Military Aviation News Archive
10/28/2021
After years of deliberation on how best to train seasoned fighter pilots to combat sophisticated foes, the Air Force has now floated publicly the idea of buying more than a hundred new advanced tactical trainers. And while the service’s future trainer, the Boeing’s T-7 Red Hawk, may be in the mix, the head of Air Combat Command wants to check out the market to see whether other companies can offer a more high-performance jet.
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10/27/2021
U.S. Air Force tactical air control party (TACP) Airmen, deployed to the 82nd Expeditionary Air Support Operations Squadron, along with the U.S. Army 1st Battalion 194th Armor Regiment joint fires observers (JFOs) in-training, and the Italian air force (Aeronautica Militare) Task Group Typhoon recently trained together at Udairi Range, Kuwait.
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10/27/2021
Although it has the Sino-Pakistan fighter JF-17 as its virtual favorite, the purchase of 12 combat aircraft by the Argentine Air Force (FAA) has gained a new chapter, according to sources on the Zona Militar website. United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the company responsible for Mapo-MiG, would have improved its offering of MiG-35 supersonic jets in order to beat the competition.
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10/27/2021
The Air Force’s “4+1” fighter plan for the 2020s, unveiled in recent months, will leave the service with a fleet that’s too small and improperly configured to deal with peer threats. What’s needed is a plan that emphasizes stealth aircraft; rapidly retires non-stealthy and expensive-to-maintain “legacy” airplanes; and doesn’t create gaps in USAF’s ability to control the air in a conflict, according to new analysis from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
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10/26/2021
The Air Force is eyeing Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail platform to replace its aging airborne early warning and control capabilities, a service official said Oct. 25. Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of Air Combat Command, said the E-7 Wedgetail could be the ideal solution to what he called the “multi-spectral problem” of updating the Air Force’s current air domain surveillance capabilities. Maintaining the Air Force’s fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS will only become more difficult as the aircraft age.
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10/26/2021
Electronic warfare (EW) avionics experts at the Boeing Co. will produce EW avionics for the U.S. Air Force F-15 jet fighter fleet that will help protect the combat aircraft from radar-guided missiles. Officials of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, announced a $55.4 million order in late September to Boeing Defense, Space & Security segment in St. Louis for the F-15's Eagle Passive Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS) low rate initial
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10/25/2021
U.S. Marines landed two F-35B Lighting II stealth jets on a Japanese naval ship earlier this month in a show of allied democracies’ partnership in defending sea lanes in the Pacific Ocean The aircraft from Fighter Attack Squadron 242 successfully conducted the first ever landing aboard the JS Izumo following modifications to allow short take-off and vertical landing aboard the helicopter carrier.
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10/25/2021
U.S. Air Force fighter pilots and crew members are far more likely to be diagnosed with certain types of cancers than their fellow airmen, according to the most comprehensive military study to date. The study is the first confirmation of a connection long suspected by fighter aviators who saw their peers contracting some cancers at concerning rates. Earlier, less comprehensive studies had proven inconclusive.
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10/25/2021
A really interesting training mission was carried out on Saturday Oct. 23, 2021, in Sweden, where a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130J Commando II aircraft landed on a highway on Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, strategically located in the the Baltic Sea. The American Special Operations aircraft arrived over the road segment used for the drills in formation with a Swedish Air Force C-130H (locally designated TP 84) and two Swedish JAS 39 Gripen jets.
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10/24/2021
The Biden administration has told lawmakers that the US is nearing a formalized agreement with Pakistan for use of its airspace to conduct military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, according to three sources familiar with the details of a classified briefing with members of Congress that took place on Friday morning.
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10/24/2021
This spring the U.S. Air Force staged a small number of F-22 stealth fighters to an outlying airfield in Alaska. Now the service has sent F-16 fighters even farther afield, to a dangerous little base right next to Russia. As part of a so-called “Agile Combat Employment” exercise, the F-22s from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage—the Pentagon’s main Alaska base—flew out of King Salmon airport on a temporary basis back in May.
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10/23/2021
The C-130 Hercules is the absolute workhorse of the U.S. Air Force. The basic C-130, released into the wild in 1956, has been improved on and modified extensively throughout the years. The C-130J Super Hercules has hit the mainstream and is now parked on nearly every active C-130 ramp in the Air Force. The venerable Hercules is owned and operated by the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Navy, and the Air National Guard. It fills roles unique to each organization.
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10/23/2021
Amid all the debate and political sparring over funding, sustainment, per-aircraft cost, and long-term modernization, there is another pressing circumstance that tends to get obscured by the conceptual and budget-oriented turbulence surrounding the aircraft.
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10/22/2021
On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, on a trip to Israel, visited an Indian Air Force contingent at an airbase in Israel. Five upgraded Mirage 2000 fighters of the Indian Air Force are in Israel to take part in the multilateral 'Blue Flag' exercise. The Indian Air Force had participated in Blue Flag in 2017, but the current edition of the exercise is the first to see the deployment of fighter jets.
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10/22/2021
The effort is being led by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) program has its roots in an Indian effort to modernize the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) stock of older fighters, including the SEPECAT Jaguar and Dassault Mirage 2000. The AMCA project has undergone multiple iterations, but the core requirement is for a stealth, single-seat multi-role multirole fighter.
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10/22/2021
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) on Thursday started the main and operational phase of a large-scale military drill codenamed ‘Devotees of the Velayat Sanctuary’. Iranian Air Force Commander Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi said that on the first day of the military exercise, the force’s F-7 fighter aircraft targeted the hypothetical enemy’s positions with Yaseen-90 standoff bombs developed by local experts.
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10/22/2021
The US Navy (USN) is researching options for a “Tactical Surrogate Aircraft”. The aircraft would supplement flight time and training in frontline combat aircraft, provide adversary air support and serve as a flight lead aircraft for Fleet Replacement Squadrons, a unit that trains naval aviators on frontline combat aircraft, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35C and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
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10/21/2021
China has for the first time showed off retired 1950s era fighter jets that have been converted to unmanned drones, with satellite photos of two of its east coast bases near Taiwan showing a large number of the jets on site. The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command published the photos of two Shenyang J-6s on its Weibo social media account during a post about the ceremony marking the start of the training cycle for the second half of 2021 for a training brigade.
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10/20/2021
Singapore military aircraft that flew over southern Johor earlier this month were taking part in a multilateral exercise and had obtained the requisite approvals to enter Malaysian territorial airspace, said the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) on Tuesday (Oct 19).
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10/20/2021
No sooner had the Defense Intelligence Agency issued its North Korean Military Power report, in which it predicted Pyongyang would resume ballistic missile tests, than North Korea did exactly that, lofting a submarine-launched ballistic missile Oct. 19. The test, in which an SLBM launched from the port of Sinpo into the Sea of Japan, was detected and characterized by South Korea, which said the missile attained an altitude of about 40 miles, traveling about 280 miles downrange.
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10/20/2021
Radar experts at Lockheed Martin Corp. will build a mobile advanced radar system to help pilots of the F-35 joint strike fighter learn to operate safely in hostile areas guarded by modern radar-guided surface-to-air missiles.
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10/19/2021
SIX companies are understood to have submitted bids to supply 18 light combat aircraft (LCA) to the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) in a tender that closed last week, sources say. While the details were not readily available, the contract for one squadron (18 planes) of LCA is said to be valued at around RM4 billion, with half of the amount, or RM2 billion, to be paid via counter trade involving crude palm oil or palm oil products.
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10/19/2021
In what appears to be a response to the growing tensions with Iran, Israel’s Ministry of Defense has requested the US hasten delivery of eight Boeing KC-46 refueling airplanes ordered earlier this year but expected to arrive only in two years.
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10/19/2021
A Namibia Defence Force (NDF) F-7 fighter jet has been badly damaged in a runway excursion at Ondangwa’s Andimba Toivo Ya Toivo Airport. The aircraft (0315) suffered the incident on 15 October. The Chief of the Namibia Defence Force, Air Marshal Martin Pinehas, told Informante that the aircraft had landed normally but its brake parachute failed to deploy, causing it to overshoot the runway. As Ondangwa is now a commercial airport, it does not have arresting systems, he said.
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10/18/2021
The Air Force will hold its annual Tien Lung drills from Monday until Oct. 29, with the bulk of the exercises taking place in Jiadong, Pingtung County, according to military sources. The source told CNA that Air Force F-16Vs, Mirage-2000s, and Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDFs) will take part in the annual maneuvers, which will also include competitive testing of the Air Force's air-to-ground, air-to-sea, air-to-air, and land-based combat skills.
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