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Boeing Co. BA +0.48% , which has built military planes for almost a century, is preparing for the prospect of a fighter-less future. The steadfast commitment of the U.S. and many allies to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program made by Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT +0.60% is drying up funding for Boeing's fighters. Now, the head of Boeing's defense unit is preparing a road map that would concede the fighter market to Lockheed and pin the business's future on other aircraft, including military versions of its commercial jetliners. "You have to face reality," Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing, Defense, Space...

A Sukhoi SU-35 fighter aircraft participates in a flying display during the 50th Paris Air Show at the Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 23, 2013. CREDIT: REUTERS/PASCAL ROSSIGNOL (Reuters) - Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was presented with an unlikely gift for a religious leader this week as he toured a factory in Russia's far-east - a single-seater fighter jet SU-35. Kirill was presented with the jet after giving workers at the civilian and military aircraft plant icons blessed by himself, the church said in a statement on its official website on Tuesday. The patriarch,...

NASA has awarded the highly-anticipated space taxi contract to Boeing and SpaceX, a move which will end the agency’s reliance on Russian technology to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract aims to restore an American capability to launch astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station by the end of 2017. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have been transported to space on Russian-built Soyuz vessels. …

By Dario Leone The F-15 is not only a famous MiG Killer. The legendary Eagle is also a very robust aircraft, that can survive some serious damages. As shown by a very well-known incident which occurred in 1983, in the skies over Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert, in Israel, during a mock aerial combat between two Israeli Air Force F-15Ds and four A-4Ns, when one of the Eagles, the F-15D #957 nicknamed ‘Markia Shchakim’, 5 killmarks, used for conversion of a new pilot named Zivi Nedivi, collided mid-air with one of the Skyhawks. As explained in No Wing F-15,...

Russian expert says fighter jets can’t hide forever—but that’s old news A Russian military expert has sounded a seemingly dire warning for the United States. Dr. Igor Sutyagin claims that stealthy fighter jets and bombers can’t stay hidden much longer as enemy radar technology improves. The U.S. military is betting hundreds of billions of dollars—in essence, its whole air-power investment—that detection-dodging stealth works … and will keep working for many decades to come. So if Sutyagin is absolutely right, America could be in big trouble. The roughly trillion dollars Washington has spent designing and building F-117s, B-2s, F-22s, F-35s and...

BEIJING --- The PLA Daily reported that the naval and air forces of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will conduct its first free air-combat confrontation drill. According to the drill plan, an aviation detachment equipped with several fighters under the East China Sea Fleet of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLAN) and a troop unit under the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) will join the confrontation drill. It is the first of its kind in the history of the PLAN and the PLAAF. The free air-combat confrontation drill will be conducted on the one-to-one and two-to-two basis...

It's unusual for the United States - by far the biggest defense spender in the world - to seek scrapped military equipment from other nations. Typically, those roles are reversed. But for the past several years, according to internal emails obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, the U.S. Navy has been negotiating to acquire Japan's retired fleet of MH-53E Sea Dragons. The Navy wants to harvest the old helicopters for parts to help keep its own Sea Dragons flying until 2025. "It's telling when we are put in a position where we need to buy scrapped aircraft to keep ours going," said...

The CT-114 Tutor is, by most definitions, a museum piece. However, think of it rather as “the little airplane that could—and still can” because, after nearly 50 years in service, the agile single-engine jet remains a key element of the Royal Canadian Air Force. While the appropriately-named Tutors have not been used for lead-in fighter training since 2000, when they were replaced with Beechcraft CT-156 Harvard II turboprops and BAE Systems CT-155 Hawk jets in the NATO Flying Training in Canada (NFTC) program, two are still flown for systems evaluation purposes by the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment (AETE) in Cold...

The Israeli air force is developing a short field operating capability for its Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters, based on the use of a rocket-assisted take-off. A first test is scheduled for next year, with the air force having decided to develop such a system for its F-16A/B, C/D and I-model variants. Rocket assistance can be used by some military transports to provide additional thrust when an aircraft is heavy or a runway is short. As part of the new plan, rockets will be placed under the wing of the F-16 and released after they have burned out. Close attention will...

I home school a young girl. In years past, we have gone to the local air show and done such things as measure the tops and bottom of wings and rotos and figure the ratio or difference between the area of the top of the wing versus the bottom and estimated which wings had more lift than others. We measure how much area the wheels occupied on the ground and consulted with the crew chief what the tire pressure was and calculated the weight of the plane. In years past we were able to see F18s form a vapor cone...

India learned the hard way with INS ‘Vikramaditya’ Like a lot of countries, India wants the best weapons it can afford. But ideological and financial concerns mean there are a lot of things it won’t buy from the United States or Europe. That pretty much leaves, well, Russia. India has been a big buyer of Russian weapons for 50 years. Those haven’t been easy years for New Delhi. India’s defense contracts with Russia have consistently suffered delays and cost overruns. And the resulting hardware doesn’t always work. Of all India’s Russian procurement woes, none speak more to the dysfunctional relationship...

WASHINGTON, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Europe's Airbus said on Thursday that it sees the possibility of selling hundreds of its A400M military transport plane to the U.S. military in the medium to long term. Barry Eccleston, president of Airbus Americas Inc, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit that the company was focused on securing additional orders for the UH-72 helicopter that it builds in Mississippi in the short term, but its "next big project" would be focused on marketing the A400M. "There's this incredible airplane that can do just about everything," Eccleston said, noting that Airbus saw possible sales...

Appointed as the Air Force Chief of Staff (CEMAA) on September 17, 2012, at the age of 53, General Denis Mercier had joined the French Air Force academy in 1979 and qualified as a fighter pilot in 1983. With 182 combat missions and more than 3,000 flying hours (mostly on Mirage F1C and Mirage 2000C) throughout his career, he has acquired extensive experience both as an operational commander and as a fighter pilot. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the French Air Force Academy in Salon de Provence. Prior to becoming Air Chief, he was posted as a senior...

A Hongqi-10 ship-based missile defence cell installed on a Chinese warship. Photo: SCMP Pictures China has shown off the People's Liberation Army's latest hardware on primetime state television, an advanced short-range missile defence system said to have a “high success rate” destroying incoming missiles and aircraft. The Hongqi-10 (Reg Flag 10) surface-to-air missile was shown in China Central Television's evening news bulletin Wednesday being fired from ships and land-based mobile launchers, and exploding in the sky on impact with its target. It will protect warships against rockets over a limited area, and will be used alongside an “area defence system”...

An interesting trend: America has supplanted Russia as New Delhi’s primary supplier of defense materiel. Will it last? In August, the Indian Ministry of Defense approved the $2.5 billion purchase of 22 Boeing AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and 15 CH-47F Chinook heavy lift helicopters. The sale still has one last hurdle—Indian Cabinet approval—but if completed it will be the latest example of a major shift in U.S.-Indo relations that in the past three years have seen Washington become India’s top defense equipment supplier. The approval of the Apache and Chinook deals comes about a month after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel...

British combat air post-2020 will depend on the RAF’s Typhoon fast jet fleet – currently planned to total 107 aircraft at the end of this decade – and the F-35 Lightning II strike fighter, operated jointly by the RAF and the Royal Navy. Then-Secretary of State for Defence Phillip Hammond said in July 2012 that the UK would buy up to forty-eight F-35B short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft in the next ten years of the newly agreed equipment plan. These will not only form the fixed-wing complement of the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, but will also deploy with...

More types of aircraft are still needed for Beijing to establish its first carrier air wing on China's first aircraft carrier the Liaoning, according to Wendell Minnick, in an article written on Sept. 7 in Washington-based Defense News. 24 J-15 Flying Shark fighters, six Z-18F anti-submarine warfare helicopters, four Z-18J airborne early warning helicopters and two Z-9C rescue helicopters will together form the first carrier air wing of the People's Liberation Army Navy according to an article in Chinese-language newspaper Shanghai Morning Post published Aug. 28, citing an interview with Cao Dongwei, a senior colonel and researcher at the PLA...

Modifying the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter is part of what the U.S. Navy wants to discuss with contractors in a series of “technical interchange meetings” before it develops an analysis of alternatives (AoA) for a future carrier-based strike fighter. In a September 9 solicitation, the Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) invited companies to participate in the meetings “for the purposes of trade space refinement” before it begins the AoA process next year. Navair said the solicitation is an addendum to the request for information (RFI) it issued in April 2012 for the FA-XX requirement to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet...

(Reuters) - Japan and the United States are exploring the possibility of Tokyo acquiring offensive weapons that would allow Japan to project power far beyond its borders, Japanese officials said, a move that would likely infuriate China. While Japan's intensifying rivalry with China dominates the headlines, Tokyo's focus would be the ability to take out North Korean missile bases, said three Japanese officials involved in the process. They said Tokyo was holding the informal, previously undisclosed talks with Washington about capabilities that would mark an enhancement of military might for a country that has not fired a shot in anger...

The medium-range air-to-air missiles to be outfitted to Turkey’s F-16 and F-35 fighter jets will come with a price tag of $320 million A new generation of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) that Turkey will acquire from the United States will significantly upgrade and boost the country’s aerial firepower, according to Air Force officials. “Perhaps the most important feature about the new weaponry is that they will be used both in our F-16 fighters and the future F-35s,” one senior official said. A defense official said the new version features more sensitive guidance, adding to a fleet’s firepower. This will...