Newly-appointed Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik and Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Muhammad Asif met Friday in Islamabad to discuss bilateral defense cooperation.
"One of the most important issues between [the two countries] is a deal for T129 attack helicopters," Isik said at a joint press conference held after the meeting.
The deal for the sale of the T129s -- a multi-role attack helicopter co-developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries -- will "further enhance our bilateral cooperation in the defense industry," Isik asserted.
Special Operations Command will test a laser weapon on an Apache helicopter this summer, said one official May 26.
SOCOM's program executive office rotary wing is working alongside the Army’s project office for Apache Attack Helicopters to conduct a feasibility test this summer, said Col. John Vannoy, program manager for rotary wing.
“There is absolutely a niche I believe for use of directed energy weapons,” he said during a briefing at the annual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association. “The lens we are looking at this through right now is: ‘Is it feasible to do this?’ We’re not at the point where we’ve laid out a business case to advance it.”
The office envisions using a laser weapon to destroy vehicles or generators versus sending in a missile that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.
Vannoy’s office and the Army's Apache office have entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with Raytheon to put a podded laser on the aircraft, he said.
“We really want to understand the environment on the wing, the beam quality we can get off the wing and the ability to beam steer and keep power on a target,” he said.
Environmental factors such as dust could affect beam quality. In addition, the vibrations on an Apache’s wing could affect steering, he said.
Vannoy did not disclose a specific timeframe for the test or when results would be made public. “Most of that will be internal quite frankly,” he said.
The effort is still in its infancy, he said. “I wouldn’t say that we’re at the tipping point and you’re going to see a Star Wars like effect or a Death Star laser hanging off the side of a rotary wing aircraft,” he said.
A directed energy weapon could also be mounted on an MH-60 Black Hawk, he said.
A Russian Mi-28 attack helicopter crashed in Syria on April 12. The two crew died.
The gunship is the third aircraft the Russian military has lost in its six-month-old intervention in Syria on behalf of the regime of Pres. Bashar Al Assad.
The Mi-28 was not shot down, multiple media outlets reported, citing the Russian defense ministry.
TASS says Egypt has agreed to buy over 50 Ka-52 naval helicopters that Russia had produce to deploy on the Mistral helicopter carriers.
After three years of waiting, India's Cabinet Committee of Security (CCS), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and which is responsible for the purchase of weapons and equipment, has cleared a $2.5 billion deal to buy 22 Apache AH-64 Block III attack helicopters and 15 Chinook CH-47F heavy-lift helicopters from Boeing.
CCS approval, granted at a meeting Tuesday, means formalities have been cleared and the deal could be inked in the next two months, said a Defence Ministry official.
CCS clearance came ahead of Modi's Sept. 24-29 visit to the US, when he is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama.
While the Boeing deal was finalized in 2013, CCS clearance had been delayed because of issues relating to offset obligations, which have been sorted out, the MoD official said.
Boeing extended its price quote for the helicopters in July until the end of September, thereby agreeing to sell the helicopters at the price the company had quoted in 2013.
And then there were five. There were already going to be four different aircraft in the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family, from light to medium to heavy to “ultra.”
Now it’s almost certain that the medium FVL will be split into two separate versions: a smaller attack/reconnaissance aircraft and a larger troop-carrying assault craft. What’s more, the Army’s aviation chief said today, they might even end up using entirely different forms of propulsion, for example with one being a tiltrotor (like the V-22 Osprey) and the other being a “compound” helicopter with a pusher propeller and coaxial blades (like the Sikorsky X2 or the Eurocopter X-3).
“Really, the medium category is going to be two aircraft with two capability sets,” Maj. Gen. Michael Lundy, commanding general of the Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker told an Association of the United States Army aviation symposium. The logic of splitting the medium lift category into different aircraft will be discussed Friday at a meeting of an FVL executive steering group that includes officers from all the armed services, Lundy added.
“We’re going to talk about where we’re heading,” Lundy said, emphasizing that no decisions are being made at this stage: Much will depend on the results of flight tests in 2017 and 2018 of technology demonstrator aircraft being developed by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. — the tiltrotor — and a team of Boeing Company and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. — the coaxial rotors — under the Joint Multirole (JMR) program. An industry official, however, said the Army briefed Bell and the Boeing/Sikorsky team earlier this week on the fact that service leaders think the attack and assault versions of the medium-lift FVL will need to be two different aircraft.
The JMR is one of the first concrete steps in the long-range FVL initiative, which aims to develop new, far faster and more agile vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft for all the services in four different sizes: light, medium, heavy and ultra.
The initial requirements for the JMR Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) call for attack and utility versions of an aircraft that weighs about 30,000 pounds at takeoff, can fly faster than 230 knots (about 265 miles per hour), can carry as many as 12 troops about 230 miles in the utility version and then loiter for half an hour before returning to base without refueling.
Pakistan’s closest friend China is expected to give another gift this year, in shape of their famous helicopter Z10. According to reports, three Z10 helicopters are expected to be included in Pakistan Army aviation fleet, which will be helpful in cleaning the terrorism in the county.
Pakistan showed interest in purchasing Z10 helicopters, sources said. The helicopter is capable of targeting the enemy with a range of 3 to 4 kilometers without coming in reader. It is also capable of targeting in the air as well as on ground from air.
With the induction of Z10, Pakistan Army’s capability of targeting the terrorists will increase. Pakistan is already using the helicopters effectively in the war against terrorism.
Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer Hussain told Dawn on Friday the matter was being discussed with Chinese authorities.
It is for the first time that a senior government functionary has confirmed talks with China over purchase of the longer-range stealth aircraft — an issue that has been a subject of speculation in defence circles since the 10th edition of the Zhuhai Air Show (China) held earlier this month, when the aircraft was unveiled.
The Jane’s Defence Weekly had quoted an unnamed Pakistani official as saying that the PAF was holding talks with China for the purchase of 30 to 40 of the Shenyang FC-31 fighter planes and that discussions had gone beyond initial inquiries.
The FC-31 is being developed by China primarily for the export market. Chinese officials claim that several countries have expressed interest in the aircraft believed to be comparable to US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
A prototype of the aircraft, designated as J-31, has been flown by the Chinese aircraft research and development firm Shenyang Aviation Company for a couple of years now.
What particularly interests the PAF is that FC-31 prototype (J-31) and JF-17 use the same Russian Klimov RD-93 engines.
Pakistan is increasingly relying on China as a reliable source for its defence procurements.
Mr Hussain said that Pakistan was also interested in Chinese attack helicopter Z-10.
