed by the Belarusian Defense Ministry and Russia’s Irkut corporation.
Belarus is the first CIS state to buy the aircraft.
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12/18/2012
The Air Force on Monday gave their F-35 training school the go-ahead to officially open its doors to teach pilots how to fly the military’s newest stealth fighter jet. Gen. Edward Rice, who heads the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, visited Eglin Monday to give his formal approval.
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12/18/2012
A real life game of chess is being played out in the Pacific between China, the United States and its allies. China is dramatically modernizing its military, especially its navy, and has been engaged in confrontations in recent months with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal. Both Japan and the Philippines have defense treaties with the U.S.
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12/18/2012
India has long believed that an advanced and self-sufficient defense sector is essential to its status as an emerging power. Yet, as Richard A. Bitzinger writes, the country remains saddled with a bloated and inefficient defense-industrial base that has contributed little to its great power aspirations.
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12/18/2012
Russian arms exports reached a record $14 billion in 2012, President Vladimir Putin said, and India, Algeria and Vietnam remain the biggest buyers, Kommersant reported on Tuesday. However, the leading buyers were joined by Iraq, which entered into a contract to buy 42 Pantsir-S1 air defense systems and 30 Mi-28NE combat helicopters worth a total of $4.2 billion, or about 30% of all contracts, the paper reported.
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12/18/2012
Two aircraft carriers stationed off the Syrian coast were sent back to the US this week in a move that the Obama administration thought would ease tensions, but angered Turkish officials who hoped for significant US military presence in the region. The USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier and the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and its 2,500 marines were recalled after being stationed on the Syrian coast, allegedly in preparation of potential military invasion.
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12/18/2012
Officials at Embraer Defense and Security in Brazil needed an audio system for the Embraer KC-390 military transport aircraft to ensure broadcast announcements are heard throughout the aircraft’s cockpit and cabin. They found their solution at Cobham. Cobham won a contract to provide the Passenger Address System (PAS) for the KC-390.
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12/18/2012
The Indian Air Force will install anti-collision technology in all aircraft procured from now on, according to Defence Minister A.K. Antony. “The type of equipment will depend on the role and operational employability of the aircraft,” Antony wrote in a Dec. 17 letter to Parliament.
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12/18/2012
The men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces need the tools to do their jobs. These tools are expensive, and buying them is often a complex process involving numerous federal departments. We must ensure that public money is well spent, military needs are met, and jobs are delivered for Canadian workers.
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12/18/2012
Russia’s leading aircraft engine maker OAO Klimov will soon start testing an advanced engine for attack helicopters, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday. The VK-2500 is produced under a special federal program to develop the country’s defense sector and allied industries, he said, adding that it is built using exclusively Russian-manufactured components. “We are completely moving away from imported components,” Rogozin said.
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12/18/2012
Russia’s overseas arms sales exceeded $14 billion this year, outperforming forecasts by more than $500 million, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. The country’s defense industry also sealed export contracts worth another $15 billion in 2012, Putin said in Moscow.
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12/17/2012
A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can’t do it anymore. For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn’t be
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