By Robbin Laird The Germans had a clear opportunity to acquire F-35s as their Tornado replacement aircraft and chose not to do so. Unlike other Tornado users, namely, Britain and Italy, the F-35 was put aside in favor of a new Eurofighter replacement option known as the Future Combat Air…
By Robbin Laird With the US Navy’s FMS Offer to Germany for Triton having expired without being extended, Germany is now pursuing a manned aircraft alternative for the SIGINT mission. The approach would be to buy three Bombardier G6000 aircraft and equip them as special mission aircraft. Germany already has…
By defenceWeb The first three Su-35 fighter jets for Egypt’s air force have been seen flying in Russia, months after it emerged production had started at the Gagarin Aircraft Plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. On 22 July, photos emerged of five aircraft in flight, with serials 9210, 9212 and 9214 visible. They…
By Robbin Laird After Germany retired its specially modified signals intelligence Atlantique maritime patrol aircraft, there was a clear gap in the capabilities of Germany to provide for either national or NATO capabilities in this area. This was done in the immediate post-Cold War environment where the United States and…
By Robbin Laird As I suggested in the lead article in this series on how to evaluate platform choices in the context of evolving needs and concepts of operations, too often, a simple platform versus platform presentation is made which confuses rather than clarifies what the tactical and strategic implications…
A recent article published by NATO on July 29, 2020 highlights the growing focus of attention within NATO on maritime remote systems. Michael Brasseur is a naval warfare expert at the US Mission to NATO. This former captain of two warships who has sailed and served all over the world,…
By Robbin Laird I have attended the International Fighter Conference for the past two years in Berlin. I provided several analytical pieces on presentations and discussions at those two events as well as reports covering the events as well. I was certainly looking forward to coming to Berlin and seeing…
The Embraer KC-390 is seen in the photo above (credited to Embraer) and is one of the reasons Boeing signed a joint venture with Embraer in the first place. The joint venture embraced this airplane as a core part of the way ahead for the joint venture. In an October…
