It was a year ago that Aero-News last looked at the question of
the US Army's need for intra-theater airlift, and its proposal to
buy a commercial off-the-shelf aircraft for what it calls the
"Future Cargo Aircraft" requirement. The latest developments of
this proposal include a change to a joint USAF-USA requirement and
a re-opening of the contract, which had been narrowed to the Alenia
C-27J (below) or the EADS C-295, to all comers.
Airmen from Yokota Air Base, Japan, and Andersen Air Base, Guam,
in the Philippines as part of an annual bilateral exercise, are
providing real-world humanitarian assistance after mudslides
engulfed a village and 1,800 people, Feb. 17.
We wish we'd had more notification of this. But here's the deal:
if you're a military-trained parachutist, you still have one day to
sign up to go jump in Chile with the International Airborne
Society. The deadline's February 20th, and honestly, we got the
email at 2050 on February 18th (that's 8:50 PM to all you civilian
"legs" out there).
NAVAIR’s P-8A Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft Team has
officially entered its critical design phase. Before PDR could be
officially “closed”, the team had to resolve only nine
action items following the program’s Preliminary Design
Review (PDR) in November.