Military Aviation News Archive
04/27/2013
For some time now, there have been unofficial reports that Russia has cut off arms sales to Azerbaijan, in particular of military aircraft that Baku has been seeking. There has been no comment from Moscow, either formally or via anonymous sources, and it's not clear why Russia would have made this move.
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04/27/2013
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley will step down after a five-year tenure during which he improved the service's handling of nuclear materials, but had to deal with scandals surrounding aircraft contracts, sexual assaults by service members and the mishandling of war dead. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement Friday that Donley is returning to private life. His last day on the job is June 21.
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04/27/2013
Russia has approached India again with an offer for MiG-35 fighters. The move comes as negotiations drag on to finalize a contract for the Dassault Rafale, which was declared the winner of the medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA) competition in January last year. Explaining the move, Sergei Korotkov, general director at Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG (RAC MiG), told Russian media, “Although we lost the tender, we nonetheless met all the requirements set by the tender committee.”
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04/27/2013
Israel, which has the most advanced defense industry in the Middle East, is in the forefront of the rapidly expanding drone business that's changing the way wars will be fought for decades to come. With state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries, Elbit Systems and Aeronautics Defense Systems developing new and more agile unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as ground and seaborne drones, the Jewish state seems well-placed to corner a big slice of a market valued at around $50 billion a year.
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04/27/2013
In the innermost ring of Dante's "Inferno," Satan is encased in a block of ice. The subjects of Mitchell Zuckoff's excellent, affecting "Frozen in Time" would understand the great poet's startling imagery. For those brave, beleaguered persons, subzero temperatures, merciless snow and ice, and treacherous glaciers were as hellish as fire and brimstone.
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04/27/2013
This just came into Defence Watch from Norway’s Defence Ministry:
The Norwegian government today submitted a formal request to the Norwegian parliament for authorization to procure six F-35 Lightning II aircraft for delivery in 2017. In doing so, the Norwegian government follows up on its renewed plans from 2012 to stretch its procurement of the F-35 over additional years, and to accelerate its initial purchase by one year.
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04/27/2013
n all of the West, only one all-new fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-35, is in full-scale development. If it outlasts its predecessors, as new products usually do, it could find itself to be the last man standing. The F-35 will have Russian and Chinese competition, but only the U.S. fighter is likely to be engineered to standards that facilitate integration of Western weapons and sensors. For many countries, there will be no real alternative.
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04/27/2013
A Russian military delegation has arrived in the United States to take part in a series of planning meetings with US and Canadian counterparts ahead of the joint Vigilant Eagle 2013 anti-terrorism drills to be held this summer, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The meetings will coordinate the scenario and the schedule of the drills, the composition of trilateral air force assets involved, communications and security issues, according to the ministry.
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04/26/2013
The U.S. Army has fielded the 250th UH-72A Lakota helicopter delivered to Army and National Guard units by EADS North America since 2006. Every Lakota – including an additional five produced for the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School – has been delivered on time and on budget, by an American workforce that is more than 50 percent U.S. military veterans.
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04/26/2013
The Army's newest attack helicopter is on track, the colonel in charge said in response to congressional concerns: Delays in manufacturing transmissions for the Boeing-built AH-64E Guardian have neither driven up the price nor slowed its fielding to combat units.
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04/26/2013
RAF's unmanned Reaper aircraft had been operated from Creech airforce base in Nevada, but missions from Lincolnshire began this week. Remotely controlled armed drones used to target insurgents in Afghanistan have been operated from the UK for the first time, the Ministry of Defence said on Thursday.
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04/26/2013
Israel said Thursday that it shot down an unmanned aircraft that had entered Israeli airspace off the northern coast near Haifa, the second such incident in nearly seven months. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said the drone was first detected as it was flying along the coast of Lebanon toward Israel. When it became clear that the aircraft was not going to stop or change course, Israel dispatched helicopters and F-16 warplanes to destroy it about five miles off the coast.
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04/26/2013
Kazakhstan's military authorities have grounded all the nation's MiG jet fighter aircraft following a crash earlier this week that killed the pilot and injured the navigator of a MiG-31 interceptor, Kazakhstan’s air force chief said on Thursday. The Kazakhstan Air Force Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor crashed during a training flight in central Kazakhstan on Wednesday. The crew managed to eject from the plane before the crash, but the pilot died. A probe was opened into the accident.
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04/26/2013
Russia’s fifth-generation T-50 fighter jet will enter service with the country’s armed forces in 2016, and not 2015 as was previously announced, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
“The T-50 fifth generation jet should go into serial production and enter service in 2016,” Putin said at a live Q&A session with the Russian public. The Defense Ministry had earlier said the jet would be ready in 2015.
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04/26/2013
The United States said Thursday it has evidence that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian government in the civil war there, blaming the increasingly “desperate” regime of President Bashar al-Assad for crossing a “red line” that US President Barack Obama has said could lead to US intervention in the conflict.
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04/26/2013
Military inspectors from Canada and Hungary will carry out a joint monitoring mission over the Russian territory under the international Open Skies Treaty on April 26-30, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The NATO experts will fly on board a Hungarian Air Force’s Antonov An-26 plane using surveillance equipment certified internationally and approved by the Russian side.
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04/25/2013
The tide of war may be receding, as President Barack Obama is fond of saying, but US military demand for unmanned drones and their remote pilots is growing. Here in the New Mexico desert, the US Air Force has ramped up training of drone operators - even as the nation increasingly debates their use and US forces prepare to leave Afghanistan.
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04/25/2013
Beset with monetary woes and a tenuous relationship with the US, Pakistan’s naval modernization plans appear to be faltering with the hoped for acquisition of further surplus US equipment now unlikely. Former Australian defense attaché to Pakistan, Brian Cloughley, says Pakistan’s crippled economy means “the Navy will not receive as much as it needs for capital equipment,” increasing the importance of obtaining surplus equipment.
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04/25/2013
Lockheed Martin may receive a U.S. order in June for as many as 60 F-35 jets, consolidating the sixth and seventh production contracts for the costliest weapons system, according to the Pentagon's program manager The contract may be valued at about $9 billion, according to a person familiar with negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed who declined to be named. The number of F-35s may rise to as many as 71 if orders from other nations are included.
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04/25/2013
It is difficult to discuss the F-35 without actually knowing what the aircraft is and how F-35 fleets will reshape combat. But this is precisely what the budding negative commentary on the F-35 is built on – a lack of knowledge. Even worse, the existing 5th generation aircraft is not well known either, because of its limited numbers and its condemnation by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Barack Obama as a “Cold War” weapon.
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04/25/2013
The Nizhny Novgorod-based Sokol aircraft manufacturer said on Wednesday it will develop a light aircraft for training air force pilots. The order for the development of a new training aircraft came from Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Viktor Bondarev earlier this year. The new aircraft will be a modernized two-seat version of the M-101T Gzhel utility turboprop aircraft, the company said.
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04/25/2013
A former Russian Air Force general was given a four-year suspended sentence and fined 5 million rubles ($160,000) by a court-martial on Wednesday for causing the crash of a Sukhoi Su-27UB fighter jet last year in Russia’s Karelia region. The court-martial Judge Vladislav Pisaryov found Maj. Gen. Kanamat Botashev guilty of breaking flight rules by flying aerobatics in the jet without proper training and authorization.
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04/25/2013
A Kazakhstan Air Force Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor crashed during a training flight in central Kazakhstan last night, killing the pilot and injuring the navigator, Kazakhstan military prosecutors said on Wednesday. The crash occurred near the village of Prostornoye in the Karaganda Region at 10.45 p.m. local time (4.45 p.m. GMT) on Tuesday. “The crew ejected from the plane before the crash," the Military Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
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04/25/2013
Northrop Grumman is the industry sponsor of this competition, which is held in coordination with the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investments (ADASI) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The flying competition, which was open to the public as spectators, took place at the Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi, April 23-24.
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04/25/2013
The upgrading of the Royal Saudi Air Force Tornados has been completed. The final aircraft being returned being photographed at Malta on its route back to the Kingdom. The BAE Systems end of year investor presentation confirmed that “Under the Saudi British Defence Co-operation Programme (SBDCP), orders totalling £3.4bn were awarded for support through to 2016, including the provision of manpower, logistics and training to the RSAF.
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