Aircraft

A Hellenic Navy vessel and a Super Puma helicopter were involved in the search for a missing migrant off the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes over the weekend.

The man was reportedly on board a 30-meter boat along with another 63 undocumented migrants when they were spotted by a cargo ship. The man subsequently fell into the sea and went missing.

Russia is going to set up an air base in eastern Belarus and deploy Su-27 fighter jets there, Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Viktor Bondarev said on Wednesday.

The air base of the Russian and Belarusian Air Force will be established in Bobruysk in 2016, ITAR-TASS quoted Bondarev as saying during a visit to the facilities under construction.

Bulgaria's armed forces must soon reduce their dependence of Russian equipment and maintenance or face the risk of ‘catastrophic consequences,' Velizar Shalamanov has told the BBC.

Athens and Sofia are in talks about Bulgaria's possible purchase of second-hand F-16, a Greek media outlet argues.

Bulgaria must choose new fighter planes for its air force in the next six months, caretaker Defence Minister Velizar Shalamanov said during an international conference at Sofia's Defence Academy.

The country can choose among three offers - new Gripen fighters, used Eurofighter from Italy or used F16 from Portugal - and according to Shalamanov nothing is predetermined.

Alliance forces have started air combat exercises MACE XVI in Slovakia with 14 member states participating, the country's Defense Minister says.

As many as 660 personnel is expected to attend, and two non-NATO countries of the Partnership for Peace
program have also joined, Martina Belkovska was quoted by the Global Post as saying.

Bulgarian Air Force is participating in the NATO exercise Ramstein Guard-8 which takes place between September 22 - October 3 in the airspace of Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, the Defense Ministry in Sofia said in a statement.

The main objective of the exercise is to improve the preparation of forces and air defense tools of NATO member states during radio-frequency interference.

Bulgaria and Romania will begin a joint air policing exercise this month to practice measures against potential threat to strategic facilities from hijacked or suspicious aircraft.

The medium-range air-to-air missiles to be outfitted to Turkey’s F-16 and F-35 fighter jets will come with a price tag of $320 million A new generation of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) that Turkey will acquire from the United States will significantly upgrade and boost the country’s aerial firepower, according to Air Force officials.

A hypersonic weapon being developed by the U.S. military was destroyed four seconds after its launch from a test range in Alaska early on Aug. 25 after controllers detected a problem with the system, the Pentagon said.
   
The weapon is part of a program to create a missile that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within an hour of getting data and permission to launch.