In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Aug. 02 2022

Credit: Aviation Week.

The Kazakh Air and Air Defense Force (KAADF) has the largest fleet of military aircraft among the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The fleet is 83% Russian-origin aircraft, although this will likely change in the next 20 years.

Credit: Skyports.

Britain’s Orkney Islands are set to become the first region of the UK to have an uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) mail delivery service.

Credit: Avgar Idan.

German defense company Rheinmetall has broken ground on an F-35 center fuselage assembly plant.

Credit: Skydio.

The U.S. Army now wants to buy another 12,000 small, short-range reconnaissance (SRR) drones over the next decade, according to the CEO of one of the competing firms. 

Credit: Pyka.

Startup Pyka has received approval from the FAA to operate its autonomous electric crop spraying aircraft in the U.S.

Credit: NASA.

A non-profit dedicated to asteroid defense has made publicly available a nongovernment “precovery service” for the confirmation and refining of asteroid trajectories by rapidly searching through a collection of astronomical data hosted on Google Cloud.

Credit: UK Royal Navy.

A test of the Thales Martlet lightweight missile from a UK Royal Navy Wildcat helicopter has given the service a limited helicopter air-to-air missile capability for the first time.

Credit: U.S. Navy.

Taiwan’s Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) has earmarked NT$150 million ($4.8 million) to commission Dassault to study the possibility of modernizing and lengthening the service life of the air force’s twin-seat Mirage 2000s.