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An initial batch of Advanced Fulcrum lightweight multirole fighters for Egypt is in production at the Russian Aircraft Corporation “MiG” (RAC MiG), according to industry sources. The number on order and the exact type of aircraft is not yet known. A couple of aircraft are to be ready for flight tests by the year-end. Russian media reports have given a contract value of $2 billion. Neither Moscow nor Cairo have revealed the status of the deal. This is mainly due to its complex nature, arranged by Egypt and Saudi Arabia with the latter granting funds under government-to-government agreements of a...

Over the past decade, Canada has lived through its own unique F-35 saga. It even crept into this TV spot where little kids compare their fighter jets. The conservative government of Stephen Harper had a fixation on buying just 65 examples of the stealth jet to replace the country's overextended fleet of 80 CF-18A+ Hornets. When liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took power early last winter, he made it clear that the F-35 deal was not going to happen. Now Trudeau’s cabinet has reportedly decided to order a batch of F/A-18 Super Hornets as an interim fighter solution, pushing off...

Delays in prepping the CST-100 crew capsule could cost Boeing millions -- or more. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- attributed to Mark Twain And over at Boeing (NYSE:BA), "history" looks like it's about to rhyme with "misery" for the one-time space monopolist. As you may recall, Boeing (in the form of United Launch Alliance, its joint venture with Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT)) was forced to bow out of an Air Force competition to launch a GPS III satellite into orbit last year. ULA's withdrawal was partly Congress' fault, inasmuch as Congress had briefly enacted a law forbidding...

BERLIN: Vietnam and South Korea are looking seriously at buying refurbished Lockheed Martin Corp P-3 and S-3 maritime surveillance planes to counter China's military buildup and repeated North Korean missile launches, the company said. Vietnam is expected to request formal pricing and availability data on four to six older U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft in the next few months, Clay Fearnow, a senior executive with Lockheed's aeronautics division, told Reuters at the Berlin air show last week. The Obama administration's move to completely lift its arms embargo on Vietnam last month paved the way for such a sale, but any...

WASHINGTON: When Boeing really, truly and finally won the airborne tanker competition by underbidding what was then EADS North America (now Airbus) by at least 10 percent, the chairman of the losing company, Ralph Crosby, said he believed it important that Boeing be watched closely to make sure they delivered at that price and on schedule. “If they aren’t, then they should be held accountable,” he said at the press conference announcing EADS would not protest the win. Well, Boeing’s KC-46 is quite late and very over-budget. It was supposed to be ready for a spring 2017 arrival at Altus...

Local news reporting a Thunderbird crashed and the pilot safely ejected.

Thunderbird jet crashed Thursday after a flyover of the academy's commencement, which was attended by President Obama, the US Air Force said.

Pakistan failed to move forward with the purchase of eight U.S.-made F-16C/D Block-52 fighter aircraft following a dispute over financing, Dawn reported on May 28. According to an unidentified source Pakistan failed to provide a so-called Letter of Acceptance for the procurement of the eight fighter jets by May 24 and the offer expired. “Pakistan decided not to fully fund the case with national funds, so the terms of sale have now expired,” the source told Dawn. U.S. lawmakers have been blocking financing for the eight F-16s under the so-called Foreign Military Financing (FMF), with the result that Pakistan would...

BREAKING @bertrandpiccard just landed in #LehighValley at the gates of #NYC after a 0 fuel flight.

Will the United States start using Israeli suicide drones? It might, after Israeli defense company UVision teamed up with US defense giant Raytheon, to adapt the Israeli-designed Hero-30 remotely-operated loitering munition to US military requirements. Now, both companies are jointly offering it to American infantry forces for use on future battlefields. Yair Dubester, Director of UVision, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that the Hero 30, if acquired by the US, would appear in potential future combat zones around the globe. Unlike larger suicide drones, the Hero 30 is designed for individual soldier use. Each soldier can carry up to...

The PLA Air Force refuted the rumor that the J-20 fighter has been deployed to troops on May 31. Since May 30, some media has been reporting that "J-20s are in service in the Southern Theatre Command" and that "J-20s and J-10s are being used in military drills together". According to the official Weibo account of the PLA Air Force, those reports are not true. So far, J-20s have not been used to equipped the air force. A TV station mistakenly used the image of a J-20 when reporting an air unit of the Southern Theater Command on May 29....

The Ministry of Defence is poised to hand another major deal to a US company, with a £2bn contract for new Apache helicopters set to be awarded to Boeing. Leonardo, the Italian aerospace manufacturer until recently known as Finmeccanica, had been battling to land the deal, which would have seen the refitted helicopters produced at its base in Yeovil, Somerset, where 3,700 staff are employed. Such an agreement would have provided a significant long-term boost to UK jobs and skills. However, it is understood the MoD has decided to hand the 50-aircraft contract, worth £2bn over its lifetime when servicing...

The silhouette of one of the British Army’s Apache attack helicopters in the skies over Afghanistan is a reassuring sight for coalition forces on the battlefield. Its ungainly shape projects a menacing power that foes are unlikely to stand up to – if they haven’t already fled at the sound of its approaching rotors. But this symbol of British military power won’t be quite so British in the future. It’s almost certain that a forthcoming order for 50 updated Apaches will go to Boeing, the latest in a spate of major defence deals to go to the US. Three weeks...

A Navy captain from Virginia Beach was testifying before Congress on Thursday about the shortage of flyable fighter jets at Oceana Naval Air Station. As he spoke, word came to military officials seated behind him: A pair of F/A-18F Super Hornets from Oceana had “a mid-air mishap” off the coast of North Carolina, forcing four aviators to eject and sending their $57 million aircraft hurtling into the Atlantic Ocean. Capt. Randy Stearns, commodore of Strike Fighter Wing Atlantic, was briefed on the training accident involving two of his jets during a short recess from the hearing, then returned to the...

Military aircraft can have notoriously short lifespans, especially during periods of technological ferment. The most elite aircraft of World War I could become obsolete in a matter of months. Things weren’t much different in World War II. And at the dawn of the jet age, entire fleets of aircraft became passé as technologies matured. The advanced fighters that fought in the skies over Korea became junk just a few years later. But a few designs stand the test of the time. The B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, yet remains in service today. New C-130s continue to roll off the...

The Hongdu Aviation Industries Group celebrated its 65th anniversary by unveiling an advanced L-15 Falcon trainer jet equipped with bombs and radar, thought to be a passive electronically scanned array (PSEA), that will help accuracy in airborne combat. The Falcon has not been known to carry weapons, until the Hongdu video was released and made the rounds on Chinese websites earlier this month. In the video, the jet can be seen with a centered-fuselage pod carrying a 23 mm cannon, PL-5II air-to-air missiles, and underwing fuel tanks. Hongdu, a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), had originally...

Two of the US Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets have crashed off the coast of North Carolina on Thursday, the US Coast Guard confirmed. Their crews have been recovered and taken to a hospital.

SEOUL— General Electric Co. has clinched a deal to supply engines for South Korea’s next-generation fighter jets. The U.S. conglomerate beat Eurojet Turbo GmbH, a European engine maker, to provide the F414-GE-400 engines, South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration said Thursday. A final contract will be signed next month, it said. The agency didn’t disclose the deal value, but a person familiar with the matter estimated it at $3.5 billion. The deal is part of one of South Korea’s most ambitious weapons-development programs. The project, Korean Fighter Experimental, or KF-X, is part of Seoul’s plans to replace its decades-old fleet...

More than four decades after the fall of Saigon, Washington is still holding on to various classified details about its fight in Southeast Asia. Among the Pentagon media arm’s still-secret records are photos and video of updated World War II-era bombers the U.S. Air Force sent to hit Laos. In May 1966, pilots and crews from the 603rd Air Commando Squadron brought eight B-26K Invaders from their base in Louisiana to Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand. Desperate to stem the flow of troops and supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam, the flying branch had...

Saab has begun work to modify a pair of Bombardier Global 6000 business jets to its “swing-role” GlobalEye configuration for lead customer the United Arab Emirates. “We are building as we speak,” Saab chief executive Håkan Buskhe told journalists during a 17 May briefing in Stockholm. “It’s full speed ahead in our workshop.” The Swedish company signed a $1.27 billion deal with the UAE at the Dubai air show in November, with the heavily adapted Global 6000s to be capable of conducting airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), maritime and land surveillance and electronic intelligence duties. Saab Speaking during a...