The war in Ukraine has produced many new lessons, in particular on the potential duration of a very high intensity engagement, or on the role of artillery and heavy armor in the land maneuver. In other areas, it has above all confirmed developments anticipated by military planners, such as the vulnerability of combat helicopters and close air support aircraft to modern anti-aircraft defences, while the US Army has precisely launched the FLRAA and FARA programs of new generation helicopters and that the US Air Force has towed for almost a decade with Congress to withdraw from service its A-10 Thunderbolts...
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After the A-10, the US Air Force wants to withdraw its F-15Cs from service by 2030
The preparation of the annual budget of the American armed forces is a very rich period of lessons, allowing in particular the 3 forces of the country, the executive on the one hand, the Congress on the other hand, but also the armed forces themselves, to publicly express their vision and expectations for the coming year and beyond, in terms of investments but also of format and strategy. If, during the 90s, 2000s and 2010s, everyone's considerations were above all technological or economic, since the beginning of the decade they have taken on a new, very applied character, while tensions with Russia, China and also Iran or Korea...
Read the articleAfter support aircraft, American fighters will also have to evolve profoundly in the years to come.
As is the case every year at the same time, the specialized US defense press has not lacked a subject to cover in recent days. Indeed, it is in March that the parliamentary hearings begin with a view to preparing the next armed forces budget, in this case the 2024 budget which will come into effect in the fall of 2023. Due to the political organization of the financing of the defense effort on the other side of the Atlantic, Congress having the last word on the subject well beyond the overall envelope requested by the executive, the debates preparing this budget are generally very precise and technical. However, they are also an opportunity for…
Read the articleThe US Air Force is reducing its next tanker order to prepare for the arrival of next-generation Tankers
A few days ago, the US Air Force announced the first order paving the way for a future order for 26 E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft to partially replace its 34 E-3 Sentry which entered service between the end of of the 70s and the mid-80s, and which are beginning to noticeably mark the weight of the years. If this order will indeed make it possible to renew a critical capability for American air power, it is also significant that the US Air Force has favored, with this decision, a relatively economical solution based on an aircraft initially designed for export by Boeing. Obviously,…
Read the articleDo Awacs Advanced Air Warning aircraft still have a place in modern air warfare?
Since the Second World War, Western armies have drawn much of their firepower from their air forces. However, from the mid-50s, it was not so much the relative quality of their fighters and bombers against Soviet aircraft, as the strength of the support fleet, which carried Western air superiority. Thus, in 1957, the KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft entered service which, based on a Boeing 707 cell, made it possible to refuel in flight first the strategic bombers of the US Air Force, then the hunting fleet as the new hunters were equipped with…
Read the articleThe next generation of combat aircraft will have to rely on new support aircraft
In recent years, the race has been launched between the major aeronautical powers to develop a new generation fighter. Whether it is the NGAD of the US Air Force, the NGAD F/A-XX of the US Navy, the Franco-Spanish-German SCAF, the Italian-British-Japanese FCAS, or the still secret Chinese program , these 6th generation devices will bring new capabilities creating a clean break with previous generations, much more than those supposed to define the dubious 5th generation. Through their cooperative engagement capabilities, drone control, and performance unparalleled with current aircraft, these fighters will allow air forces to retain for decades to come...
Read the articleFacing China, US precision ammunition stocks would only last a week
One week ! This is the time it will take for the US Navy and the US Air Force to deplete its stocks of long-range precision ammunition in the event of a conflict between the United States and China around the island of Taiwan. . This is essentially the observation made by the latest report from the American think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, which also points to the impossibility for American industry as organized today to meet the needs of a high-intensity war against a great power, if the conflict were to last, as is the case in Ukraine against Russia. And of…
Read the articleChina could not seize Taiwan militarily in 2026 according to simulations
While the attention of European leaders and soldiers is now quite logically focusing on Russia and on the direct and induced consequences of the conflict in Ukraine, American strategists are above all committed to anticipating the evolution of the political standoff and potentially military between Washington and Beijing in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The main subject of friction between the two world superpowers is none other than the island of Taiwan, which has been autonomous since 1949 after the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, defeated by the communist forces of Mao Zedong, left the continent. to install an autonomous government on the island. If, during the 90s and…
Read the articleAfter the F-135 engine, the F-35 will also change radar with the AN/APG-85
In a synthetic way, it is common to say that a combat aircraft is none other than the association of a cell, an engine and a radar. And the devices that marked their time, such as the F4 Phantom II, the Mirage III, the Mig-21, the F-15, the F-16 or the Su-27, all respected this definition, relying on the perfect complementarity of these 3 key components. For fifteen years, Lockheed-Martin's F-35 has also been presented as the most striking aircraft of its generation, and as such has been adorned with all the virtues. However, under the leadership of the US Air Force, it seems that...
Read the articleDespite a successful test, the future of the American AGM-183A ARRW hypersonic missile is not guaranteed
In the middle of the electoral campaign for his re-election to the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin stunned the world of defense on March 1, 2018, when he announced, during a television interview, that the hypersonic airborne missile Kinzhal had entered service a few months earlier in the within the Russian Air Force. With a range of 2000 km, the Russian missile, which can be used from the Mig-31K heavy interceptor or the Tu-22M3 long-range bomber, follows a semi-ballistic trajectory with significant evolution capabilities and a speed greater than Mach 5, making it particularly difficult to detect and intercept for traditional anti-ballistic systems such as the…
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