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Fighter pilots wore diapers and flew non-stop for more than nine hours to carry out the Indian Air Force's farthest and longest bombing exercise recently - symbolising the IAF's extended reach. They flew Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters to destroy mock targets in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A senior IAF officer told HT, "The fighters dropped air-to-ground ordnance for the first time on an uninhabited island in the Andamans. We want to exploit the location of these islands to train fighter pilots for extreme missions." Six fighter planes were launched from air force bases in Bareilly and Pune for the experimental...

The Russian Defense Ministry plans to overhaul its air force fleet. According to various media reports, the Ministry wants to buy at least 1,500 aircraft, including 350 new warplanes, by 2020. The fleet would include 70 per cent new equipment at that point, said Air Force Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Alexander Zelin. The state of the warplane fleet which forms the backbone of the Russian Air Force's combat potential remains a major military problem. Russian military aircraft are 25-plus years old, on the average. Consequently, the warplane fleet may shrink considerably in the next 10-15 years. What aircraft will the Air...

India signed a deal with Russia on Friday to buy 29 MiG-29 fighter jets, further cementing Moscow's role as New Delhi's principal arms supplier, the plane maker said. "According to the contract, supplies will start in 2012," said Mikhail Pogosyan, the general director of both Russian plane makers RAC-MiG and Sukhoi. He estimated the value of the deal at around 1.5 billion dollars. The deal is on top of 16 MiG-29 planes New Delhi already agreed to buy for deployment on an aircraft carrier it also hopes to obtain from Russia. Pogosyan was part of a large business delegation accompanying...

Russia will build more than 1,000 stealth fighter jets within four decades, including at least 200 for its traditional weapons buyer India, the head of plane maker Sukhoi said on Friday. Sukhoi test-flew its long-delayed fifth-generation fighter at the end of January, and Moscow said it would be able to compete with its U.S. F-22 Raptor rival built more than a decade ago. Sukhoi said last week it hoped the fighter, codenamed T-50, would be ready for use in 2015. "If you talk about warplanes of this type, there is definitely a market for it if we produce more than...

This week, I have learned why Kim Beazley was one of Australia’s best defence minsters. His biographer Peter FitzSimons explained on ABC TV that Beazley, as a trained historian, had this view: “I know that the logic of history, to large land masses populated by a small number of people surrounded by cultures alien to them, is very cruel. I don’t accept that Australia will necessarily be like that. But we have choices. And it is the choices we make now that will determine whether Australia will survive in 2050.” What is so remarkable about Kim Beazley's view of Australia...

India and Russia are expected to sign the first of a series of agreements for the development of fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) to meet futuristic requirements of the Indian Air Force during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to New Delhi later this week "We expect to ink the agreement for the development of FGFA design and its technical parameters after March 10," sources in the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said. The comments come ahead of Putin's two-day visit to New Delhi begining Thursday. The twin-stick two seater version of the futuristic multi-role fighter jet for the IAF would...

Only the United States-made F-16 fighter jets were strong enough to help Taiwan repel an attack from China's more sophisticated aircraft, reports said yesterday. The Chinese-language Liberty Times daily said internal Ministry of National Defense reports showed the air force's Indigenous Defense Fighters and French-made Mirage 2000 jets were not up to the standards of China's most recent aircraft. Taiwan has been trying to obtain upgraded F-16 C/D jets from the U.S., but the Obama Administration has so far failed to agree on the deal. One Russian-supplied Sukhoi-30 from China's air force was the equivalent of 2.8 Mirages or 1.7...

India is seeking another 42 Su-30MKI fighters from Russia. The negotiations have been going on for months, in an effort to get the right price. India buys bare bones fighters from Russia, and equips these Su-30MKIs with Israeli sensors and communications gear. India has about a hundred Su-30MKIs in service, and is building about one a month under license. India bought fifty in the late 1990s, and another 40 three years ago. This is in addition to the license to build 140 locally. India wants to have nearly 300 within five years, partly because of the increasing threat of invasion...

The major flight trials of Russia's fifth generation fighter aircraft will begin in April, 2010, at Gromov R&D Institute, in Zhukovsky. According to a report by RIA Novosti, the statement was conveyed on Monday by the sources from Sukhoi Company. In Feb, 2010 the fifth generation fighter aircraft made its first test flight in Komsomolsk-na-Amure. "Before it passes to the serial production stage, the aircraft should make about 2000 flights. Judging by the way the work is organised (as per PAK FA) we have no doubts that we will succeed in it and our armed force will get the aircraft...

A Russian-Indian fifth-generation fighter jet could be developed by 2015-2016, a Russian defense industry official said on Tuesday. Moscow and New Delhi are expected to sign a contract on a joint development of the new fighter in the near future, focusing on the design concept and technical requirements put forward by India. "I hope that we will be able to build a joint fifth-generation aircraft in the next five to six years. It is a time-consuming and complex project," said Alexander Fomin, first deputy head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation. The new aircraft will be most...

Russia's fifth-generation jet fighter, the T-50, is to undergo more than 2,000 flight tests before full-scale production starts, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday. "Before the jet goes into production, it should complete over 2,000 test flights," Putin said. He also said now that Russia had a fifth-generation prototype fighter, it should start working on a new-generation long-range strategic bomber that he described as "an airborne missile-carrier." A source at the Sukhoi aircraft maker said earlier in the day the T-50 would start on a standard flight test program in April, adding it would take "several years" to complete the...

India and Russia are negotiating a new contract on the delivery of 42 Su-30MKI to the Indian Air Force, an Indian newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing military sources. According to the Daily News and Analysis newspaper, the new deal, which is reportedly worth more than $3 billion, has been in the works for several months. The new air-superiority fighters will come on top of the 230 already contracted from Russia in three deals worth a total of $8.5 billion. "The [new] order is being placed due to the insufficient number of fighter squadrons in the Indian Air Force and would...

MOSCOW (AP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia will build a new strategic bomber, a move that comes as the nation tries to upgrade its aging military arsenal. "We won't limit ourselves to just one new model," Putin said at a government meeting that focused on military aviation. "We must start work on a prospective long-range aircraft, our new strategic bomber." Putin didn't mention any details in his public remarks, but said that the development of new aircraft engines, materials for aircraft construction and electronics will be the top priorities. The chief of the Russian long-range aviation,...

Defense: The administration decision to scrap a proven aircraft in favor of a supposedly cheaper, more flexible replacement is proving to be an expensive mistake. We may wind up defenseless and broke. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be America's frontline fighter for the foreseeable future is in big trouble. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the general in charge of the program this week amid concerns of spiraling costs and program delays. Gates also announced he is withholding $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Daniel J. Crowley, one of Lockheed Martin's project managers,...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's fifth-generation stealth jet fighter will be ready for use in 2015, its designer said on Monday, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pressed the aviation industry to design a new strategic bomber. Moscow is scrambling to update its ageing fleet of military aircraft. It test-flew a long-awaited stealth fighter at the end of January, presenting it as Moscow's first all-new warplane since the 1991 Soviet collapse and a challenge to the technological supremacy of its Cold War foe the United States. Asked to compare his brainchild to the U.S. F-22 Raptor, built more than a decade ago,...

The first flight of Russia's stealthy PAK-FA is the best recent example of the problems examined in the United States Defense Science Board report on “Capability Surprise”, released in September last year. This study is an important step forward in identifying the causes of many past, current and developing strategic failures. A capability surprise arises whenever an opponent makes use of a new capability, or uses an existing capability in a different way, catching the target or victim off guard1. Al Qaeda's use in September, 2001, of passenger laden hijacked aircraft as cruise missiles was a good example of a...

In an open-source assessment of Russia's Sukhoi PAK-FA, aka the Raptor Killer, Air Power Australia concludes, "once the PAK-FA is deployed within a theatre of operations, especially if it is supported robustly by counter-VLO capable ISR systems, the United States will no longer have the capability to rapidly impose air superiority, or possibly even achieve air superiority." Moreover, the Obama administration's decision to kill the F-22 air superiority fighter in favor of the multi-role F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may prove disastrous, as "the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter struggles to survive against the conventional Su-35BM Flanker… Against [a basic-model] PAK-FA, the...

Russia and India will sign the first contract on the manufacturing of a fifth-generation jet fighter in late February-early March, a Russian defense industry official said Monday. "We expect a contract on the first stage of design, specifically the development of a technical design concept, to be signed in late February-early March," Alexander Fomin, first deputy head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation, said. He added that Russia and India were currently "at an active phase of negotiations" on manufacturing fifth-generation fighters. It was not entirely clear whether Fomin was referring to Russia's prototype fifth-generation fighter, which...

Russia's effort to develop an F-22 class fighter (the PAK FA) is going to require a lot of work. The prototype, that took its first flight recently, was clearly the basic Su-27 airframe modified to be stealthier. This included changing the shape of the aircraft to be less radar reflective, and providing internal bays for bombs and missiles. But there's much more to do in order to achieve anything close to the stealthiness of the F-22. It took fifteen years for the F-22 to go from initial flight, to entering service. The PAK FA could proceed faster, learning from the...

When a nation accustomed to decades of projecting power loses control of large tracts of airspace, that is a strategic disaster. If that nation loses control of the airspace over its homeland, that is a strategic catastrophe. America has enjoyed air superiority over airspace in locations of its choice for about 40 years. The F-22A ‘Air Dominance’ Raptor and the clear intent to establish the next level, air dominance, was an aircraft thirty years ahead of its time. Its concept design is now twenty years old, and the aircraft should be in full stride and in its prime. The Sukhoi...