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Two Mississauga, Ont., men have been indicted for allegedly helping to run an international procurement network over a five-year period to traffic materials such as aircraft parts and satellite communications equipment to support Pakistan’s nuclear program. Father and son Muhammad Ahsan Wali, 48, and Haji Wali Muhammad Sheikh, 82, are among five men accused of being associated with an alleged front company called Business World, based in Rawalpindi, a city in northern Pakistan, according to the United States Department of Justice. The other three charged include another one of Sheikh’s sons in Pakistan, as well as one man in Hong...

PRAGUE (Reuters) - During the last days of the Cold War in 1988, Czechoslovakia's Aero Vodochody's factory outside Prague produced a record 250 of its Albatros L-39 training jets for Soviet bloc air forces. Those customers disappeared with the collapse of Communism as successive governments focused on building a market economy and steered away from arms exports, sending the industry into a tailspin. Numerous comeback attempts sputtered for Aero, which halted jet production between 2003 and 2015. Now a growing number of conflicts around the world is helping to fuel demand for arms, providing Czech firms an opportunity to sell...

The Supreme Court ruling on Aereo is out, and the court has ruled against the upstart company and in favor of TV broadcasters. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that had ruled in favor of Aero, a service that lets you stream live network TV. The court found that Aereo's service violated the copyrights of live network TV stations. "This ruling appears sweeping and definitive, determining that Aereo is illegal," the lawyer Tom Goldstein wrote on SCOTUSBlog. The case will have lasting implications for the way content is delivered online. Aereo's technology uses special...

Sukhoi's Stealth Fighter May Be Quick Export to India Posted by David A. Fulghum at 2/2/2010 9:12 AM CST U.S. intelligence officials are closely monitoring the testing of Sukhoi’s T-50 stealth fighter prototype. It’s first flight from Komsomolsk has packed Russian blogs with pictures and videos taken from the base’s fence line and transcripts of in-flight conversations between Russian aircrews. Funding aid for the program is expected to come from India, say U.S. officials. India's air force is becoming sophisticated and has adopted an operational flexibility and tactical innovation similar to U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter units. The flights...

September 24, 2008 Last week saw the one year anniversary of SSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleroderma ’s Ulimate Aero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AERO becoming the fastest production car in the world at 256.18 mph, pushing past marks set by Koenigsegg’s CCR and Bugatti’s Veyron. It’s the first time the top speed record has stood for a whole year since McLaren’s F1 held it for seven years with 386.4 kmh (240.1mph). Now comes news that an Ultimate Aero EV (Electric Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle ) is in development. A 500 bhp EV is planned for late 2009 and a 1000 bhp 4WD EV is also under consideration. Now here’s...

The two new pastors of a church in Kake and their pilot escaped injury after a fire broke out in their small commuter airplane as it took off from the Southeast Alaska community. .....SNIP.... So much smoke filled the cabin that he and his wife could not see pilot Rich Anderson seated two feet in front of them in the cabin. But Anderson managed to find the runway, land the aircraft, kick open the co-pilot door and help them out, they said.

In what will be seen by many in the industry as a stinging rebuke for Airbus and its planned A350 jetliner, its biggest customer is expected to place an order for as many as 50 of The Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliners at next week's Paris Air Show, an industry source confirmed Tuesday night. ...SNIP.... ....Steve Udvar-Hazy, its founder and chief executive, told the P-I last week at an industry conference in Vancouver, B.C., that he has not been given enough details about the A350 to decide whether he wants the plane. Instead, Hazy will order additional 787s, the industry source...

Piece by very large piece, Boeing's 787 is arriving at Boeing's Everett plant. The Large Cargo Freighter known as the Dreamlifter has delivered nearly all the major 787 sections. Final assembly of the first plane will begin soon, once the wings come from Japan and the rest of the fuselage arrives from South Carolina. The latest Dreamlifter shipment came early Friday morning. The modified 747-400 carried the forward fuselage manufactured in Wichita, Kan., and the two aft fuselage sections manufactured by Vought in South Carolina. The first 787 special delivery was April 24, when the Large Cargo Freighter arrived in...

Boeing's Large Cargo Freighter known as the Dreamlifter made its inaugural delivery to Everett Tuesday evening. Flying from Italy with the first horizontal stabilizer for the 787 in its huge belly, the Dreamlifter landed at Paine Field about 6:30 p.m., and over the next few hours Boeing workers carefully removed the precious cargo. Final assembly at the Everett plant of the first 787 will start next month once all the major 787 sections have arrived via the Dreamlifter. Check out the photo gallery of this historic first delivery by P-I photographer Joshua Trujillo.

MUMBAI/ BOMBAY: In the largest commercial airplane order in India's civil aviation history, national carrier Air-India today signed an agreement with US aerospace firm Boeing for purchase of 68 modern aircraft at an estimated cost of Rs 35,000 crore. The agreement was signed between Air-India Chairman V Thulasidas and Boeing Commercial Airplane President and CEO Alan Mulally in the presence of Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel at the Air-India office in south Mumbai. Air-India's order consists of 23 Boeing 777s, including eight Boeing 777-200 LR (longer range) worldliners and 15 777-300 ERs (extended range), and 27 787-8 Boeing dreamliners. Besides,...

Asia's biggest air show began today in Yelhanka, Bangalore. Over 350 companies including US giants Boeing and LM participating. More than 30 countries, aviation majors such as US, Russia, Israel, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland etc show casing their toys. I'm maintaining an online picture log at http://india-defence.com/ Day 1, already got a pretty good collection of pics, view at: http://srirangan.net/india-defence/node/82 Enjoy!

Although Microsoft didn't announce general hardware requirements for Longhorn as expected at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 trade show this week, company representatives did reveal that the graphics-card requirements for the upcoming system have changed since Microsoft first revealed them at WinHEC 2003. Microsoft also presented details about Longhorn's so-called tiered user experience, which the company calls Aero. "The Aero user experience is a generational leap over what's available today in Windows XP," Kerry Hammil, a program manager on the Avalon team, said during a graphics session at the show Monday afternoon. "There will be two discrete...

Of all the military gadgets on parade on television, there's one you can bring home without spooking the neighbors into thinking you've gone postal. Night-vision scopes, once available only at defense contractor prices, can be found nowadays at Wal-Mart for less than $100. The new consumer models are less powerful than the military versions, but they're more portable, too. They're also more stylish, so you won't look like that creep from Silence of the Lambs. Technology has made huge leaps since the first Gulf War, but the grunts in the field still wear the same AN/PVS-7 headsets manufactured for Desert...