Naftaly Mwaniki

PARIS — The companies behind the Eurofighter, Europe’s most prevalent homegrown combat jet, have set new growth targets that prize a near-term fleet buildup over more distant breakthroughs expected from sixth-generation programs like the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS.
The plan envisions an annual Eurofighter production boost from 14 planes now to 20 copies within 36 months, eying 30 at some point after that, said Jorge Tamarit Degenhardt, CEO of a consortium combining Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems.
Degenhardt told reporters at the Paris Air Show he expects the export business to grow, with sales campaigns humming in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Austria and Portugal. That is in addition to requests for planes and upgrades from the core users Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
“We didn’t max out yet,” Degenhardt said, referring to company plans to make more jets, faster.
The idea of producing “combat mass” for Europe, as the CE..

PARIS — Airbus is considering raising production of its A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft in response to “very high” demand from existing clients and potential new buyers, the company said at the Paris Air Show on Tuesday.
“With the signals we’re getting from the customers, we are studying a rate increase of the MRTT,” said Jean-Brice Dumont, head of air power at Airbus, in a press conference here. “When I say study, it’s more than studying.”
Airbus currently produces between four and five A330 MRTT aircraft a year, and “we would have to significantly increase it,” Dumont said. “The demand signal on the tankers is very high.”
Europe faces critical capability shortfalls in air-to-air refueling, according to the European Defence Agency. Airbus had delivered 36 A330 MRTT aircraft to European customers by the end of April, with another six on order, compared to the United States operating a tanker fleet o..

PARIS — The search aperture for drone technology in the tri-national GCAP program remains wide open for Italy, with considerations including a potential conversion of M-345 or M-346 Leonardo trainer jets for the role, according to company CEO Roberto Cingolani.
Those homemade options are in addition to the drone lineup from new joint venture partner Baykar, whose jet-powered Kizilelma aircraft could be closest to what engineers are seeking under the British-Italian-Japanese program, Cingolani told reporters at the Paris Air Show.
“To be honest, we have the 345 and the 346,” he said, referring to the company’s trainer and light fighter plane variants. “We could modify those to be unmanned.”
He added: “But there are also big drones produced by Baykar that could be modified. In that case you have the unmanned, but you have to transform it into a real airplane. We start from a real airplane, transformed into an unmanned one.”
Cingolani’..

PARIS — Airbus Helicopters is looking to translate success in Poland selling rotorcraft for civilian and para-public markets into military orders, offering the H145M as a versatile option for light attack and training missions, the company’s head of sales for Eastern Europe said.
The twin-engine H145 can serve as an advanced training platform, bridging the gap to heavier helicopters acquired by Poland such as the Apache, while being agile and large enough to provide a multi-role capability, Ludovic Boistot, Airbus Helicopters vice president of sales Eastern Europe and CIS, told Defense News in an interview last week ahead of the Paris Air show.
“We are a key partner to Poland, but in the civil and para-public sectors,” Boistot said. “We are trying to demonstrate that Airbus Helicopters is a good partner, also for defense.”
The bid to sell the H145 light utility helicopter comes more than eight years after Poland scrapped a purchase of Airbus H225M ta..

PARIS — A top Boeing executive said the company is proceeding with work on a contract to build two new Air Force One jets amid a pending deal by President Donald Trump to accept a donated jet for the mission from Qatar.
Stephen Parker, Boeing’s interim president and chief executive officer, told reporters at the Paris Air Show there had been “no impact at all” on the firm’s assignment of transforming a pair of 747-8 aircraft into VC-25B Air Force One planes.
At a press conference, Parker largely managed to sidestep the hot potato that is the controversial Qatari gift to Trump, saying Boeing was instead “laser focused” on achieving the requisite safety and other certifications of the two aircraft for which the company is on the hook.
Trump’s surprise focus on using a Qatari-donated jet for the presidential transport aircraft has sparked multiple controversies, including concerns about the feasibility of quickly adapting it for presidential use, its co..

PARIS — European NATO countries are eyeing drones for airborne electromagnetic-warfare operations including radar jamming, a skill many of the continent’s air forces are currently lacking.
Italy’s Leonardo says between ten and twenty NATO countries have expressed interest in a capability similar to the StormShroud radar-jammer drone it provided to the U.K.
Leonardo has taken a lead in radar-jamming drones with StormShroud, built around the company’s BriteStorm jammer on an unmanned aerial system from Portugal’s Tekever. U.S., European and Israeli rivals will be presenting some of their airborne electronic warfare offerings at the Paris Air Show starting here on Monday.
Europe largely depends on the U.S. for airborne electromagnetic warfare, a gap some countries are looking to address amid uncertainty about American commitment to the continent. Meanwhile, an aggressive Russia has been expanding capabilities based on its experience in Ukraine, where drones are omni-pres..

ROME — The Italian Air Force has formally entered into service a new basic jet trainer, the Leonardo M-345, which will operate alongside the firm’s better known M-346 advanced trainer.
The M-345 entered service on Thursday at a ceremony at the Air Force’s 61st Wing at Galatina air base in southern Italy, where it will replace the long serving MB-339.
The Air Force said 18 aircraft have been ordered to date, with seven delivered and four involved in operational test and evaluation activities which wrapped up in March.
Four instructors are now trained, the Air Force said.
The jet encompasses phases 2 and 3 of flight training before pilots shift to flying the M-346 in phase 4.
“With the M-345 now integrated into the armed force’s training syllabus which already features the M-346 for the more advanced phases of training, the Italian Air Force will boast the most modern fixed-wing military training system in Europe,” said Stefano Bortoli, Leonardo Aerona..

The Air Force would cut its F-35A purchase for fiscal 2026 roughly in half under the White House’s draft defense budget.
The service typically buys about four dozen Joint Strike Fighters each year, with some years’ purchases topping 60. But a budget document obtained by Defense News shows the service would procure 24 F-35s next year, for a cost of nearly $4 billion.
That is less than the 44 F-35s, costing $4.8 billion, the Air Force is on track to buy this year, and the 51 jets worth $5.5 billion the service bought in 2024.
And while the number of jets the Air Force plans to buy would drop by 45% between 2025 and 2026, the savings would lag far behind. The cost of the F-35 purchases in 2026 would drop less than 18% over the 2025 cost, suggesting economies of scale would suffer from the reduced buy.
The slow emergence of budget documents and administration spending plans in this way is highly unusual, even for an administration in its first months. Proposed budgets for the u..

The Air Force has tested a new variation of its ship-killing Quicksink guided bomb to expand its options for taking out enemy vessels in a future war.
In a June 4 statement, the service said it dropped a 500-pound version of Quicksink, made from a GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber at Eglin Air Force Base’s Gulf Test Range off the coast of Florida. Previous Quicksink tests were conducted with 2,000-pound bombs.
Quicksink is the Air Force Research Laboratory’s effort to strengthen its ability to take out enemy ships. This capability would be particularly important in the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan, which would likely involve grueling fighting in the Pacific Ocean and require U.S. forces to destroy Chinese ships.
Previous tests used modified GBU-31 JDAMs to destroy target vessels. Those JDAMs are guided by GPS and use fins to steer towards the target as they fall.
AFRL previously said that it redesigned the JDAM&rsqu..

COLOGNE, Germany — Swedish warplane maker Saab and Germany-based Helsing sent a Gripen-E combat jet aloft in late May powered by an artificial-intelligence agent that took control of long-range flight maneuvers from the human pilot, the companies announced.
The series of three test flights above the Baltic Sea constitutes the first time that an AI application was in charge of real-world maneuvering, recommending missile shots at a Gripen training aircraft from a distance and evading disadvantageous flight paths that could turn dicey in a closer dogfight, executives told reporters in a June 10 call.
The integration of of Helsing’s Centaur AI pilot into the Gripen took merely six months and was made possible by the jet’s avionics architecture, which separates hardware and software elements for rapid integration of third-party capabilities, said Johan Segertoft, head of Saab’s Gripen business unit.
The combination of Gripen-E with Centaur is market-ready, according..