Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
China's naval helicopter unit has learned to land on moving ships at night after trying and failing to do so for three decades. Luo Changshuang, political commissar of the shipboard air troop, says the unit is now an all-weather, multitask combat force.
Singapore Airlines isn't happy with the performance of Virgin Atlantic Airways and isn't ruling out getting rid of its 49% stake in the British carrier. "It [Virgin Atlantic] has not produced the sort of returns we had anticipated when going in," Chief Executive Chew Choon Seng tells Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, adding that the Sept. 11 attacks didn't help.
Japan will accelerate upgrades of its F-15J Eagles amid a reordering of priorities in response to a congressional move last week to maintain an export ban on the F-22 Raptor. The 200-odd F-15Js currently in service will operate for longer than previously planned, according to a budget plan that is evidently designed to buy time for a later Japanese push for F-22s.