NATO's Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) programme has got off the ground at last, with 13 nations having agreed to fund the acquisition and initial operation of five MP-RTIP-equipped Northrop Grumman Block 40 Global Hawks.

Signed on the sidelines of NATO's Chicago Summit, the AGS deal is worth $1.7 billion. That's a major investment to make during tough economic times, but covers much less than the originally planned mix of unmanned air vehicles and Airbus A321 surveillance aircraft first talked about getting on for a decade ago.

To be based at NAS Sigonella in Sicily, the AGS fleet (Global Hawk image supplied by Northrop Grumman) and its ground infrastructure will start being delivered during 2015, and should achieve full operational status in 2017.

But that's not the end of it; under current plans all 28 of the alliance's member states will provide financial support for long-term operations, while its two leading European players, the UK and France, will contribute other surveillance equipment. The pair are due to sign a memorandum of understanding in 2017 to determine what that will entail, but have previously agreed to pursue a collaborative medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV project; Telemos.

Another option for the UK would be to retain part of its Sentinel R1 fleet, which is currently threatened with early retirement following the departure of NATO forces from Afghanistan later this decade. It also has allocated funds for a "Crow's Nest" programme to replace the Royal Navy's current Sea King 7 airborne surveillance and control system helicopters (which have been used to great effect in Afghanistan and during last year's Libya operation), which would provide a more modest contribution.

US Marine Corps Col Arthur Tomassetti, 33^rd Fighter Wing vice-commander, had his first local area F-35B flight scrubbed yesterday due to weather. Today, however, the weather was good and he managed to log 1.5 hours on the jet--which returned home with zero discrepancies.

USAF Photo by Major Karen Roganov--these are from yesterday's attempt...

Most of the flight was out over the Gulf of Mexico and consisted of basic aircraft handling maneuvers such as turns, climbs, descents. But Tomassetti also did some formation flying with the two Boeing F/A-18s that are visiting from Marine Corps Reserve Squadron VMFA-112 based at Fort Worth, Texas. Returning to base, he did some touch and goes around the Eglin pattern.

As Tomassetti describes it, flying at Eglin without having to hit specific test points is far less stressful than a full-up test sortie would be at NAS Patuxent River or Edwards AFB.

Tomassetti says: "The difference between flying test flights in a test aircraft and flying the F-35B in Eglin airspace is not being under the continuous pressure of a test flight following very specific procedures. Today I really had the luxury of exploring the aircraft at my own pace, getting comfortable flying it around, and operating the displays. I was able to focus on what I wanted to focus on and my first time flying in the Eglin airspace.

I continue to be impressed how easy it is to fly the F-35 and how well it performs. For the last two years I only flew in the back seat of the F-16s at Eglin. Today's flight is one of the first steps in building VMFAT-501's capability to train F-35 pilots. I was happy to be able to contribute to that effort."

Maintainers are also impressed with how well the F-35 doing given its immaturity. Right now, Eglin relies upon contractor maintenance support, but military crews are learning fast how to take care of the new jets.  

"We were able to incorporate Lockheed Martin Contracted Logistics Support procedures accomplished with the Air Force F-35A to streamline operations for the first week of flying the F-35B variant," says USMC Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Smith, a VMFAT-501 maintainer.  "So we were scheduled to fly three days and the F-35B flew all three days on our first week of flying operations."

The Eurofighter Typhoon has replaced the last of the Italian Air Force's Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons in the air defense role, the consortium announced today. Italy currently has 62 Typhoons in its inventory dispersed between four squadrons at two different bases around the country.

The Italians have been operating 34 F-16A model jets, the bulk of which were Air Defense Variant aircraft, for the last 10 years. The aircraft were leased from US Air Force surplus stocks. Most of the surviving jets have been returned to the United States and have been placed into storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona. The program, which was dubbed Peace Caesar, was originally intended to run for five years.

The F-16s were intended to be used as a gap-filler during Italy's transition from the antiquated Lockheed F-104 to the new Typhoon.

Italy had originally intended to buy some 121 Typhoons, but in recent years cut that number back to 96 aircraft. Given that nation's present financial difficulties, it is difficult to predict if the current procurement numbers will hold.

Yesterday saw the confirmation of an impressive 102-aircraft programme to equip the Royal Saudi Air Force with a new-generation pilot training fleet from 2014.

Brokered under a new agreement between the Saudi Arabian and UK governments, the deal includes 22 BAE Systems Hawk advanced jet trainers and - as revealed exclusively by my colleague Stephen Trimble on Flightglobal a full week before the announcement - a whopping 55 Pilatus PC-21s. Ground-based training equipment, personnel training and some in-service support is also included.

BAE puts the value of the programme so far at around £1.6 billion ($2.5 billion), with some elements still remaining to be confirmed. This includes a planned 25-strong fleet of primary trainers which will support candidate screening and initial flying instruction. Figures coming out of Riyadh say the total spend is likely to be around the $3 billion mark.

Riyadh needs new trainers to support its fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons (it has received its first 24 of 72) and 84 new Boeing F-15SAs and 70 upgraded F-15s.

Going for the Hawk AJT/PC-21 combination makes sense - Saudi Arabia already has 45 legacy Hawk 65/65As (Saudi Hawks display team aircraft pictured above, just because it's a great shot - source BAE Systems) and 47 PC-9s in service. It's unclear whether it will replace only its oldest 29 Hawk 65s under this deal, but it certainly looks like it has embraced the concept of "downloading" touted by trainer manufacturers for the last several years. Students will certainly be able to learn a lot from flying the PC-21, as reported by our test pilot Peter Collins from his assessment ride in the type in 2008.

This has been an exceptional week for Pilatus, which also today confirmed its receipt of a contract to deliver 75 Swiss-built PC-7 MkII trainers to the Indian air force.

But perhaps there are follow-on opportunities for BAE in Saudi Arabia too: will Riyadh maybe later order another batch of Hawks (Mr Trimble take note; pronunciation "Hork", not "Hock") to replace its younger Mk65A airframes? And will the Saudi Hawks also be in line for new jets? I don't know the answer to either of those, but one thing's for sure: this is certainly one customer which still has real money to spend.

F-35 pilots from the initial cadre at Eglin AFB, Florida, have started their transition to the new aircraft. Initially, the 33^rd Fighter Wing had two test pilots who were putting the jet through its paces.

Recently, however, US Marine Corps Col Arthur Tomassetti, the unit's vice commander, has gotten checked out in the F-35 at the Navy's Pax River test facility. He was scheduled to fly his first local sortie today in an F-35B, but was forced to postpone due to deteriorating weather. He'll be giving it another shot in the morning.

Read the full story here

Tomassetti, as some of you might recall, was one of the original X-35 concept demonstrator test pilots. So he's seen the program right from day one basically.

But 33^rd FW is working on getting its first non-test pilot checked out on the F-35. Lt Col Lee Kloos, the commander of the 58^th Fighter Squadron, should be finished his six-ride transition course in the next week or two.

The veteran F-16 operational tester and Weapons School grad shared some of his impressions the F-35. The jet is powerful, stable and easy to fly.

"One of the things this aircraft usually takes hit on is the handling because it's not an F-22," Kloos says. "An F-22 is unique in its ability to maneuver and we'll never be that."

But compared to other aircraft, a combat-configured F-35 probably edges out other existing designs carrying a similar load-out. "When I'm downrange in Badguyland that's the configuration I need to have confidence in maneuvering, and that's where I think the F-35 starts to edge out an aircraft like the F-16," Kloos says.

A combat-configured F-16 is encumbered with weapons, external fuel tanks, and electronic countermeasures pods that sap the jet's performance. "You put all that on, I'll take the F-35 as far as handling characteristic and performance, that's not to mention the tactical capabilities and advancements in stealth," he says. "It's of course way beyond what the F-16 has currently."

The F-35's acceleration is "very comparable" to a Block 50 F-16. "Again, if you cleaned off an F-16 and wanted to turn and maintain Gs and [turn] rates, then I think a clean F-16 would certainly outperform a loaded F-35," Kloos says. "But if you compared them at combat loadings, the F-35 I think would probably outperform it."

The F-16, Kloos says, is a very capable aircraft in a within visual range engagement--especially in the lightly loaded air-to-air configuration used during training sorties at home station. "It's really good at performing in that kind of configuration," Kloos says. "But that's not a configuration that I've ever--I've been in a lot of different deployments--and those are the configurations I've never been in with weapons onboard."

Meanwhile, the F-35A continues to increase its sortie generation rate with another two-turn-two launch at Eglin earlier today. The second F-35A flight was cut somewhat short due to the same weather pattern that scrubbed Tomassetti's flight.

The US Air Force's 33^rd Fighter Wing and US Marine Corps flew their first Lockheed Martin F-35B local area flight at Eglin AFB, Florida, earlier today (22 May). But while today was the STOVL model's day, the wing's F-35A fleet is performing very well, a senior USAF official says.

The F-35A had already flown 47 sorties to date, but today they added to that total.

The unit "launched a two turn two of F-35As, another first," the senior official says. That makes "for a total of five sorties flown today."

I was hoping to find video footage of the flight but instead I found this clip from this Perpar3D simulation software.  Those are some very nice renderings. I'm sure it's great for training, but it would also make for an awesome video game.

Yesterday I wrote from Airbus Military's Getafe site near Madrid about a change of conversion plan for the UK's next (and fifth) A330 Voyager tanker/transport, and lo and behold, look what I saw taking to the air in Toulouse today, but the very same aircraft.

Airbus expects the "green" widebody to arrive in Getafe towards the end of this week, after a decision was taken to move its conversion from Cobham Aviation Services in the UK. The latter says that it is already "working at full capacity" on its first two airframes.

The need to safeguard the planned delivery schedule for the next aircraft in the UK's Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft deal (a private finance initiative contract) is such that a large penalty payment would have been incurred with any slip, hence the move to Spain. Much as the PFI route for delivering Voyager has been criticised on cost terms, a traditional procurement wouldn't have had this option available to it.

Airbus Military's A400M development aircraft "Grizzly 2" just took off from Toulouse, France on its way to performing the type's first unpaved runway trials.

The aircraft is now en route for Cottbus, Germany, where it is expected to stay through the rest of this week. First on the agenda will be making landings on a grass strip, which should provide some spectacular photo opportunities.

Confession time from me; I only packed a 70mm lens, so apologies for the dodgy image quality!

Our Airbus Military media visit also included a look around MSN3, but sadly no pictures were allowed onboard or in the cockpit. It has recently performed initial flights with underwing hose and drogue refuelling pods installed (now removed) and is also doing night-time work to prove use of the enhanced vision system.

Hawker Beechcraft T-6 Texas II primary trainers from the 33rd Flying Training Squadron are providing adversary support to the US Air Force's elite Weapons School--joining a long list of other types that have done so previously. The USAF Weapons School is where the service takes its best instructor pilots and molds them into weapons and tactics officers in their respective airframes. Those few aviators who graduate return to their parent unit to become their chief instructor pilot and tactical guru. The best of those graduates are eventually hand-picked to return to the school as instructor pilots. The addition of the relatively low performance turboprop T-6 to the onslaught of "Red Air" adversaries--which could include everything from F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s to F-22s replicating threats--broadens the scope of challenges the students have to deal with. That in turn will help the combat air forces when those students graduate to become Weapons officers.

Here are two T-6s from the 33rd FTS that are participating as adversaries during the WIC course. USAF Photo

This is a Weapons School F-22 from the 433rd Weapons Squadron. USAF Photo

The USAF has more here

The Pentagon has released its new assessment of the Chinese military. In terms of aircraft development, China is developing the Chengdu J-20, it is bolstering its long range strike capability, airborne command and control capabilities, and it's interested in developing unmanned aircraft. The country is also set to have its first aircraft carrier in service, but it won't have a full air wing for some time yet...

Here is the full article

Meanwhile, the China's second J-20 has flown. Here is a video of that... It's pretty damn long (and not particularly riveting).

Also, in Congress, the House of Representatives has passed a measure requiring the Obama Administration to sell Taiwan at least 66 new F-16 fighters.

Read about it here