Free Republic

EA AIR SPACE 2024 — The Navy is in the nascent stages of evaluating how to bring autonomous combat drones to the decks of aircraft carriers, but the service’s top official for unmanned programs says one thing is certain: The drones will have to be cheap, topping out at about $15 million per unit. To keep prices low, the Navy will likely sacrifice the longevity of each so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, said Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, the Navy’s program executive for unmanned systems and weapons. Instead of being sustained over a 40-year lifecycle, a single drone could be catapulted and...

Ed Pierson was flying from Seattle to New Jersey in 2023, when he ended up boarding a plane he’d never wanted to fly on. The Seattle resident booked with Alaska Airlines last March, purposefully selecting a flight with a plane he was happy to board – essentially, anything but a Boeing 737 Max. “I got to the airport, checked again that it wasn’t the Max. I went through security, got coffee. I walked onto the plane – I thought, it’s kinda new,” Pierson told CNN. “Then I sat down and on the emergency card [in the seat pocket] it said...

The story about the US carrier leaving the region was covered in Al-Mayadeen media, which is pro-Iran, showing that pro-Iran figures in the region are watching. Iran's Alborz warship has passed through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and entered the Red Sea, the country's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Monday. Iranian warships have been operating in the region "to secure shipping lanes since 2009," Tasnim said. Iranian-backed groups have not reduced their attacks in the Middle East. On the opposite, pro-Iranian media sought to highlight how the attacks are increasing. Al-Mayadeen media, which is pro-Iran, claimed that there were attacks...

The Navy announced they ‘safely’ recovered the Military plane that overshot the runway and has been stuck in Kaneohe Bay for almost two weeks. Kaneohe Bay (HawaiiNewsNow) -- The Navy announced they ‘safely’ recovered the Military plane that overshot the runway and has been stuck in Kaneohe Bay for almost two weeks. Navy officials say it took meticulous planning and assembling specialized equipment from off island, a multidisciplinary team of military and civilian experts to carefully raise the P-8A Poseidon from the bay. Officials say the operation lasted 13 hours, beginning at 6:30 a.m., Dec. 2. The aircraft was floated...

The Douglas Commercial 3 (DC-3) was one of the most mass-produced, well-engineered aircraft in history. Built to last, to land anywhere and never to break, Douglas churned out more than 11,000 of the type before and during World War II. But how many of these 80-year-old aircraft are still flying today? The 80-year old aircraft that will never die For an aircraft that was built before the Second World War, you’d be forgiven for assuming most would have been retired by now. So, imagine our surprise when we discovered one had suffered a runway excursion in Colombia in August 2020....

Former President Donald Trump mocked the Biden administration over its push for electrified tanks and planes during a speech Friday in California.Trump criticized the push while speaking at the California Republican Party’s fall convention in Anaheim, California. The U.S. Army released a plan in February 2022 to develop electric combat vehicles by 2050, The Washington Post reported.Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told the Senate Armed Services Committee during an April 26 hearing she backed an effort to make every one of the Department of Defense’s non-tactical vehicles an electric vehicle by 2030.WATCH:Trump speaks to GOP Members in Anaheim“You know they’re...

New batches of Russia's most advanced jet fighters coming online The 57s might be in case Russia ever has to fight a war against space aliens or some such, they wouldn't seem to need anything that sophisticated for dealing with nato...

About 100 planes around the world have been caught up in a scandal that would be cartoonish if it weren’t so terrifying. It saw a dubious company, with fake employees and an address that was a glorified PO box, sell and distribute fake airplane parts that ended up in planes belonging to some of the world’s biggest airlines. On Thursday night, American Airlines became the fourth, and so far final, airline to have found parts from AOG Technics in its aircraft. Southwest kicked off the disclosures from various airlines around the world in early September, when it became the first...

On Sunday afternoon, it was announced an F-35 fighter jet valued at an estimated $100 million was missing. The US Marine Corps announced that the pilot of the F-35 had safely ejected from the jet but asked for the public’s help in locating the missing $100 million aircraft. Collin Rugg of Trending Politics shared a video showing the location of the crash. Along with the video, he wrote: “The debris field of the F-35 jet has been released after it was located in a field in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. The crash site was about 80 miles from Joint Base...

A F-35 jet could have crashed on Sunday due to poor weather in South Carolina, new audio suggests - as questions mount as to why the disastrous training exercise was allowed to proceed. The F-35B Lightning II which the unnamed Marine pilot was flying is believed to be at risk of malfunctions if it flies in thunderstorms, according to a Forbes investigation in November. Its sister jet, the F-35A, is more severely affected and cannot fly within 25 miles of lightning he issue lies within the F-35's OBIGGS (Onboard Inert Gas Generation) system, which pumps nitrogen-enriched air into its fuel...

The pilot who ejected from a $100 million F-35 fighter jet claimed to have lost the plane in the weather — and likely bailed out before he could activate its tracking system, sources and experts said. “He’s unsure of where his plane crashed, said he just lost it in the weather,” a voice can be heard saying of the pilot on a Charleston County Emergency Medical Services call posted Tuesday by a meteorologist. The unidentified pilot landed in a North Charleston residential neighborhood and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. He has since been discharged. Military officials have...

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is stuck in New Delhi following the conclusion of the G20 summit as his official aircraft has developed a snag. While the nature of the snag remains unknown, this is not the first time that the 34-year-old aircraft, nicknamed ‘Flying Taj Mahal’, has suffered a mechanical defect in its history of transporting Trudeau across the globe. How did the Canadian PM’s aircraft get the ‘Flying Taj Mahal’ moniker? The CC 150 Polaris aircraft, which is essentially an Airbus 310-300, was christened the ‘Flying Taj Mahal’ by the then opposition leader of Canada Jean Chrétien...

Toll Aviation has signed a deal to bring a new AI-based uncrewed aerial system (UAS) to Australia. V-BAT, made by US-based company Shield AI, is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS that its manufacturer says can meet “a broad array of civil and defence mission requirements” through its capacity for multi-mission payload sets.

Russia's super attack helicopter playing a major role

The ABC has confirmed multiple military personnel have been rescued from an aircraft crash site on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin. There are no reports of fatalities. CareFlight and NT Police have confirmed they are both responding to the incident on the remote Melville Island, 60km off the coast from Darwin. The Northern Territory government's fire incident map shows emergency services were notified about the aircraft crash at 9.43am this morning. A Defence spokesperson said the "aircraft incident" occurred during Exercise Predator’s Run 2023. "Initial reports suggest the incident involves United States defence personnel and that Australian Defence Force...

STATUS UPDATES | August 02, 2023 Flight 54 Preview – By the Numbers Written by NASA/JPLFlight 54 Expected Flight date: 08/03/2023 Horizontal flight distance: 0 (pop-up flight) Flight time: 24.62 seconds Flight altitude: 16 feet (5 meters) Heading: NA (hovering) Max Flight speed: 0 Goal of flight: 1) Heli localization

Four people were killed in two separate crashes during an airshow in Wisconsin over the weekend — including the daughter of two-time Super Bowl-winning offensive lineman Bruce Collie — days after celebrating her third wedding anniversary. Collie’s daughter, Devyn Reiley, 30, and her co-pilot Zach Colliemoreno, 20, were flying a World War II-era T-6 Texan during the AirVenture Oshkosh airshow when the aircraft plunged into Lake Winnebago at around 9 a.m. Saturday, five minutes after takeoff, according to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). The vintage aircraft had reached 3,900 feet before plummeting into the lake. Witnesses of the fatal crash...

Ukraine's air force has appeared to confirm that a U.S-made Patriot missile system was behind the downing of five Russian aircraft in one day in May 2023. A video posted on Monday shows "kill" markings on the side of a Patriot air defense system that indicate it claimed three helicopters and two jets on May 13. If accurate, this would be a record for a Patriot system in a single day.

Let’s discuss Lyn Alden’s thought provoking Tweets on China’s aircraft industry.Under the RadarAround the margins, a Chinese-made plane starts reducing import needs, especially if they start reducing its foreign part composition too. The next phase, once more mature, would be to export it throughout BRICS+ countries. This news has been rather under the radar. -China ramped up auto exports over the past three years. They rival Germany and Japan in auto exports now. -Now China's new plane (15 years from start of development) is out. Good chance that it ramps up big in several years. — Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact) June...

Airbus, a European aerospace company, announced a deal Monday to sell 500 single-aisle planes to IndiGo, India’s largest airline, in what is now the biggest plane deal in history. The agreement will make IndiGo the world’s biggest A320 Family—the Airbus aircraft line that is one of the best-selling in the world—customer, bringing the total number of Airbus aircraft IndiGo has ordered to 1,330. Neither of the two companies released financial details of the sale when announcing it at the Paris Air Show, though Reuters reported it’s a “multibillion-dollar deal” and the aircraft will be received between 2030 and 2035. IndiGo...