Aviation news

The Atlantic: Russia and China have deprived the United States of naval dominance

China and Russia have deprived the United States of its former naval dominance, writes The Atlantic. Without its revival, America cannot expect to regain its dominant role in the world. On the way to this is the industrial decline and the miscalculations of its strategists, who squandered resources on foreign adventures.

Foreign Affairs: the conflict in Ukraine has shown how the US is not ready for war with China

The US military-industrial complex is collapsing due to the Ukrainian conflict, which revealed the systemic shortcomings of the American military industry, writes Foreign Affairs. Drastic changes are needed in this area, otherwise America will lose the war with China in the first few weeks, the author of the article believes.

The production of civilian drones has started in the Rudnevo Industrial Park. This was announced on Friday, March 31, by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Even before joining NATO, Sweden and Finland acquired high military potential

During the Cold War, the neutrality of the two Scandinavian countries looked different. Finland, in fact, was in the Soviet sphere of influence, although it was not going to build socialism. Sweden took a much more pro-Western position, while it managed to become one of only five countries in the world that produced almost all military equipment for themselves. Except that Sweden has not created nuclear weapons, although such attempts have been made.

Russia responded to the supply of British "challengers" to the APU with atomic warheads in Belarus

It is unlikely that the Deputy Minister of Defense of Great Britain Annabel Goldie expected to receive such a strong response to her statement of March 21 that the equipment of the Challenger-2 main battle tanks supplied to Ukraine includes armor-piercing shells with a depleted uranium head.

Ballistic missile strikes may be more dangerous

The strong explosion that thundered on the afternoon of March 26 in Kireevsk, fortunately, was not accompanied by the destruction of residential buildings, but only left behind a deep crater. In it, experts found the wreckage of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Tu-141 "Strizh" type, converted from a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft into a low-flying aerial bomb carrier.

For the first time, Israel has sent its F-35I Adir fighters to conduct joint exercises with the US Air Force "Red Flag" on the territory of the United States. The maneuvers took place at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada in the period from March 12 to 24.

They were once among the strongest in the world

From the Air Force and Air Defense Forces of the USSR, the Armed Forces of Ukraine received gigantic air power: 4 air armies, 10 air divisions, 49 air regiments, 2.8 thousand planes and helicopters, 8 anti-aircraft missile brigades, 10 anti-aircraft missile regiments. Moreover, in these units, formations and associations, the share of the most modern aviation equipment at that time was very high.

According to the company's CEO Dan Hart, it was decided to lay off about 90% of the staff of all departments, except for 100 employees

The company Virgin Orbit, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson and engaged in launching satellites, will cease its activities "in the foreseeable future" due to lack of funding. This was reported by CNBC with reference to an audio recording of CEO Dan Hart's speech on Thursday at a company meeting.

The material is the final part of the article "Lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine – UAV operations, options and trends". The author is David Saw– an analyst at European Security & Defense. 

In March, two NATO countries announced the delivery of MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine. In order to resist modern Russian fighters, European MiGs are going to be upgraded with modern American AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles and new radars. Read more about this weapon in the TASS material.

Operated by the Naval Forces of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA), the WZ-7 drone was built by Guizhou Aircraft Corporation. His external analysis showed that the initial version of the WZ-7 for the Air Force is similar to the role of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk of the US Air Force, a long-range drone capable of providing reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The next flight tests of weapons for attack drones have been carried out in Turkey. This time we are talking about the supersonic air-based missile IHA-230. It was launched from the Bayraktar AKINCI TIHA high-altitude attack drone.

In the USA, they reported on the tests of a hypersonic missile. The flight was unsuccessful. Americans have not been able to create their own "new generation weapons" for more than two decades. About the main difficulties — in the material of RIA Novosti.

Turkey intends to open the production of drones in Africa, in particular in Nigeria. This was announced by the ambassador of this country to Turkey Ismail Abba Yusuf.

As reported by the web resource ATO.ru in Maxim Pyadushkin's article, "AirBridgeCargo Airline will return to the sky on IL-96 aircraft. The carrier can receive two cargo IL-96-400T, previously flown by its bankrupt competitor - the airline "Flight", once the largest Russian cargo airline AirBridgeCargo plans to resume operations this summer on Il-96 cargo planes. The carrier stopped flights in March 2022 after the introduction of Western sanctions against Russian civil aviation.

American fifth-generation F-35 fighters are not always able to detect Russian air defense systems, despite the presence of special equipment. Such a problem was faced by the pilots of the US Air Force, who were transferred together with the planes to Europe to patrol the airspace near the Russian and Belarusian borders. This is written by AirForceTimes.

AirForceTimes: American F-35 fighters failed to recognize Russian S-300

The US Air Force has deployed units in Eastern Europe to collect data. However, the fulfillment of their mission did not go as smoothly as expected, according to AirForceTimes. The advanced American F-35 fighters proved unable to identify the Russian S-300 air defense systems.

On March 29, 2023, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) of the US Department of Defense sent a notification to the US Congress about the planned possible sale of 24 Bell AH-1W SuperCobra combat helicopters decommissioned by the US Marine Corps to Bahrain through the US Intergovernmental Foreign Military Sales Program Foreign Military Sales (FMS). This possible sale has been approved by the U.S. Department of State. The total cost of the proposed delivery will be $ 350 million, weapons are not included in the delivery.

The Ukrainian authorities have announced a new threat – Russian planned aerial bombs. They are dropped by aircraft outside the air defense zone of Ukraine and are capable of flying tens of kilometers in order to then deliver an accurate and powerful strike. The Ukrainian command says that these smart winged land mines are now used against the Ukrainian Armed Forces almost daily. Is this so, or is Kiev simply begging for fighters from the West with the help of such complaints?