December 22, 2011 Military Aviation News
12/22/2011
The Philippines has asked the United States, its closest security partner, to give it at
least a squadron of second-hand F-16 fighters to help upgrade its territorial defences, the foreign secretary said on Wednesday. The Philippines has no air power to speak of, with its 40-year-old F-5A/Bs fighter jets retired from service several years ago. It has no bombers or surveillance aircraft and still flies Vietnam War-era UH-1H helicopters.
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12/22/2011
India's Air Chief on Wednesday flew a one-hour sortie in a Sukhoi combat jet in a bid to restore his pilots' confidence after doubts were raised over the aircraft's safety following a crash on December 13, the third since the plane was inducted in 1997.
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12/22/2011
Never colonised, Oman has benefited from a long and close alliance with Britain, which helped transform the tribal levies and palace guard of Muscat and Oman into modern armed forces.
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12/22/2011
News of the death of Kim Jong-il was accompanied by conspicuous muscle flexing by the North Korean military. The “Dear Leader” left behind an enormous war machine, the maintenance of which consumes the bulk of the country’s daily activities. How does this machine work and what does the future hold for it?
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12/22/2011
The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized 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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12/22/2011
With its Dec. 20 decision to purchase Lockheed-Martin's Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning II as Japan's next generation fighter aircraft, the Japanese government gets to have its cake and eat it too. What Japan wants is simple: the most advanced military technology available (or at least better than what China has); activity in the domestic weapons industry; and good relations with the United States. They get all this and then some with the F-35.
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12/22/2011
A Saudi Hawk jet aircraft of the Royal Saudi Air Force crashed during a training mission in the north-western region (Tabuk) yesterday morning, the Saudi Telegraph has reported. The newspaper reported that an official source of the Ministry of Defence said the crash was caused by a bird collision, which led to a malfunction in one of its engines. The source said the pilot managed to eject safely in a parachute.
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12/22/2011
The US Department of Defense has announced that Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $600 million fixed-price foreign military sales contract for the supply of 12 additional Block 50 F-16 C/D fighters (eight single-seat F-16Cs and four two-seat F-16Ds) to the Royal Air Force of Oman.
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