Defence Minister John Faulkner has announced that the government has given second pass approval for the acquisition of seven CH-47F Chinooks for the Australian Army. The acquisition of additional Chinooks to initially complement and then replace the Army’s six existing CH-47Ds, which have been substantially upgraded in recent years to a standard not dissimiliar to the
The USAF has proposed buying 112 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawks and converting them to an HH-60L configuration for Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) work to replace the service’s ageing fleet of HH-60G Pave Hawks. The decision comes in the wake of the abandonment of the CSAR-X program earlier this year and an urgent requirement to
The Department of Defence has confirmed that the RAAF’s KC-30A Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) project has not been placed on the government’s ‘projects of concern’ list despite reports to the contrary and the project running nearly two years late. In response to questions from Australian Aviation following rumours the project was in trouble and
One time Australian Aviation ‘Defence Update’ columnist T Max Hawkins passed away in Sydney on February 16, aged 83. Hawkins was a well known and respected defence writer, editing the Defence Industry Newsletter and the Australian Defence Report for many years, and wrote the ‘Defence Update’ column in Australian Aviation from the early 1980s through
Boeing’s Vigilare command and control system has successfully passed factory acceptance testing and will move on to on-site testing prior to final acceptance by the RAAF later this year. The tests, conducted at Boeing’s Brisbane test facility, verified system-level requirements for delivery of the system to the Northern Regional Operational Centre (NROC) at RAAF Tindal
EADS has issued a statement urging caution on drawing conclusions from the issuing of a letter by A400M partner nations on the future of the troubled program. The company says it is too early to draw financial conclusions from the contents of the letter in which the partner nations proposed the additional financial commitments they
