February 29, 2012 Military Aviation News
02/29/2012
The U.S. Air Force is making progress on a new long-range bomber, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said at a trade conference in Florida last week. “There’s a competition,” Donley said, according to DoDBuzz.
“The program is underway, the requirements, the cost parameters have been set by the Secretary of Defense and we’re executing in that direction…we’ve identified the target delivery for the mid ‘20s.”
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02/29/2012
America’s newest stealth fighters have a major problem: their pilots can’t breathe, due to some sort of malfunction in the planes’ oxygen-generation systems. For months, the Air Force has been studying the problem, which temporarily grounded the entire fleet of F-22 Raptors and may have contributed to a pilot’s death. Today, the Air Force admitted they still don’t know exactly what’s causing the issue.
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02/29/2012
When Lt.-Gen. Juancho Sabban received an urgent phone call from an oil company saying two Chinese vessels were threatening to ram its survey ship, the Philippine commander’s message was clear: don’t move, we will come to the rescue. Within hours, a Philippine surveillance plane, patrol ships and light attack aircraft arrived in the disputed area of Reed Bank in the South China Sea. By then the Chinese boats had left after chasing away the survey ship, Veritas Voyager, hired by U.K.-based Forum
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02/29/2012
The world’s top suppliers of military hardware and combat support services scored sales of $411.1 billion in 2010, and 60 percent of that business went to U.S. companies, according to a study published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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02/29/2012
Because of Reaper’s nature, unit-cost estimates can be tricky. Various media reports cite a per-unit cost from $4 million to $5 million. They are quite incorrect.
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02/29/2012
The US Air Force has canceled a $355 million contract for a light attack aircraft made by Brazil's Embraer, saying it would open an investigation after protests from a rival US aerospace firm, officials said Tuesday. The contract for 20 Embraer AT-29 Super Tucano aircraft was awarded in December as part of plans to arm the Afghan military amid a NATO troop drawdown.
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02/29/2012
The crew of a Su-30 fighter that crashed earlier on Tuesday in Russia’s Far East reported an engine fire before the crash, a spokesman for the Main Military Investigative Directorate said.
The Su-30MK2 fighter jet crashed 130 km northeast of Komsomolsk-na-Amure during a post-construction test flight. Both pilots ejected safely, although one of them was hurt on landing.
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02/29/2012
Russia has partially resumed flights of Su-24 Fencer tactical bombers after one of them crashed in Russia’s Urals, Defense Ministry spokesman Col Vladimir Drik said on Tuesday.
“After tests, unit commanders… will receive permission to resume flights of this type of aircraft,” he said. All Su-24s were grounded after one of them crashed in the woods of the Kurgan region during a routine flight on February 13. Both pilots ejected safely.
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