December 25, 2012 Military Aviation News
12/25/2012
The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014, concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul. The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms.
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12/25/2012
India plans to spend about $100 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade its largely Soviet-era military equipment, as Asia's third-largest economy looks to match its growing economic clout with military power. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, India, one of the world's largest arms importers, has shifted towards buying from the West as Russian products were plagued by delivery delays, maintenance problems and a lack of spare parts.
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12/25/2012
The launch of Astra, India’s air-to-air missile, for the third day on Monday from a static launcher on the ground at Chandipur, Odisha, proved to be a success. The flight-trials on December 21 and 22 from fixed launchers were equally successful. On Monday, Astra manoeuvred at 22g (gravitational force) and intercepted an electronic target with 6g. The three triumphs in a row have paved the way for its launch from an aircraft next year.
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12/25/2012
This year China stepped up its game as a military player with new fighter jets and an aircraft carrier, while also taking a more hawkish approach to political disputes with neighboring nations. China celebrated the successful flight of a the new Shenyang J-15 fighter aircraft - also called the Flying Shark - which was completely designed and manufactured in China and is equipped with domestically produced weapons and radar technology as well.
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12/25/2012
Five multi-role Su-34 bombers will be delivered for a second squadron of the Baltimore air base in Voronezh, southwest Russia, on Tuesday. “Today five Sukhoi Su-34 multi-role frontline bombers have flown from the Novosibirsk aircraft factory’s air field. The jets will make a non-stop flight from Novosibirsk to Voronezh, a distance of over 3,000 kilometers,” said Western Military District (WMD) spokesman Col. Andrei Bobrun.
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12/25/2012
NATO will continue chartering Antonov An-124 Ruslan heavy lift transport planes until at least December 31, 2014, Ukraine’s Antonov design bureau said on Monday. The Alliance has been using six An-124-100 planes, provided by Ukraine’s Antonov state company and Russia’s Volga-Dnepr group, to transport heavy equipment across the globe by air since 2006 under the SALIS (Strategic Airlift Interim Solution) program.
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12/25/2012
Russian aerobatic teams the Swifts and the Russian Knights will receive new Su-30SM and Su-35C fighter jets ahead of regular Russian Air Force units, the force’s commander Viktor Bondarev said on Monday. “When we wrap the preliminary troop tests of these two airplanes, they will be supplied [to the teams] on an advance basis,” Bondarev said at a press conference in the Moscow Region.
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12/25/2012
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev on Monday reiterated that Manas international airport, which currently hosts a US airbase, is to be a purely civilian facility after the US base closes. “There will not be a military component at Manas airport: That is my firm position,” he said. Atambayev announced plans in November last year to close the base by 2014, when the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is to be pulled out of Afghanistan.
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