Archive: News & Articles

Together with the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt – DLR) Diehl and HENSOLDT carried out flight tests for a new sensor system to increase air safety in July and August. The objective is to prevent aircraft collisions. In the future, the sensors tested for detecting and avoiding collisions (Sense & Avoid) […]

The Helicopter Division of Leonardo has delivered the 1,000th AW139, assigned to the Italian Customs Police (Guardia di Finanza) on September 20. A historical milestone for a rotary-wing development and certification programme which was publicly launched in 1998 and which was celebrated by Leonardo at its historical assembly line facility at Vergiate (Varese), near Milan. […]

Lately, it has emerged that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Slovakia intends to start a procurement programme for a number of modern trainer aircraft, which will allow for the training of a new generation of pilots, who in the next years will start operating a fleet of 14 F-16V Block 70/72 multirole fighter jets, […]

The leading British defence companies including BAE Systems, Leonardo UK, Rolls Royce and MBDA UK, together with key Italian industry players represented by Leonardo Italy, Elettronica, Avio Aero and MBDA Italy, announced their intent to partner on the Tempest programme by signing a Statement of Intent (SOI) on the second day of DSEI 2019. The […]

From August 27 to September 01, 2019, the XIV edition of the MAKS International Aerospace Salon took place at the Zhukovsky airfield in the vicinity of Moscow. The fair was attended by 870 companies from 33 countries, including 184 international companies. The organisers counted over 578 thousand visitors and estimated the amount of contracts concluded […]

GE has recently presented its Catalyst, a new, clean-sheet turboprop engine developed entirely in Europe with all EU technologies. This engine has taken another important step in its development and certification programme. The company announced it has successfully completing altitude testing at Canada’s National Research Council Altitude Test Facility, where the engine has been tested […]

According to Chinese media, the newly developed stealth fighter J-20 has now been selected as the aircraft for the next generation of Chinese aircraft carriers. The J-20, developed by Chengdu Aerospace Corporation (CAC), has thus prevailed over the F-31 presented by Shendyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC), which produces the previous J-15 carrier aircraft. Both are subsidiaries […]

On September 1 a contingent of the Czech Air Force will commence a four month long mission as part of the NATO’s Baltic Air Policing operation. Czech Gripen pilots will patrol and protect the airspace of three Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Czech pilots will take over their responsibilities from members of the British, […]

The Czech Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced its decision to procure a number of U.S. H-1 family of helicopters, which are manufactured by Bell. The contract will cover acquisition of four AH-1Z Viper attack and eight UH-1Y Venom utility/multirole helicopters. The planned acquisition was announced yesterday, during a visit by the country’s Prime Minister, […]

The International Aerospace Salon MAKS-2019 will be held at Zhukovskiy, Moscow Region on August 27 to September 1. The show profile allows to display all type of military and commercial aircraft, space technology and air-defence systems attracting a huge number of participants, predominantly Russian. Due to US/EU sanctions Western companies limited their presence to commercial […]

The Polish Air Force is at the threshold of modernisation of its combat air fleet, as a number of legacy, Soviet-era platforms are planned to be phased out in the nearest future. They will gradually be replaced by modern 5th generation multirole fighter aircraft, which will be procured under the “Harpia” programme. Poland’s Ministry of […]

The first Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) pod has been delivered to the U.S. Navy to begin ground and aircraft integration testing. Raytheon will deliver 15 EMD (Engineering and Manufacturing Development) pods for mission systems testing and qualification as well as 14 aeromechanical pods for airworthiness certification. NGJ-MB is a high-capacity and power airborne electronic […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Raytheon successfully completed the baseline design review for the Tactical Boost Glide hypersonic weapons programme. A boost glide weapon uses a rocket to accelerate its payload and achieve hypersonic speeds – velocities greater than Mach 5. During flight, the payload separates from the rocket and glides unpowered […]

Today the U.S. Navy has awarded a $167 million firm-fixed-price contract for 263 full-rate production Lot 8 Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles (AARGM) to Alliant Techsystems Operations, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. Within this contract existing AGM-88B High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles will be conversed into 260 AGM-88E AARGM all-up-rounds and 3 Captive Air Training […]

HENSOLDT’s Twinvis passive radar system has been tested during a comprehensive measurement campaign for its air traffic control capabilities. As part of the campaign a passive radar sensor cluster was installed at four sites in South Germany, from which air traffic above this region could be monitored and tracked in real time. This showed that […]

THALES Training and Simulation will develop concepts for a ground-based training and simulation system aimed at complementing the UK’s Tempest future fighter programme. AERALIS, the British firm developing the UK’s first home-grown fast jet training aircraft since the Hawk, signed a corresponding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with THALES recently. Within this partnership AERALIS and THALES […]

The British Ministry of Defence has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Raytheon, so that the company joins Team ARTEMIS Industry, a collaboration between government and industry formed to fast track the launch of a small satellite constellation and enhance the UK’s sovereign space capability. UK MoD has made a commitment to launch a small […]

UK and Sweden have committed to a joint approach to ensure their future combat air power. The corresponding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by the British Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt and her Swedish counterpart Peter Hultqvist, that commits both governments to work on a joint combat air development and acquisition programme, including the […]

AERALIS announced recently it would cooperate with defence experts to ensure that it can provide the training required for sixth generation fighter jets. The US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, China and Russia have already announced the development of a sixth generation aircraft programme. While these concept aircraft of the future will share many of the […]

Airbus has signed the new A400M Global Support contract with OCCAR, which manages the multinational programme on behalf of the launch customer nations Germany, France, UK, Spain, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg. This is the first support contract for all A400M participating states; it will bring the benefits of a fully integrated suite of common services […]

The decision on the future tactical air defence system (Taktisches Luftverteidigungssystem = TLVS) has one thing in particular: a long time frame. Accordingly, the Patriot modernization is taking place in parallel, so that Germany will continue to have the necessary missile defence capability. Yesterday, the Budget Committee of the German Parliament approved the upgrade of […]