Military Aviation

Japan’s Self Defense Force (JSDF) has cleared its V-22 Osprey fleet to return to flight after determining pilot error was the cause of an October accident on Yonaguni Island. The incident occurred during a joint exercise with U.S. military where the V-22 Osprey tilted and hit the ground as it was taking off, though no […]

The U.S. Air Force announced yesterday it will phase out A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka “Warthog”) attack aircraft in Korea in favor of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters such as the F-15, F-16 and F-35. “The modernization effort seeks to ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” the USAF said, “including the Korean peninsula, through state-of-the-art […]

Reuters reported that China’s advanced Z-20 helicopter appeared at the Zhuhai Airshow today (Nov. 12). According to analysts who spoke with the news agency, the most significant element of the new version of the military rotorcraft is its potential to shore up China’s naval capability to protect itself from submarine attacks. Chinese state media recently […]

A woman who went through testing as an astronaut candidate in 1961 and finally went to space 60 years later was among those honored at the American Valor event in Washington on Saturday. Wally Funk was among soldiers, female special forces operatives and the famed Black 24th Infantry Regiment known as the “Buffalo Soldiers” to […]

The online military information source The War Zone published a detailed report this week focused on  U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall addressing financial “uncertainty” involving current modernization efforts. In his keynote address at the Airlift/Tanker Association’s annual symposium last Friday (Nov. 1), Kendall discussed the affordability of new stealth fighters, advanced aerial refueling tankers […]

South Korean media is reporting that North Korean frontline fighter pilots are among the thousands of troops sent to Russia, possibly to join the war in Ukraine. Korea has some of the same old Soviet-era aircraft that Russia is using against Ukraine, and their pilots are as good as the Russian fighter jocks according to […]

Two naval aviators whose EA-18G Growler crashed at about 6,000 feet near Mt. Rainier in Washington State last week have been declared dead by the Navy. An Army Special Forces team reached the wreckage of the electronics warfare aircraft in challenging terrain, and the Navy confirmed on Sunday that the operation changed from a rescue to […]

At press time, the crew of a U.S. Navy EA-18G Growler is still missing, though the wreckage had been located near Mount Rainier in Washington State. The jet crashed while on a training mission on Tuesday (Oct. 15) at around 3:23 p.m. local time. Aerial search crews located the wreckage on Wednesday around 12:30 in […]

Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, announced yesterday (Oct. 14) it has received a $6 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance its flight autonomy program. The government funding will go toward installing Sikorsky’s ALIAS/MATRIX (Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System) in a U.S. Army experimental fly-by-wire Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk […]

For close to a half century, Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, Arizona, was the main training center for U.S. Air Force F-16 pilots. But on Sept. 30, the last Fighting Falcon training mission closed out that history. The Air Force announced this week that the 56th Fighter Wing has now shifted exclusively to flying […]