Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force (4)
RAF Land Rover overturns in crash
A MILITARY 4x4 overturned on an Aberdeenshire road.
The RAF Lossiemouth military Land Rover Defender landed on its roof in the crash on the outskirts of Aberdeen.
The accident happened on an unclassified route, known locally as the Wogel Road, between Westhill and Blackburn.
The 4x4 was thought to have struck the side of the Aberdeenshire road before overturning and slowly sliding down the roadway with the driver trapped inside.
The crash happened in Aberdeenshire at 2pm yesterday.
Grampian Police, who were called to the scene, said the man managed to get out of RAF Lossiemouth 4x4 before they arrived at the scene in Aberdeenshire.
An RAF spokesman confirmed the Land Rover in the crash was a military vehicle and that one of their servicemen was inside.
source: Evening express.co.uk
RAF award for Bridgwater squadron leader
BRIDGWATER man Christopher Sendell is pictured here receiving a crest from the Countess of Wessex, Sophie Rhys-Jones.
Christopher, squadron leader at RAF Wittering and a former Chilton Trinity Technology College pupil, was handed the framed coat of arms with the Queen's signature at a recent ceremony.
Christopher, who is ranked as a commanding officer in the No 1
Expeditionary Logistics Squadron, was honoured to receive the crest
from the countess, the honorary air commodore for RAF Wittering.
source thewestcountry.co.uk
From Ground Force to Air Force
Former Marine takes to the skies to become RAF fighter jet ace over Afghanistan.
From ground force to Air Force, ex-Royal Marine, Flight Lieutenant Phil Rossiter has been playing a vital role in the fight against Improvised Explosive Devices and all from 40,000feet above Afghanistan.
Flt Lt Phil Rossiter, 29, from 14 Squadron, based at Royal Air Force Lossiemouth, Scotland, flies a state of the art tornado G4. He is on his first operational tour as an RAF officer. However, having served at Bagram as a former Royal Marine he is no stranger to being out on the ground in Afghanistan,
”I joined the Royal Marines for the physical and mental challenges, but after several years of service I decided I wanted to be tested in a totally different environment. The Royal Air Force offered me this challenge and I joined in 2003.
Rise of the robot warplanes
The Ministry of
Defence's London headquarters yesterday, Thursday 30 July 2009, hosted
an exhibition of the latest Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) giving military
and civilian staff a chance to gather their own intelligence on the
future of military aviation. Report by Shell Daruwala.
Simultaneously, in the skies over Afghanistan, battlefield
commanders' need for high quality round-the-clock real-time aerial
intelligence is driving forward the development of a new breed of
aircraft - the Unmanned Air Systems; autonomous robot planes which many
believe could replace manned combat aircraft altogether within a
generation. Cambridge and Harvard alumnus Quentin Davies, Minister for Defence
Equipment and Support, is clear about where he lies on the subject: "My own working assumption is that although we certainly need the
manned combat aircraft, and are investing in some very good ones at the
moment; we hope to sign the contract for the third phase of Typhoon
[today] and, as you know, we are purchasing the first three JSF [Joint
Strike Fighter] aircraft to take part in the training, testing and
evaluation phase of that, and that will take us through to the 2030s,
but beyond that I think the name of the game will be UAVs [Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles]," he said. Surrounded by display stands with life-sized
and scale models of a futuristic squadron of exotically-named aircraft
(Hermes, Zephyr, Mantis, Taranis, HERTI...) that appear to have come
straight from the set of a sci-fi movie, it is difficult to ground
yourself in the reality that some of these systems are already proving
their worth in theatre. Lockheed Martin's Desert Hawk III, operated by the Royal Artillery,
is a relatively low-cost, hand-launched mini-UAS used for short-range,
low-altitude intelligence-gathering, surveillance, target acquisition
and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capable of being operated day or night from
a portable ground control station.
Last week marked the centenary of aviation
pioneer Louis Bleriot's 1909 first powered flight across the English
Channel. Today, the Ministry of Defence has signed a contract for the
third phase of Typhoon - an aircraft so advanced that it takes a hugely
complex suite of on-board computers just to keep it in the sky.