December 26, 2012 Military Aviation News
12/26/2012
Even without $1.2 trillion in "sequestration" cuts that could begin Jan. 2, the enormous U.S. military budget – which has consistently made up almost half of the country’s annual discretionary spending – is entering a period of austerity unseen in more than a decade. Since late 2011, defense contractors big and small have been planning for the previously announced reduction in defense spending of $487 billion over 10 years. But they could lose an additional $492 billion under sequestration.
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12/26/2012
Is the U.S. getting ready to wage the Cold War again? If one believes the critics, that’s the aim behind a planned $10 billion modernization of the B61 nuclear bomb, the backbone of the Pentagon’s tactical nuclear arsenal. Actually, there are some other reasons for the upgrade: to reinforce global deterrence, to provide options against a range of future threats, and to make the U.S. stronger and safer. Achieving those goals is worth the money.
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12/26/2012
They were the Bravest of rescue operations overseas — a team of four FDNY firefighters flying into combat to tend to wounded troops in Afghanistan. The smoke-eaters of the 101st Rescue Squadron of the New York Air National Guard were deployed to more than 50 missions and saved nearly 100 lives between September and November while stationed at Camp Bastion in the southern part of the war-torn country.
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12/26/2012
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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12/26/2012
It was a historic day for India. For the first time a visiting Russian head of State was greeted by booing crowds rather than by the usual, choreographed cheers and waves. Vladimir Putin’s visit comes at a time when India-Russia relations are at their lowest ebb (except for perhaps in the mid-1960s when the Soviets threatened to sell tanks to Pakistan) and Putin had some hard-talking to do in his 18 hours in India.
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12/26/2012
A MiG-21 combat aircraft flown by a Syrian pilot who defected to Jordan in June was found to have been upgraded back in Syria to carry chemical weapons and to fly without a pilot, the Yisrael Hayom daily reported on Tuesday. According to the report, U.S. experts who examined the plane believe Russian engineers helped convert the plane and that Syria has more of them in its air force.
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12/26/2012
A military transport plane has crashed in southern Kazakhstan, killing all 27 people on board. News footage from the scene shows mangled fragments of the aircraft in a swirling blizzard. A crew of seven was on board, along with 20 military personnel. The twin-engined Antonov jet disappeared from radar screens at 7pm as it made its fourth attempt to land at Shymkent, the regional capital of South Kazakhstan.
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