Military Aviation

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) officially retired its Bell AH-1W Super Cobra twin-engine attack helicopters last week after 34 years of service. The model completed its first flight on Nov. 16, 1983, and the USMC took delivery of its first AH-1W—initially called the AH-1T+—on March 27, 1986. The Super Cobra will be replaced by […]

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office says it didn’t know about or authorize the use of an RC-26B reconnaissance aircraft and a Lakota helicopter to monitor the quiet upscale neighborhood where the Air National Guard’s state commander lives while widespread rioting gripped the rest of the state last June in the wake of the death of […]

Honeywell Aerospace has signed a contract with the U.S. Army for the repair and overhaul of T55-GA-714A engines installed on its CH-47 Chinook helicopters. The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract, which aims to “ensure that the U.S. Army’s Chinook fleet has spare engines to sustain its future missions and overall readiness,” covers the next […]

An F-16 by any other name is apparently an F-21 if it’s being sold to India. Lockheed Martin is pitching a partly made-in-India version of the Viper that will carry the different numerical designation. For the record, Lockheed Martin says the V-21 will have a custom weapons system developed for India, a long-range infrared search […]

The Royal Thai Air Force has awarded Textron Aviation Defense a contract for an “Integrated Training System” designed to support operations at the Royal Thai Air Force Flying Training School at Kamphaeng Saen air base. The contract includes 12 Beechcraft T-6C Texan II aircraft, ground-based training systems for pilots and maintenance personnel, a mission planning […]

Hurricane Sally disrupted operations and wrecked some airplanes but most of the facilities affected along the Gulf coast and inland in Alabama are open and cleaning up the mess. AOPA found five facilities either closed or with limited operations in the storm’s aftermath but most were back in business by the weekend. The impact stretched […]

The U.S. Air Force is testing a new fighter jet prototype designed and built under its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The mystery aircraft has already been flown, although it has not been made public how many prototypes have been built or how much flight time the design has accrued. Details about the fighter’s […]

Ground testing of Boeing’s Loyal Wingman prototype is underway with the first engine start on the autonomous unmanned aircraft successfully completed this month. The Loyal Wingman is designed to serve as the foundation for Boeing’s Airpower Teaming System, which uses “artificial intelligence to fly independently or in support of manned aircraft.” The aircraft is the […]

The Air Force is toying with the idea of giving the president a supersonic ride to his or her international appointments. According to military.com the Air Force’s Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate has awarded a $1 million small business innovation research contract to aerospace startup Exosonic to nail down the basics of a low-boom supersonic […]

United Launch Alliance says it will be at least a week before it can try again to launch an expensive spy satellite from Cape Canaveral. Its Delta IV Heavy rocket automatically aborted starting its engines just three seconds before liftoff early Saturday. The launch had already been postponed from its Aug. 27 planned liftoff. In […]