Poland has said it will protect Slovakia’s airspace should the latter decide to ground its fleet of MiG-29s and transfer the fighter aircraft to Ukraine.
Offshore helicopter operator Bristow Group is to purchase British International Helicopters (BIH) in its first major acquisition since restructuring and merging with Era Group in 2020.
After successfully launching a 34-satellite rideshare mission from New Zealand, a Rocket Lab helicopter crew snared the returning first-stage booster mid-air for the first time, then released the rocket into the ocean for retrieval by ship.
The Russian Aerospace Forces conducted the first operational launch of a light Angara 1.2 rocket from Plesetsk spaceport in the northern part of the country on April 29.
The Pentagon is sending new rotations of fighter aircraft to NATO’s eastern front as the U.S. and other allies continue to airlift large amounts of aid into the region for Ukraine.
The technology driving the new, unmanned collaborative aircraft that will fly alongside the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter is so ready that the service can skip any risk reduction activities and head straight into engineering and manufacturing development, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says.
If in past years the U.S. Air Force was hedging its bets on notional, more affordable aircraft designs, it is now embracing the strategy of high-end air power to counter China, placing its dollars behind the F-35 fighter, the B-21 bomber and the future Next Generation Air Dominance fighter family.
French satellite startup Prométhée has contracted with NanoAvionics to build a hyperspectral nanosatellite demonstrator. The ProtoMéthée-1 will be based on NanoAvionics’ 16U nanosatellite bus M16P and would be a forerunner to plans to launch a 20-satellite constellation by 2025, Prométhée said on April 29.
Lockheed Martin is demonstrating how it can integrate U.S. Army land-based air defense radars into longer-range systems such as the U.S. Navy’s Aegis, with a specific eye on the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) high priority of defending Guam.
A proposal for a new DARPA program would fund four new flight tests of a scramjet-powered cruise missile to build on lessons learned from the ongoing Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, the agency says in budget planning documents.
Axiom Space has signed an agreement to provide a United Arab Emirates professional astronaut with a six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station.
DARPA has secretly tested a hypersonic Tactical Boost Glide system as a risk-reduction effort for the U.S. Air Force’s Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon.
During an April 28 spacewalk, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev enabled the first motion of the European Space Agency’s 37-ft. robot arm, a multipurpose manipulator that was launched to the International Space Station in July 2021 as part of the Russian Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module.
A glide bomb equipped with a new seeker destroyed a full-scale ship in the Gulf of Mexico test range for the second time on April 28, moving a technology for a new class of air-launched weapons closer to fielding, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory says.
Aviation Week editors make sense of recommended reductions to the number of F-35 and F-15EX fighters the U.S. Air Force plan to buy in the coming years.
The F-35 program is struggling to find enough funding to fully stand up and resource the jet’s depots because the Pentagon’s habit of underfunding the maintenance facilities while expecting cost reductions in contract negotiations is not playing out as expected, the program executive says.
Northrop Grumman is progressing on workforce absenteeism issues that plagued its F-35 program over the winter, and otherwise does not see particular problems elsewhere in its portfolio due to ongoing inflation, labor, pandemic or war-related issues, the large prime’s chief executive said April 28.
