Russia, India Describe Next-Gen Fighter Plans

The air force commanders of both Russia and India have this month discussed the progress and future schedule of the fifth-generation Sukhoi fighter project. They are keen to have their own pilots evaluate the design so that they can take a decision on further funding for the project.
Russian air force commander Gen. Victor Bondarev said that he expects all four flyable prototypes of the so-called PAKFA (Future Aviation Complex of Frontal Aviation) to gather at the defense ministry’s test base and firing range near Akhtubinsk in Southern Russia, for customer assessment and weapons release trials. By the year-end their number shall increase to eight. If tests are a success, the PAKFA will go into series production in late 2015 or early 2016.

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U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan are at 5-year low

KABUL, Afghanistan — On the eve of the final "fighting season" before the major pullout of American troops from Afghanistan begins, U.S. deaths here have fallen to their lowest levels in five years.
The decline is ever steeper for international forces: The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force suffered its fewest number of troops killed in December, January and February in seven years.
U.S. deaths in those months this winter totaled 17, down from 57 the previous winter.
As of Friday, a Marine who died in Helmand province on Feb. 22 was the only U.S. service member to be killed in 43 days, the longest such stretch since the winter of 2006-07, according to records kept by iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184597/us-troop-deaths-in-afghanistan.html#storylink=cpy

Air Force Tanker Project to Cost More Than $4.9B

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE -- The cost to develop a new Air Force refueling tanker is expected to exceed a $4.9 billion spending cap, but taxpayers won't be on the hook for the extra costs, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base manages the program.
The GAO report released this week also found the flight test schedule for the KC-46 aerial refueling tanker was a "substantive concern" for the aircraft that is a top Air Force acquisition priority.
The service branch has a $52 billion fixed-price contract to buy an initial 179 KC-46 tankers from Chicago-based Boeing Co. through 2027.
The KC-46, a military tanker version of the commercial Boeing 767 passenger airliner, will replace many aging KC-135 Stratotanker refuelers, the last of which joined the fleet in 1965.

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Russia Sold Over $2.5 Bln Worth of Weapons Abroad in Jan-Feb

S-300 air defence missile system


MOSCOW, March 1 (RIA Novosti) - In the first two months of 2013, Russia sold over $2.5 billion worth of weapons to other countries, the head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said Friday.
“In the first month of this year, we sold arms worth $1 billion. In the first two months, total weapons sales exceeded $2.5 billion,” Alexander Fomin told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Fomin said Russia’s portfolio of foreign orders for arms now totals some $46 billion, with “80 percent of this portfolio accounting for orders for the next three to four years.”

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Why The Russian Army Is Fading Away

February 28, 2013: The Russian government recently bowed to public pressure and agreed not to send conscripts into combat. Only “contract soldiers” (higher paid volunteer troops) will do combat, unless there is a general war. As a result of this new policy, combat training of conscripts will be reduced from six to four months. Actually, training was cut in half but conscripts will not be sent to a combat zone (as in the Caucasus) until they had been in uniform for at least four months. The actual wording of these new regulations allowed conscripts to be sent to do non-combat jobs in the Caucasus, where terrorism is quite common. This was not publicized. These new rules were issued with no fanfare but the word quickly got around and parents of draft age (18-26) men were outraged. This was seen as a subterfuge to save money (less training for draftees) at the expense of the young conscripts and still send them to dangerous service in the Caucasus. While the conscripts would not be chasing after Islamic terrorists down there, they would be targets for terrorist attacks and would, because of the training cuts, be less able to defend themselves. The parents figured that out themselves. The military saw the change as necessary because conscripts are only in for a year now, rather than two, and extensive training is costly and largely wasted because most of the conscripts leave after their year is up. The larger problem is that Russia has fewer and fewer people to conscript and a very difficult time attracting volunteers.


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Israeli-Palestinian tensions could ultimately spark a major confrontation

At some point, in the year ahead, depending on the deployment of troops on the ground and the nature of the specific trigger that is pulled, there could be a serious explosion between Palestinians and Israelis.

 

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F-35 Cleared For Flight; Turbine Crack Cause Identified

WASHINGTON: The entire F-35 fleet has been cleared to resume flying only one week after being grounded for the second time this year. In vintage Pentagonese, this is how the return to flight was announced today to Capitol Hill:"Upon completion and compliance with the immediate action Time Compliant Technical Directive (TCTD) issued this week to borescope inspect the LPT stage 3 turbine blades, F-35 LRIP aircraft are returned to flight status. Additionally, a 25 Effective Flight Hour (EFH) reporting cycle of creep damage will now be implemented to monitor and limit turbine creep exposure."

Basically, it means that a potentially really serious problem -- turbine blades suffering from high cycle fatigue -- was not the cause of the half-inch crack which led to last week's highly publicized grounding.

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