Military Aviation News Archive
10/23/2012
Just one month after China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was commissioned, photographs are appearing on the Internet of the Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark fighter jet operating over the ship. The photographs have appeared on Chinese-language military blogs and government-run newspapers. The images show the J-15 flying just above the carrier deck, along with a photograph of a Changhe Z-8 search-and-rescue helicopter taking off from the deck.
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10/23/2012
An F-35A test aircraft, flown by U.S. Air Force Maj. Matthew Phillips, completed the first aerial weapons release of an AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) from a conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft, Oct. 19. The aircraft, known as AF-1, jettisoned the instrumented AIM-120 over the China Lake test range from an internal weapons bay.
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10/23/2012
The tri-national Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) has successfully completed certification testing for its advanced Mode 5 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system at Pratica di Mare Air Force Base in Italy.
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10/23/2012
he first C-5M Super Galaxy production joint acceptance flight with Lockheed Martin and the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) occurred Oct. 17, here at the Lockheed Martin facilities. The joint aircrew included: (from left: Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Huff, Flight Engineer, Lt. Col. Robert Griffith, Aircraft Commander, Master Sgt. Garrad Mitchell, Flight Engineer, Lockheed Martin pilot, Butch Johnson, LM Flight Engineer Larry Frias and LM Flight Engineer John Linville.
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10/23/2012
A recent weapons flight test in the Utah desert may change future warfare after the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage. Boeing [NYSE: BA] and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) during a flight over the Utah Test and Training Range that was monitored from Hill Air Force Base.
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10/22/2012
The US Navy has begun acquiring the sophisticated lightweight air-launched Mk-54 torpedoes from the US weapon maker Raytheon for the Indian Navy. A company spokesperson told India Strategic magazine ( www.indiastrategic.in ) from Tewksbury in the US that the US Navy has placed an order for the torpedoes and associated equipment worth $45.3 million for the Indian and Australian navies. The breakup of numbers and respective costs was not given.
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10/22/2012
A multibillion-dollar project to buy new search-and-rescue aircraft for the Canadian military — once seen as a likely win for Alenia Aermacchi’s C-27J Spartan — has turned into a full-fledged competition, attracting aircraft manufacturers from around the world. The Canadian Forces has reversed its previous decision to operate only one type of aircraft for the new search-and-rescue fleet.
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10/22/2012
A U.S. aircraft carrier group cruised through the disputed South China Sea on Saturday in a show of American power in waters that are fast becoming a focal point of Washington's strategic rivalry with Beijing.
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10/20/2012
Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Saturday will press Syrian officials for a truce, just hours after Lebanese politicians blamed Damascus for the killing of a top security official. But even as Brahimi arrived in the war-torn country Friday, government jets hammered the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwest, and fighters there accused the regime of using cluster bombs in the attack, echoing claims by one rights group.
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10/20/2012
Japan's Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighters against Chinese military aircraft approaching Japanese air space 54 times from July to September, more than three times as often as from April to June, the Defense Ministry said. While Chinese military planes have been increasingly active each year, the recent spike in incidents is apparently due to friction over the Senkaku Islands, located in the East China Sea. The islands, which are administered by Japan, are also claimed by China and Taiwan.
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10/20/2012
France's defense minister announced here Friday that his country will purchase 14 MRTT aerial refueling tanker aircraft from Spain. Jean-Yves Le Drian shared the news with reporters after touring the Airbus Military Conversion Center in the Madrid industrial suburb of Getafe and meeting with Spanish counterpart Pedro Morenes.
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10/20/2012
Chinese pilots are learning how to take-off and land on the country's first aircraft carrier, a media report said on Friday. China's first aircraft carrier was delivered and commissioned to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in September. The carrier, formerly known as the Soviet ship Varyag, was renamed Liaoning and underwent years of refitting to install engines and weapons, as well as a year-long sea trials.
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10/20/2012
The Indian government approved a $1.5-billion deal to buy 200 air-launched variants of the Russian-Indian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile and 10,000 Russian-made Invar anti-tank missiles. The Deccan Herald Indian daily reported the approval for the deal was made on Thursday.
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10/20/2012
The second United Kingdom Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II takes off from Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base today for delivery to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Eglin’s eleventh U.S. Marine Corps F-35B ferried to the Emerald Coast with the U.K. jet. The aircraft, known as ZM136 and BF-16, departed at approximately 8:06 a.m. CDT with U.K. Royal Air Force Sqn. Ldr. Jim Schofield and Marine Corps Maj. Adam Levine at the controls, respectively, for the 90-minute ferry flight to Eglin.
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10/19/2012
“As the U.S. begins to implement [the rebalance], Subic will play an important role because it is one of the important facilities that can service its presence in the Pacific.” One would think that this quote is from a US military or government official, but this actually came from the executive director of the Philippine Presidential Commission on the Visiting Forces Agreement.
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10/19/2012
As many as 140 World War II Spitfire fighter planes - three to four times the number of airworthy models known to exist - are believed to be buried in near-pristine condition in Myanmar. A British-Myanmar partnership says it will begin digging them up by the end of the month.
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10/19/2012
Iraq has signed a contract to buy its second set of 18 F-16 fighters from the United States, part of a deal to purchase 36 of the jets to rebuild its air force, Iraq's acting defence minister said on Thursday. Baghdad signed an initial deal for the first set of 18 jets in September last year valued at roughly $3 billion and those aircraft are scheduled to be delivered by September 2014.
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10/19/2012
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials are considering a sale of 28 advanced AIM-9X-2 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles to the Royal Netherlands Air Force in The Hague, Netherlands to upgrade the organization's fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16AM/BM Fighting Falcon jet fighter aircraft.
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10/19/2012
The engines roared overhead as an F-35B fell into formation. Although this is a basic maneuver for the test pilots, the possibilities for combat environments created by these elite aircraft working together are anything but mundane. The F-35, which features three variants to be used by the Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy, is a single-seat aircraft capable of stealthy operations, equipped with an enhanced computer technology system.
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10/19/2012
Over the past decade, China’s military-aviation industry has been gradually transforming its defence, science, technology, and innovation capabilities, and narrowing the once-wide technological gaps with advanced aviation powers. In the fighter aircraft arena alone, it has been developing, testing, and producing a diverse portfolio of new designs – updating and modernising its ‘legacy fighters, developing indigenous modern ‘fourth-generation’ fighters.
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10/19/2012
India is finally giving its Jaguar "strike" fighters some much-needed new teeth with advanced missiles, engines and avionics. Apart from having a maritime strike role as well, the Jaguars have long been identified by IAF as the jets capable of delivering nuclear weapons if required. The IAF on Monday issued a RFP (request for proposal) to M/s Honeywell Aerospace, the US-based manufacturer of aircraft engines and avionics, to "completely re-engine" 125 Jaguars.
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10/19/2012
About three and a half years ago I wrote that "One might note that with regard to future battlefields the use of contractors is like the use of robots. They promise both greater cost-effectiveness and less loss of life of government soldiers." With the advantage of hindsight it turns out that the use of robots is heavily dependent on the use of contractors. It seems that today's Terminators, such as unmanned aerial systems (UAS) - drones -- are heavily dependent on mere mortals.
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10/19/2012
The commander of Russia’s famed Strizhi (Swifts) aerobatics team, Lt. Col. Valery Morozov, has been fired from the air force for taking bribes, a source at the Kubinka Air Show Center said on Thursday. “Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov signed an order discharging Morozov on October 12” for “failure to comply with his contract,” the source said. Morozov confirmed his discharge and said he will appeal it.
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10/18/2012
Russia has begun installing a new state-of-the-art anti-aircraft weapon system in its southern military region with an eye toward targeting Turkey in response to a NATO missile defense shield outpost that was recently established in East Anatolia, daily Hürriyet reported.
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10/18/2012
Military cooperation between the giants is once again on the rise with China accounting for 15 percent of Russian military exports. India remains Russia’s largest market. The slowdown in military and technical cooperation between Russian and China observed in the mid-2000s was followed by an active growth phase. Russian officials have recently said that defence exports to China are now close to $2 billion, which is comparable to the level achieved in the 1990s.
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