Defense

Australia will sell up to 46 Boeing F/A-18A/B Hornet fighters to red-air operator Air USA for U.S. Air Force training, Defense Industry Minister Melissa Price said, although only 38 aircraft appear to be available for the deal.

Japan has decided to work mainly with U.S. partners in developing its Next Generation Fighter, with only limited technical cooperation with Britain, the other contender, the Nikkei newspaper said.

While Covid 19 might have stopped flights it did not put any halt on the conflict between Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces and the Yemeni Houthi.

Key helicopter programs to protect new UK carriers are behind schedule, so race is on to get them ready for the first deployment.

Commercial orbital debris mitigation services are on the horizon, but operators will expect low costs.

Elon Musk startled an Air Force audience by declaring fighters dead, but his opinion isn’t far off current acquisition strategy.

Triton production halted; Maxar sees geospatial services growth: FAA certifies training simulator and issues with nuclear modernization.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has shelved a proposal to use the F-35 to shoot down ballistic missiles, and paused another study looking at firing lasers at missiles from unmanned aircraft systems, the agency’s director said March 4.

Ahead of flying its privately owned habitat to the International Space Station, Houston startup Axiom Space has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry three fare-paying tourists and a professional commander to the station as early as June 2021.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover was formally named “Perseverance” March 5, the winning entry in a contest that spawned 28,000 entries submitted from students in grades K through 12 from every U.S. state and territory.

The U.S. Defense Department plans to invest billions of dollars to begin mass-producing a new class of hypersonic missiles, a senior defense official said March 4.

Canada has taken up the mantle of leading an international effort to improve airspace safety over and near conflict zones, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said.

AVIATION WEEK NETWORK forecasts that from 2020 to 2029, western-designed military transport aircraft will generate $157.7 billion in maintenance

As Rocket Lab prepares for its 12th launch from New Zealand, one of its Electron rockets arrived at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, where the

R&D company UAVOS has revealed an improved version of Saudi Arabia’s Saker-1 medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system developed with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology.

NASA’s Osiris-Rex asteroid sample return spacecraft descended to its lowest altitude yet over the asteroid Bennu earlier this week to gather high-resolution imagery of its primary sample collection site.

The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference scheduled for March 16-20 has been canceled due to concerns over the coronavirus.

MHI does not expect the planned suspension of assembly operations to affect the delivery schedule.

SpaceX is testing coatings to cut the reflectivity of its growing broadband satellite constellation.

Northrop Grumman subsidiary SpaceLogistics has signed on as DARPA’s commercial partner for the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program.

Developers of the revived Stratolaunch carrier aircraft project aim to restart flight tests of the giant twin-fuselage mother ship in September as part of plans to provide a launch platform for rocket-powered hypersonic test vehicles.

Startup Jetoptera is reporting progress in its collaboration with General Electric in development of its Fluidic Propulsion System (FPS).

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is close to launching the competitive phase for the Next Generation Interceptor program, said Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the agency’s director, on March 4.

The Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano is a tandem-seat turboprop light attack aircraft developed from the EMB-312A Tucano, a basic flight trainer with secondary light attack capabilities.