The U.S. Air Force’s six-year development of a guidance kit for the 1968-vintage B61 thermonuclear bomb has entered the final stretch, with qualification flight testing due to begin in March followed by a developmental test and an evaluation series in August.
The board of French space agency CNES earlier this month green-lighted its contribution to the Franco-Chinese Space-based Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission to study gamma-ray bursts.
Indonesia has canceled a mysterious order for a Leonardo AW101 helicopter, with President Joko Widodo raising the possibility that the contract’s signing was improper.
The first U.S. mission to attempt the collection of a sample from an asteroid and return the material to Earth, NASA’s $1 billion Osiris Rex mission, is on a trajectory for a late September 2017 Earth flyby.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is reviewing its plans for the series of maneuvers that the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will perform soon to circularize its orbit around Mars with minimum fuel consumption.
The British government has launched a consultation concerning the safety and privacy of unmanned aerial systems as it looks to widen their use in society.
An emerging U.S. commercial space sector stands to benefit if the Trump administration can decide sooner rather than later whether NASA is to continue with efforts to transition its human spaceflight pursuits from low Earth orbit to deep space.
After decades of underinvestment, the coffers of Europe’s defense budgets are beginning to swell once again, driven by the perceived threat from Russia.
Russia’s defense spending will begin to decrease for the first time in a decade, but the drop-off is coming at a time when its forces are showcasing their strength.
Japan’s fiscal 2017 defense budget request asks for a 2.3% increase over 2016’s, continuing the upward trajectory that began when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in December 2012.
The South Korean parliament has refused a defense ministry request to spend 30% more on Lockheed Martin F-35 acquisition in 2017 than originally planned.
Gyroplane specialist Groen Aeronautics has begun development of an optionally piloted autogyro aimed at the market for a simple, low-cost and high-payload vertical-takeoff-and-landing unmanned aircraft. &
The U.S. Air Force has launched its highly-anticipated T-X next-generation trainer competition, issuing a request for proposals on Dec. 30 that will likely be answered by five or six industry team already vying for the $16.3 billion contract opportunity.
Turkish Aerospace Industries will market its indigenous clean-sheet twin-engine utility helicopter under the designation T-625, company officials have confirmed.
The Serbian government is to order nine H145M helicopters from Airbus as it pushes to modernize the country’s defenses after years of under investment.
Leonardo acquires full control of Sistemi Dinamici in a bid to widen its unmanned helicopter portfolio and consolidate its capabilities as a systems integrator.
The U.S. Air Force has launched another multi-billion dollar aircraft competition, this time to replace its fleet of second-hand Boeing 707-300-based Northrop Grumman E-8C Jstars tank hunters that first deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
