November 16, 2018 Military Aviation News
11/16/2018
Australia will buy at least a dozen armed Reaper drones in a major step towards a future in which air strikes are increasingly carried out remotely. The aircraft, made by US company General Atomics, will be used mainly to provide cover to Australian soldiers on operations, flying overhead while looking for threats and striking them with bombs or missiles.
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11/16/2018
Boeing delivered a QF-16 to Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. on Oct. 24. The QF-16 enables live fire weapons testing during Combat Archer. Combat Archer evaluations are conducted to prepare and evaluate operational fighter squadrons' readiness for combat operations. The program evaluates all phases of combat operations from weapons loading to aircraft performance, aircrew performance and weapons performance.
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11/16/2018
Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky received a $382 million contract for eight MH-60R Seahawk helicopters from the US Navy. Work on the helicopters is expected to be complete by September 2020, says the US Department of Defense in an online notice on 14 November. Some $147 million will be obligated initially from fiscal 2018 USN aircraft procurement funds, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
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11/16/2018
The UK Ministry of Defence has ordered its next 17 Lockheed Martin F-35Bs, as part of a 255-unit, multinational framework agreement announced by the US Department of Defense. Confirming the development on 15 November, the MoD said: "The 17 new F-35B aircraft will be delivered between 2020 and 2022." This corresponds with the programme's 12th through 14th lots of low-rate initial production.
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11/16/2018
Bahrain has confirmed its order for 12 Bell AH-1Z Vipers, six months after the US Department of State approved the deal, worth an estimated $912 million, under the Foreign Military Sales process. The attack helicopters will be delivered from the second half of 2022, the Royal Bahraini Air Force said at the Bahrain air show. Bell chief executive Mitch Snyder said the "most advanced helicopter in production" would "help protect the country for decades to come".
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11/16/2018
Lockheed Martin sees a market for 400 new F-16s – mainly in the Middle East – after securing Bahrain as launch customer for the Block 70 variant. The Royal Bahraini Air Force committed in June to 16 examples of the single-engine fighter, to be built at a new final assembly line in Greenville, South Carolina. The deal, agreed months after President Trump overturned his predecessor’s ban on a sale to Bahrain over human rights concerns.
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11/16/2018
Lockheed Martin has won a $22.7 billion contract to supply 255 F-35 Lightning II fighters for the three branches of the US armed services and international operators. The contract covers 106 F-35s for the USA, comprising 64 F-35As for the air force, 26 F-35Bs for the marines, and 16 F-35Cs for the navy, a US Department of Defense contract announcement states.
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