India says no to US fighter planes

India has told the United States that it will not be buying American for its $10-billion fighter aircraft deal. This more or less leaves the Eurofighter Typhoon and the French Rafale as the only remaining contenders for the deal. The two US contenders, Boeing and Lockheed, received formal letters from the Indian Ministry of Defence as to why their respective aircraft, the F/A-18 Superhornet and the F-16 Superviper, did not fulfil the technical requirements of Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft contract, said US and Indian sources.

Enabling the carrier strike group
The role of the E-2 and C-2
By Dr. Daniel Goure, Lexington Institute

(PDF 1.62MB, 16 pages)

EADS North America Conducts Flight Demonstrations of Its Armed Aerial Scout 72X Technical Demonstration Aircraft

ARLINGTON, VA and NASHVILLE, TN–(Marketwire – April 18, 2011) – EADS North America this week is conducting flight demonstrations of its company-funded Armed Aerial Scout 72X (AAS-72X) helicopter at the Nashville International Airport to coincide with a nearby military aviation exposition.

I hope Typhoon wins this competition. Twin engines, Supercruise and DASS. All it needs is a new AESA radar from Melco.

K-MAX® Unmanned Aerial Truck
LockheedMartinVideos on Youtube

No roads, no worries! The rugged K-MAX® multi-mission helicopter that Lockheed Martin and Kaman Aerospace have transformed into an Unmanned Aerial Truck proves why it is the best for unmanned battlefield cargo resupply missions.

Lockheed Martin’s Cormorant is a proposal for a submarine launched recoverable UAV. Its designed to fit in a trident launch tube. Wikipedia‘s article.

US Navy Uses Laser to Cripple Ship in First Sea Test

Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) completed the first live test [press release] of a solid state weapon laser at sea.

On Wednesday the USS Paul Foster, a decommissioned destroyer, was retrofitted with Northrop Grumman’s 15-kilowatt solid-state high-energy laser (HEL) prototype.

Yuri Gagarin’s daughter: ‘It wasn’t enough for him, it was too quick!’
April 12th 2011

To mark the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, his elder daughter Elena gave her first ever interview for Western media about her father to Andrea Rose of the British Council. This is the complete transcript