“The French Rafale jet, the eventual winner, beat the Typhoon hollow both in terms of life cycle costs and direct acquisition costs. The entire MMRCA project cost would have gone up by around Rs 25,000 crore if Typhoon had been selected over Rafale,” a top defence ministry source said on Thursday. 

There is no “short-term safety concern” from the fault, which was caused by an incorrect assembly in a support structure within the plane’s aft fuselage, Scott Lefeber, a spokesman, said yesterday in a statement. All Nippon Airways Co., the only operator of the 787, said it will continue flying the aircraft.

Dassault Rafale wins first export competition, although the MMRCA contract with India still needs to be finalized.

The Shadow Knight is based on the slowed-rotor/compound (SR/C) concept licensed from Carter Aviation Technologies, but with changes to enable a true hover capability for operation from ships.

© Dassault Aviation.

The behind-the-scenes dispute arose after the French government officially asked for more time to evaluate proposals that should have been approved in December at the most recent…

Overall, the new military strategy is the White House’s attempt to curb defense spending, which has ballooned since the terrorist attacks of 2001 and contributed to a massive federal deficit. “The growth will be slow, but [the budget] will still grow,” Obama told reporters.

“The purchase order [for the tankers] is likely to be made in 2013, for delivery four years later,” Longuet told a meeting of aerospace journalists. He gave no details of the number of Airbus multi-role tanker transport, or MRTT, planes that are likely to be ordered, but noted that the tankers are well-adapted for “mutualized” operations with the armed forces of other friendly countries.

Boeing decided to close its 82-year-old Wichita base and lay-off or transfer 2,160 employees after a “thorough study” launched in the third quarter last year. The study showed that Boeing’s aircraft repair and upgrade work in Wichita was no longer competitive and should be merged with San Antonio, said Mark Bass, a Boeing vice president.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is executing the programme on behalf of the US Marine Corps, which routinely deploys small units in isolated parts of Afghanistan. Its standard practice is to resupply such units by road convoys, which are vulnerable to ambush.

The EU’s scheme was launched in 2005 as one of the major pillars of the bloc’s efforts to combat climate change. From Jan. 1, all airlines using EU airports are included in the cap-and-trade scheme.

Boeing cited defense budget reductions and “shifting customer priorities” as reasons for the closure.