Military Aviation News Archive
12/30/2011
Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney today welcomed the announcement by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that it has reached an agreement to purchase from the U.S. government 84 new Boeing F-15 fighter aircraft and to upgrade 70 of its existing F-15s.
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12/29/2011
Two F-16 fighter jets flew over to check on an airplane that lost radio contact, government officials said. It happened "in the vicinity of the National Capital Region at approximately 1215 EST today," NORAD said Wednesday afternoon.
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12/29/2011
The F-22 Raptor continues to have growing pains. The Air Force says it is implementing a technical order requiring the backup oxygen system in each F-22 to be removed, inspected and returned to service before that aircraft can fly again. The system, known as the Emergency Oxygen System (EOS), is designed to be used when the pilot is having physiological symptoms that indicate a problem with the main air supply.
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12/29/2011
The British military has had to radically improve some of its simulated training war games to keep the attention of recruits who have grown up in the Playstation and Xbox generation, a Ministry of Defence scientist has admitted.
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12/29/2011
Offsetting losses in other manufacturing sectors, the St. Louis economy continues to benefit from military aerospace production dating to the first prototypes that rolled out of McDonnell Aircraft Company hangars in the mid-1940s.
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12/29/2011
The Eurofighter is in a face-off with France’s Rafale for the race to provide 126 fighters to the Air Force, that is grappling with a serious shortage of combat aircraft. A decision on the matter is expected within the next few weeks, with Defence Ministry officials indicating that the winner would be announced by the first week of January.
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12/29/2011
Experimental testing on the strike-fighter plane Su-25UBM destined for the training of pilots, with performance suitable for combat missions has been completed. The certification that confirms the end of the tests has been signed by the commander in chief of the Russian Air Force, Colonel-General Alexander Zelin, who has recommended the start of its mass production.
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12/29/2011
China on Wednesday dismissed media reports saying that Chinese troops had entered North Korea, Xinhua said. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said reports claiming that Chinese force had entered North Korea as requested by the country to help maintain its stability were “totally groundless.” Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands paid their last respects to former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as the reclusive country started a two-day funeral service for its deceased “dear leader.”
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12/28/2011
The IAF has inducted its sixth C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft procured from the US at the Hindon air base near here. This is the last of the six C-130J Super Hercules ordered by India under the US Foreign Military Sales program, IAF officials said.
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12/28/2011
Swedish defense and security company Saab recently received two orders worth a combined total $36.7 million. The first, from the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration, is for continuous support of the operational capacity of the Gripen jet fighter. Gripen is a single-engine, multi-role aircraft. It comes in four variants and is used by Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Thailand and South Africa. It has a maximum speed of 1,372 mph at altitude.
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12/28/2011
Two months ago, the U.S. MQ-1 Predator UAV fleet hit a million hours in the air. Over 20 percent of those hours were flown this year. The Predator replacement, the MQ-9 reaper has flown nearly 250,000 hours so far. America's large UAVs (MQ-1, MQ-1C, MQ-9, RQ-4 and RQ-170) flew some 400,000 hours this year.
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12/28/2011
India's quest to modernise its armed forces into a lean, mean fighting machine continued in 2011, with a few critical deals materialising and several others facing time overruns. During the past 12 months, India finalised the purchase of some important military equipment, such as 10 Boeing C-17 Globemaster III heavylift cargo planes from the US and the upgrade of 51 Mirage-2000 combat planes initially by the French manufacturer and later in India.
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12/28/2011
Aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft Corp. filed suit Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims after it was excluded from an Air Force contest to supply a small number of attack planes to Afghanistan and other allies.
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12/28/2011
Venezuela became the largest importer of Russian arms for ground forces in 2011, the Moscow based Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade (CAWAT) said on Tuesday. Russia delivered a large consignment of arms to Venezuela under contracts signed in 2009 and 2010, CAWAT head Igor Korotchenko said without offering any figures.
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12/27/2011
The commander of the Indian Air Force recently took an hour-long flight in one of Indias Russian made Su-30MKI jet fighters. This was to reassure Indian pilots that the Su-30MKI was safe. One had crashed recently, and there were widely publicized reliability problems with the engines used in the Su-30MKI, and many of the other Russian designed and built components of the aircraft.
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12/27/2011
Advantage in purchasing military equipment, senior IDF officer explains, is in the price, which would likely be dramatically lower than buying same equipment new. Due to the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East and potential delays to existing procurement plans, the IDF is looking at the possibility of purchasing fighter jets and other platforms used by the United States military in Iraq.
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12/27/2011
For the first time, U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B STOVL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft are being armed with long-range AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. Although the AV-8B is primarily a ground attack aircraft, it can also be quite effective in air-to-air combat. The first AMRAAM equipped AV-8Bs are aboard the amphibious ship (which looks like a small carrier) USS Makin Island.
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12/27/2011
Unmanned systems have revolutionized combat aviation, providing a colossal advantage in the fight against terror with surveillance and close-air support. Recently, a detachment of Marines from Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1 in Afghanistan added aerial resupply to the list of UAV capabilities. The detachment completed its first unmanned aerial system cargo delivery in a combat zone using a helicopter in Afghanistan, Dec. 17.
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12/27/2011
The government is all set to announce the winner of the Indian Air Force (IAF) competition for 126-plus combat jets early in 2012. Authoritative sources told India Strategic defence magazine that the process was nearing completion but there were volumes of paperwork and the complicated costs involving Transfer of Technology (ToT), Offsets, Lifecycle Upgrades and Maintenance Support. Every detail was being looked into as this was India’s - and the world’s - single biggest defence tender yet in t
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12/27/2011
The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realised that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane’s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the “cautionary” range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on. While the crew desperately ran through its “engine overheat” checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing.
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12/27/2011
It was the second win in Asia for the JSF (in 2007, Australia placed an initial order for 24 F-35s, and Canberra could acquire up to 100 aircraft). This order was the latest in a string of losses for the leading European fighter aircraft programmes, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the French Rafale. If these programmes do not secure an export order soon, it could be the end of their chances to sell to one of the world's most lucrative arms markets: Asia.
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12/27/2011
Iran has capability to disrupt any military plots the U.S. may seek to implement against it, Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said on Monday. Iran has the requisite technology and equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles, to “counter electronic and covert warfare,” Vahidi was quoted by Press TV as saying.
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12/26/2011
The Israeli government has canceled a $141 million contract to supply Turkey with an advanced aerial intelligence system, Israeli officials confirmed on Friday. The move appeared to reflect a profound reassessment of strategic ties with Turkey, a former ally, months after Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel.
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12/26/2011
The first batch of P-81 maritime reconnaissance aircraft being purchased by the Indian Navy from Boeing Corporation of US will carry a vital and innovative mobile satellite service (MSS)-based communication system developed by Hyderabad-based firm, Avantel.
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12/25/2011
Iran launched a large-scale 10-day naval exercise on Saturday in an area stretching from the east of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, Press TV reported. The exercise, codenamed Velayat 90, will feature advanced weapon systems and technology, including Tareq and Ghadir submarines, ground-to-sea missile systems and torpedoes.
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