In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Feb. 21 2023

Credit: Republic of Serbia. Serbia is continuing negotiations with France’s Dassault Aviation about the purchase of Rafale fighters, Serbian President Alexandar Vučić told journalists at the IDEX 2023 defense show in Abu-Dhabi on Feb. 20.

Credit: USAF. As the U.S. Air Force looks to develop uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) to fly alongside future fighters, the service is also rethinking how it organizes these fleets, and a top official says a hypothesis is starting to emerge.

Credit: Schiebel. The UK Royal Navy is eyeing plans to integrate a rotary-wing uncrewed air system on all of its surface vessels as part of its Future Maritime Aviation Force.

Credit: EDGE Group. A three-year-old, UAE-based defense conglomerate has shown off new aircraft concepts this week that reveal a new level to the country’s aerospace technology ambitions. 

Credit: Korea Aerospace Industries. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has signed an agreement to create an advanced air vehicle (AAV) demonstration center in Gyeongsangnam-do province.

Credit: NASA TV. Russia’s Roscosmos Space Corp. has rescheduled the launch of the uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 spaceship to the International Space Station (ISS) to an earlier date, which may mean that recent coolant leak problems with the Russian vehicles were not caused by manufacturing defects.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Feb. 21 that his country would formally suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, a statement made in a high-profile national address that may be limited in impact, as hours later the Russian Foreign Ministry appeared to walk it back.

Credit: NASA. The future of access to space may lie with equatorial launch sites that could make launch windows a thing of the past, according to a Feb. 15 Future In Space Operations (FISO) webinar.

Credit: Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition. Organizers of the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Kansai, have selected the partners with which they plan to showcase advanced air mobility (AAM) in Japan.

Credit: Airbus Defense and Space. Domestic, European and U.S. satellite developers are pitting themselves against each other to provide a sovereign, resilient military satcom capability to Australia.