A US Air Force web site appears to confirm the blockbuster Boeing F-15SA sale to Saudi Arabia. [UPDATE: Within two hours of my blog post, the USAF removed the image from the web site.]

The picture shown above was released to a USAF web site at 3:31pm on 28 December. That means the image appeared several hours before the Associated Press reported the deal would be announced soon by the Obama Administration. So far, the White House has not formally announced the order has been signed by the Saudi government.

Negotiations over the deal have dragged on for more than a year. The US government notified Congress in October last year that the Saudis had requested a possible $30 billion F-15 order. It would include 84 new F-15SAs with active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and AESA installations on the Saudi air force's 70 F-15SAs. But a deal was not signed for more than a year. In October, Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney assured market analysts that a deal could be imminent, explaining without elaborating that the death of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul-Aziz could accelerate the process.

Seth Kettleman makes a living buying and selling surplus aircraft machinery on the web. In late November, a strange item popped up on GovDeals.com: an A-12 Avenger II fighter canopy. Kettleman had never heard of the A-12, but he was intrigued so he started Googling. He read that the highly classified A-12 had been canceled in 1991. He also read that the A-12 was canceled before McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics assembled the first aircraft.

Kettleman decided it was worth a gamble, and won an online auction with a $2,300 bid.

After examining the merchandise, Kettleman decided it was the real thing. To his mind, Kettleman now owned the only known artifact of the A-12 programme. Sure, there is a wooden mock-up languishing on the back-lot of a military airport in Forth Worth, Texas, but this canopy may be the real thing. Kettleman has seen small panels of the Lockheed SR-71 sell for more than $500,000 in online auctions. But he doesn't own a small panel. He owns an entire canopy of the A-12 (maybe). [UPDATE: Kettleman says: "The canopy has now been verified as authentic. It was a production unit for the A-12 Avenger II manufactured by McAir (Division of McDonnell Douglas). The canopy must have a hundred or so individual serial numbers and manufacturing data marked on it. These numbers and individual pieces have been verified as authentic parts from the program."

Kettleman's canopy is now for sale on eBay for $620,238. (Note: If you are still looking for our Christmas present, this would be really perfect. Just saying.)

That, of course, assumes Kettleman owns the real thing. And that's where the story gets complicated.

GovDeals told us that the canopy was posted by the aviation department of Purdue University. That's where the canopy has been for more than 15 years. Nobody in Purdue's aviation department knows how it got there. The canopy didn't even belong to the aeronautical engineering department, which operates research wind tunnels. The aviation department teaches students how to become pilots, not design canopies for stealthy fighter jets. One day it just showed up in the back of the hangar, and nobody touched it for more than 15 years. A couple months ago, the department decided to get rid of it, a Purdue spokesman said. They thought about selling it for scrap worth about $700, but decided it may be worth more at auction on the relatively obscure GovDeals site.

Litigation for the A-12 cancellation likely made a lot of lawyers very rich. But nobody will make a better return on the A-12 than Kettleman, if he finds a buyer. He may never snag a $620,000 offer, but he will surely get a lot more than $2,300.

The US Air Force has ended the mystery of what happened to the Lockheed Martin F-22 that crashed on 16 November 2010.

According to the newly-released accident investigation board report, the cause wasn't the onboard oxygen generation system (OBOGS), although it did stop working. Instead, the pilot apparently struggled to activate the back-up oxygen system so much he inadvertently flipped the F-22 over into a steep dive while contorting his body to pull the tiny ring tucked into the side of his ejection seat.

F-22 oxygen system malfunctioned moments before crash

By:   Stephen Trimble Washington DC

A US Air Force report says the regular oxygen system stopped working before a fatal Lockheed Martin F-22 crash in Alaska last November.

The accident investigation board still blames the accident on the pilot, Captain Jeffrey Haney, who failed to activate an emergency oxygen supply that could have saved his life and the aircraft.

But the failure of an engine bleed air system that feeds the Honeywell onboard oxygen generation system (OBOGS) in the moments before the crash is a new twist in the evolving story.

[Click on the headline to ready the full story.]

There are now four active fighter assembly lines in the US, one less than a few hours ago.

Lockheed Martin confirms that F-22 tail number 4195 rolled off the assembly line earlier this morning. The last of the 185 operational F-22s has now moved to the flight line, with final delivery to the US Air Force early in the second quarter.

The closure of the F-22 assembly line caps a painful year for the programme. In January, the investigation of a mysterious F-22 crash last November in Alaska was just beginning. Pacific Air Forces Command still has not released the report by the accident investigation board. The F-22 was withheld from operations in Libya. Concerns about onboard oxygen generating system also prompted two fleet-wide groundings during the year, and the cause of the problem is still unknown.

Lockheed rolled out F-22 tail number 4001 in April 1997, the first of nine flight test aircraft. Development delays and cost overruns forced the USAF to reduce the original 750-aircraft programme to about 330 by 2000. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumseld trimmed the final number in 2006 to 187, and two aircraft have since been lost to crashes.

(Photo by Lockheed Martin)

A damaging report on the F-35 concurrency strategy is in the news this morning. Flightglobal, Ares and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have the story, and each account is based on the same leaked Pentagon report.

Read the full 20-page report by clicking here: F35 concurrency report.pdf

The report takes aim at the amount of concurrency risk in the F-35 programme. Concurrency risk measures the downside on cost of producing aircraft before completing all development. Nearly all modern commercial and military aviation programmes rely on some overlap in the development and production phases, but the F-35 acquisition plan takes this to a whole new level, according to the report. The F-35 concurrency strategy was based on certain assumptions about the accuracy of modern design tools that have proved invalid, the report says.

As a result, the Department of Defense should scrap the current acquisition plan based on automatic, yearly production increases, and allow the rate to increase as tests develop.

The report also contains the most comprehensive look at all of the ongoing and likely future design problems with the F-35 programme. None of the problems are categorised in the report as significant enough to merit halting production.

The US Air Force in Afghanistan has given itself an early Christmas present -- a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator C Avenger.

The jet-powered, stealthy unmanned air system (UAS) with -- and this is important -- an internal weapons bay is going to Afghanistan.

The Aeronautical Systems Center on 9 December released a document justifying why the service needs to award a sole-source contract to General Atomics for a Predator C to deploy to Operation Enduring Freedom as a test aircraft.

With the Avenger, the USAF's "classified customer" will have an aircraft that can drop 900kg (2,000lb) bombs. (Note to the underground residents of Natanz and Qoms: GBU-24 penetrator bombs weigh about 900kg. Just, um, FYI.)

By the way, don't think the Predator C is intended to replace the hostage Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel. The 9 December notice says the USAF started the process of buying the Predator C on 5 July.

Iran Press TV reports this evening:

Iran has announced that it intends to carry out reverse engineering on the captured RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft, which is also known as the Beast of Kandahar, and is similar in design to a US Air Force B-2 stealth bomber.

We have a few thoughts for our friends in Iran.

First: You're supposed to be ashamed about the whole reverse engineering thing. Yes, it's true  former Nazi rocket scientists got US astronauts on the moon, but at least NASA had the decency to leave that part out of the press release.

Second: The RQ-170 and the B-2 are both lifting bodies, but that's probably where the similarities end. As far as lifting bodies go, you might have learned more by Googling "horton brothers" and "northrop yb-49".

Third: What the heck happened to the landing gear?

Fourth: If you figure out where the RQ-170's intelligence-gathering sensor is, please tell us. It's been driving us crazy, and all your videos and pictures just make it more frustrating.

Five: Admit it. Even you didn't realize the RQ-170 is that small.

Six: Ran out of gas? Yeah, even we think that's hilarious.

At LIMA 2011 air show in Malaysia, Dassault released a set of imagery from an apparent engagement between the Rafale and the Lockheed Martin F-22. One of the images have been released before, and it came from the sort-of-friendly fighter jet show-down in November 2009 at Al Dhafra AB, United Arab Emirates.

The imagery was released as part of a plug for the Rafale's infrared search and track sensor, called the Thales front sector optronics system. 

These are desperate times for Dassault's fighter programme. The manufacturing house that produced the Mirage and Rafale fighter series has lost a series of competitions, including most recently in Switzerland. Defense Minister Gerard Longuet warned yesterday that the Rafale line will be closed in the absence of export orders. That may seem like merely stating the obvious, but the timing of Longuet's statement makes it a warning. India is rumoured to be set to announce tomorrow the outcome of the competition for the medium multi-rote combat aircraft (MMRCA), with only the Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon still in the running. 

Zach Rosenberg, Flightglobal's UAV and space editor, has found something very interesting in the latest release of satellite imagery posted on Google Maps last month.

On the ramp of the Yucca airstrip in Nevada -- a site officially owned by the Energy Department and unofficially suspected of being a secret, CIA UAV base -- is what appears to be an MQ-1 Predator or MQ-9 Reaper. You can spot it yourself. Go to Google Maps, search for Yucca Lake, Nevada, and zoom in on the concrete airstrip next to the dry lake bed.

As Zach reports, secret UAV bases operated by the CIA seem to be popping up everywhere, and now we have some evidence of a key operating base inside the US.

Score another point for Google Earth

What was the joke around the office almost the instant after Iran announced possession of an RQ-170 Sentinel?

"Look for the RQ-170 copy at the Zhuhai [air show] next year."

If you'll forgive the streak of cynicism, it seemed at the time like a fair swipe at the reverse-engineering skills and loose intellectual property safeguards in both Iran and China.

On the other hand, it may not be an entirely fair assessment of China's need to copy the RQ-170's technology. As this picture posted on the sinodefence forum yesterday reveals, China has been working hard to develop their own stealthy unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).

Could this be the smoking electron in the alleged unmanned air vehicle (UAV) incident over Iran?

The original reports that Iran "shot down" a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel appear to be misleading. Iranian news agency reports credited the army's electronic warfare unit with bringing down the UAV, but apparently in a way that limited the amount of damage on landing or impact.

Only six weeks ago, Russia announced delivering the Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system (shown above) to Iran. Most Russian weapons exports to Iran are blocked, including the proposed transfer of the S-300 surface to air missile system. But there is a key difference between a SAM battery and a jamming system. The S-300 can vastly complicate a strike on an Iranian nuclear site at Natanz or Qoms. A jamming system, such as the Avtobaza, is unlikely to be used to defend such a site because it could interfere with the radar of the S-300 or the Tor-M1 SAM battery.

The Avtobaza, moreover, is designed to jam side-looking and fire control radars on aircraft and manipulate the guidance and control systems of incoming enemy missiles. It would be the perfect tool to target and perhaps infiltrate the communications link that allows a UAV to be controlled from a remote location.

The incident, of course, has not been confirmed with visual evidence of the allegedly captured RQ-170. Unlike 50 years ago, when the Soviet Union shot down the Lockheed U-2, the Iranians will not be able to produce a captured Francis Gary Powers. In 1961, the Soviets appeared to destroy their credibility by releasing imagery of the wreckage of the wrong aircraft -- a luckless MiG possibly shot down by mistake in the fusillade aimed at Powers' U-2. When the Soviets produced Powers, who survived and was captured, the world finally had undeniable proof.

So there is no script in the propaganda textbook for these kinds of incidents. They tend to evolve in their own way. Iran may never produce evidence to back up their claims, or they might later today. 

Interestingly, the International Security Assistance Force has made no effort to deny Iran's claims. Instead, the NATO headquarters in Kabul issued a statement acknowledging the loss of one of their UAVs over western Afghanistan last week. The statement also suggested the Iranians may have simply found the misplaced UAV for them. It may be important that NATO officials did not deny Iran's claims that the UAV was the RQ-170, which is known to operate from Kandahar where it was originally spotted.

The official Iran Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) is reporting that national military forces have shot down a US Lockheed Martin RQ-170 stealth unmanned air system. The aircraft sustained "little damage" and is in the possession of the Iranian military, IRNA reports.

Iranian news agency claims always have to be taken with some degree of scepticism.

The credibility of the online version of the IRNA article is not helped by the accompanying photo. The US Air Force has never released an official picture of the RQ-170, but we can be sure the the UAV in the IRNA article is not it. The IRNA photo instead is a stock image of the BAE Systems Raven delta wing demonstrator, an aircraft that was retired more than seven years ago. 

It is also hard to understand how it is possible to shoot down a UAV and only cause a "little damage".

Stay tuned as the story develops ...

UPDATE 1: Iran Press TV adds a new wrinkle to the story.

"The informed source said on Sunday that Iran Army's electronic warfare unit successfully targeted the American-built RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft after it crossed into Iranian airspace over the border with neighboring Afghanistan."

If confirmed, this suggests the RQ-170 wasn't shot down by fighters or ground-based air defence systems, which may explain the lack of damage.

Once again, Iran so far has produced no visual evidence to back up its claims, so we'll have to wait for photos. Incidentally, the online Press TV article also publishes the wrong photo of the RQ-170. Their image actually shows the Dassault AVE-D demonstrator.

UPDATE 2: It's important to remember that Iran has claimed UAV kills before, although never about the RQ-170. In January, Iran claimed to shoot down two UAVs, and then claimed another UAV kill in July. Iran never provided pictures or videos to back up its claims.

UPDATE 3: The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has released a statement that US forces lost control of a UAV late last week in western Afghanistan, which shares a border with Iran. The ISAF statement apparently does not identify the lost UAV, but it also doesn't deny Iranian reports that it was the RQ-170.

UPDATE 4: Here's the full ISAF statement, via IRNA via DPA.

'The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to which the Iranians are referring may be a US reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week,' NATO said.

'The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status,' it added. 

Lockheed Martin has quietly launched two new variants of the 57-year-old (and counting!) C-130 Hercules. The C-130XJ and the C-130NG both appeared in a presentation by Ralph Heath, executive vice president of Lockheed's Aeronautics division, on 1 December at the Credit Suisse aerospace and defense conference in New York.

Few details of both configurations have been made available so far. The C-130XJ is aimed at the export market, and is designed to make the aircraft affordable to a broader set of foreign buyers, Heath said. The "X" in the designation stands for "expandable", Heath added, and buyers can upgrade to the C-130J's full capability.

It appears the C-130NG, which includes winglets and a redesigned nose and tail, will be offered after 2020 to replace the C-130H fleet. See a comparison between the old and new versions of the C-130J and C-130NG below.

Nearly 60 years has passed since Lockheed designer Willis Hawkins first unveiled the C-130 design. His legendary boss, Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, instantly hated the aircraft, warning Lockheed chief engineer Hal Hibbard the C-130 would "ruin" the company. Johnson was right about many things, such as his designs for the U-2 and SR-71, but he was completely wrong about the C-130. Rather than ruining the company, the C-130 series will be produced for at least 65 years, and possibly longer.

In the last several years, the C-130's reign over the tactical airlift market has been challenged like never before. The Airbus Military A400M and Kawasaki C-2 offer a larger platform as airlift demand increases, although the latter is forbidden to be sold outside of Japan. Meanwhile, the Embraer KC-390 and the Antonov An-178 are designed to compete directly against the C-130, albeit with a jet-powered aircraft.

To set the record straight, Lockheed Martin has not received a new $7.4 billion contract to fund upgrades for the F-22. However, a variety of news outlets, including Reuters and a Time magazine blog, as well financial analysts can be excused for getting the facts confused. They were simply reporting the verbatim text of an inaccurate Department of Defense contract announcement on 18 November.

But the truth is far more interesting.

Reuters accurately clarified that the contract is merely an increase in the cost ceiling of a contract awarded 10 years ago, but that's not quite the whole story either.

In reality, the contract award reveals a potential $1.4 billion cost increase as part of an overall, 20-year plan now worth up to $23.4 billion to continue funding F-22 upgrades. The extra money was necessary to pay Lockheed to change the F-22's advanced tactical data link, accelerate the production line shutdown by four years, launch two structural upgrade programmes and fund unexpected costs of upgrading F-22s with reliability and maintainability improvements.

It is the first -- and last -- cost ceiling increase for a potential $6 billion contract awarded to Lockheed in 2002 called the raptor enhancement development and integration (REDI).

Meanwhile, the USAF and Lockheed are continuing to negotiate a follow-on contract called REDI II, which will pay for upgrades and new development work over the next decade. The potential value of the REDI II contract is $16 billion. The total value of REDI and REDI II is $23.4 billion.