The World of Aviation

Airbus Military has successfully conducted the first series of wet contacts from the wingtip hose and drogue refuelling pods on the RAAF’s first KC-30A MRTT tanker. The tests were conducted from the tanker’s Cobham 905E pods with a Spanish air force F/A-18 Hornet, and six contacts were made during which 4000kg of fuel was transferred.

Boeing has been awarded a US$72m (A$78m) contract by the USAF to deliver more than 2900 JDAM tail kits. The Lot 14 production run will see the deliveries made in 2011 and 2012, and is the second one-year option of a six-year contract Boeing received in January 2008. The JDAM kit comprises a GPS guidance

Boeing has announced two advanced developments of its Insitu ScanEagle UAV. The first is an air launched MagEagle Compressed Carriage (MECC) variant which Boeing hopes to integrate with its P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft next decade. MECC would carry a passive magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) for the detection of distortions in the earth’s magnetic field

Lockheed Martin’s long range development of its JASSM air-to-surface missile successfully completed its sixth test flight recently, giving it a 100 per cent test success rate to date. The JASSM-ER, with a range of more than 800km, was launched from a B-1B bomber over the White Sands missile range in New Mexico and destroyed its

The UK government is reportedly looking to make a rapid buy of up to 30 CH-47 Chinook helicopters as a response to a perceived lack of rotary lift for its forces in Afghanistan. The RAF currently operates 38 Chinooks, some of which have been recently returned to the air after being grounded for nearly a

Raytheon says it has been given permission by the Pentagon to negotiate with at least two foreign operators for the supply of its Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar (RACR) AESA radar. The RACR, a scaled down development of the F/A-18E/F’s APG-79 AESA, is being offered as a retrofit to current F-16 and F/A-18 ‘classic’ operators as