Giuseppe Garibaldi has no long term future. She’s supposed to be replaced by a STOVL-capable amphibious ship, but the money hasn’t been budgeted yet.

The three Santi LPDs are meant to be replaced by two LHDs pretty soon, but I’m not sure what’s happening there. IIRC the three new ships are intended to have the same basic design.

The Giuseppe Garibaldi already took her new role as LHA, see the official Italian Navy website:
http://www.marina.difesa.it/Conosciamoci/Notizie/Pagine/20121130_amphex2012.aspx (on the bottom of the page the English text)

The exercise scope was meant to allow the commands to develop and make use of their high potentials; in fact this exercise provides for two Units with strong aircraft capacity at sea: ITS Cavour and ITS Garibaldi – this latter was recently fitted as an assault helicopter carrier. In this new role, ITS Garibaldi will make up for the gradual loss of the present amphibious units, bridging the gap until two new units enter service; thus the Italian Navy will maintain one of her peculiar skills: the amphibious assault ability, essential to the National Projection Capacity from the Sea.

So the Garibaldi will act as gap filler between the Santi LPD (to be progressively decommissioned in the next years) and the future LHDs.

Currently the Garibaldi is entering at Taranto naval base a major maintenance and update program which will last for 510 days. So it is not very correct to state that she has no long term future, since the amount of the works.

Maybe it would be more correct though to list the ship as amphibious assault carrier and not as an Aircraft carrier on the first page of this thread – thank you for your excellent work, steely dan.

Last voyage for the Spanish Principe de Asturias 🙁

http://www.meretmarine.com/fr/content/le-porte-aeronefs-principe-de-asturias-fait-ses-adieux-la-marine-espagnole

Rii’s post of the yak-130 perhaps should have made the point.
Whilst the western countries might not go for the yak version, the aermacchi M 346 was the Italian version of a joint venture and should fulfill the role nicely, though I’m not sure of the present status of the m346.

Like the hawk, these optimised trainers come in at a comfortable budget (for the military!) and can be used well in COIN operations in relatively uncontested airspace.

As an Italian I can confirm that the M-346 is doing well. It is a great Lead-In Fighter Trainer, currently undergoing tests at the Italian Testing Squadron to define the next generation training syllavbus. Still an effective machine in this role is far from being capable of a CAS role – we could discuss this more in detail, but the same problems applies IMHO to all the very good and advanced trainers on the market right now. COIN is a different thing – a turboprop could suffice – but again is different from the specifics of the OP. There is no space for a modernized AMX put on the international market (btw current AMX is a more effective combat aircraft then any advanced trainer – again we could discuss this in more detail) . Anyway it’s very difficult that M-346, Hawk, T-50. Yak-130 or anything similiar could do something like this:

The panoplia shown at airshows from some suppliers is different from the real possibilities of the advanced trainers involved.

For the rest again, I could agree on the effectiveness of the Avenger concept, but USAF was too fast on sinking it, in favour of more complex and expensive concepts. Still I have some hope on the US navy judgement.

Fleet Readiness Center East delivers first Italian Navy AV-8B after extensive upgrade

Thats including all spares fo 30 years + pilot training in Sweden + temporary rented Gripen Cs + all other SAAB equipment needed to operate the Gripen system. The jet itself is way below that cost and closer to 25-38m£.

That’s exactly how to calculate an aircraft cost, i.e. the procurement cost (or even better many airforces use as a parameter the program or acquisition cost, which includes also R&D – developing a new variant is not free – testing, operative evaluation and Milcon). Oh and of course these procurement or program costs are different from life cycle costs.

I don’t think correct an estimate even of the lower flyaway cost of just 25£ for a new variant, bear in mind that the Swiss will probably pay for the each aircraft of the version E less than the Sweds will, since the deal is on a fixed cost basis, with the Sweden going to pay for any increase of the costs in R&D of the program.

More important the E version is heavier and more performing then the C, there would be need of R&D on the very opposite direction. I am skeptical about the implementation of just a less powerful engine.

More probably there would be need of a complete redesign of the Gripen, i.e. a complete new aircraft.

That said, I think that more in general the European industry should have had thought years ago of a rather “cheap” platform to develop, similar to a modern version of Jaguar or AMX.

The F-35 was for some aspects a “poisoned fruit” that the US gave to Europe in order to gain superiority in the long term in the attack aircraft industry, with the promise of a relative affordable platform.
Would Europe have thought years ago of a modern light attack aircraft the ballooning of the F-35 costs would have not been such a pain in the heart.

But I am afraid that now it’s too late 🙁

To put it simply this is just deliberate trolling. i.e. Denying each and every evidence and effort by oher members to keep sustaining a non-objective point on false basis.

I am too new a member of this forum and not acquainted enough with the related practices, but can I ask senior members the way to bar such an everlasting continous nonsense coming from the same user?

Or on keypublishing.com it is just allowed to spread false assumptions?
In case let me know, I am ready to cancel my account here if such gross misnofrmations are allowed here.

News from interfax: http://interfax.ru/russia/news.asp?id=289470

Again I need help from our Russian speaking friends. Apparently from Google translate I understand that the Pak-Fa for sure will be produced also in the 2-seat version. Is it correct? Also is it really a “new”?

Azerbaijan to Purchase Turkish T-129 ATAK Helicopters

From the page you linked:

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Credible industry sources have informed us that the above report is inaccurate, and that Azerbaijan has neither negotiated nor contracted a purchase of Turkish T-129 helicopters.
We await official reactions by the parties involved.)