09/09/2016: The Colombian A-29B Super Tucano is one of the most successful aircraft in the Colombian inventory. Manufactured by Brazil's Embraer corporation, many countries in the region fly the A-29 including Chile, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and others. Colombian Brig. Gen. Rodrigo Alejandro Valencia Guevara speaks to its capabilities. BARKSDALE…
2012-07-16 by Robbin Laird This past weekend in a fine piece in The New York Times, C.J. Chivers focused on the airpower dimension in Afghan operations. The title was tellingly: “Afghan Conflict Losing Air Power as U.S. pulls out.” In its way, this strike was a model of what air power can…
6/12/12: By Ed Timperlake In the same week that Second Line of Defense’s own Murielle Delaporte returned from Afghanistan with the dead and wounded from a recent Taliban terrorist attack on the French forces, a lawsuit was filed against the Secretary of the US Air Force. https://www.sldinfo.com/with-the-french-forces-in-afghanistan-at-crucial-point-of-transition/ How are these…
by Francis Tusa One has to assume that Boeing is shaking its corporate head in dismay, as its chances of a deal to sell the F/A-18E/F to Brazil took a nose dive. The key thing that has affected the aircraft’s chances has been the abrupt cancellation of the deal for…
Thomas Hobson became known in history for what is called Hobson’s choice. A person has a free choice but can only chose one option. For the normal human, this sounds like no choice at all. But for Thomas Hobson, a livery stable owner in Cambridge England, he would offer customers…
by Kenneth Maxwell Brazil's principal newspaper had two stories in its Saturday issue concerning the competition for a new fleet of combat aircraft for the Brazilian air force and the continuing saga of the Super Tucano. In the "Folha de Sao Paulo," Clovis Rossi, writing from New Deli, where President…
by Ed Timperlake Almost like a soap opera with no end, the AT-6 saga continues. Chronicled on this website and on the Second Line of Defense Forum, we have looked at the continuing efforts to get a Light Attack Support (LAS) aircraft into the hands of the Afghans before it…
While military exports to the U.S. and elsewhere would help, they may not be pivotal, Curado said. Embraer now gets half of its defense sales from the domestic market and sees this slice growing to as much as 75 percent in the next few years, he said. “There’s an opportunity…
