The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded Boeing a contract for the upgrade of Japan Air Self Defense Force Boeing/Mitsubishi F-15G Eagles to the Japan Super Interceptor standard, ending more than two years of changing definitions and price negotiations.
A new initiative by the Biden administration has thrust the U.S. defense industry to the forefront of a national campaign to emit no more greenhouse gases than are removed from the atmosphere by 2050.
The U.S. and Israeli Ministry of Defense on Dec. 30 formalized a deal for 12 Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopters and two additional Boeing KC-46 Pegasus refueling tankers.
Addman Engineering, the additive manufacturing rollup under private equity investor American Industrial Partners, has acquired Castheon, a refractory metals maker that has partnered with spacecraft-providing companies, the companies announced Jan. 3.
Large U.S. defense prime contractor L3Harris Technologies has reorganized to include just three main business divisions, with Aviation Systems and its top unit executive no longer part of the company’s structure.
After successfully unfurling the James Webb Space Telescope’s tennis court-sized sunshield, flight controllers on Jan. 3 completed tensioning three of the shield’s five diamond-shaped membranes.
The Royal Thai Air Force is considering purchasing as many as eight Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIs as part of its modernization to replace its aging fleet of Northrop F-5E/Fs and F-16A/Bs.
Following the delivery of the last of its new F-15SA advanced fighter aircraft to the Royal Saudi Air Force on December 14 2020, as part of a $29bn foreign military sales (FMS) agreement signed in 2010, Boeing has now been awarded a $93.39 million ‘bilateral requirements contract modification’ for the Royal Saudi Air Force F-15SA OEM training programme, the US DoD announced on 8 December.
The Indian Air Force has started the training of its pilots on the Rafale within India itself. Rafale pilot and groundcrew training in France ended in April 2021, with the graduation of the third batch of personnel.
The joint UK-Qatari Typhoon Squadron is continuing to work up, participating in a series of exercises. The Joint Squadron was planned to operate for a period of three years, the last six months of which will be spent in Qatar.
As France enjoys its largest defence deal with the sale of Dassault Aviation Rafale fighter jets to the UAE, TATV defence editor, Jon Lake analyses the impact of the deal on both countries and the effect on the competitor manufacturers, in our last TATV Defence Monthly of 2021.
The reconfiguration of the James Webb Space Telescope continued on Dec. 30 with the removal of covers that protected the observatory’s delicate sunshield for launch, setting the stage for the deployment of a five-layer, tennis court-sized structure needed to passively cool the telescope for its science program.
The Viking CL-415 has played a vital role in combatting recent north African wildfires. We look at why it continues to perform so well and at a new, possible, successor aircraft.
NASA and Roscosmos continue to pursue an astronaut/cosmonaut crew exchange agreement for Soyuz and NASA Commercial Crew launches to the International Space Station.
