New in brief: Central and North Asia

Millennium aircraft to debut 

For the first time, a Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, is set to receive the KC-390 Millennium and A-29 Super Tucano aircraft from a Brazilian aerospace company, Embraer, according to a TheDefenecPost report in Februray. 

With a 35-metre tanker, KC-390 Millennium has twin IAE V2500-E5 turbofan engines that can load up to 23,000 kilograms of fuel and is Embraer’s proven tactical airlifter. On the other hand, the A-29 Super Tucano aircraft has a top speed of 590 kilometres per hour and can give close air surveillance and support. The plane is operable from unpaved runways, and can be armed with machine guns, cannons, precision-guided bombs, and missiles, depending on mission objectives.

Uzbekistan conducts live-fire exercise

Uzbekistan’s Armed Forces conducted a live-fire defence exercise in February involving Chinese and Russian air defence systems. 

The training employed Chinese-supplied long, medium and short-range surface-to-air-missile systems, including FD-2000B, KS-1C, FM-90, and Russian S-125 Neva/Pechora. 

The Chinese launchers can aid the army with elevation of the long-range interceptions, radar cueing integration across engagement zones and identification of unmanned systems.

The integration of Chinese radar-guided interceptors with Russian radio-command legacy systems indicates country’s strategic mechanism aimed at upgrading the battlespace.

Joint drill on locating aerial targets

Kazakhstan and Russia held a joint air-defence training under the Unified Regional Air Defense System, a bilateral military framework designed to protect shared airspace, from February 20 to March 10, according to the Kazakh media citing press service of the ministry of defence. The exercise focused on tracking and detecting aerial targets, intercepting aircraft that violate airspace, and making them land at designated airfields.

Advanced UAVs 

Kazakhstan is set to acquire the G2 and G3 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms from Israel-based UAV manufacturer, Aero-Sentinel. The announcement was made by the company confirming its partnership with the German firm 2LNK GmbH to distribute the operational UAV platforms to Kazakhstan. 

These are advanced UAV systems which operate with reduced detection risks and provide border monitoring, and sensitive reconnaissance tasks, according to the Defence Blog. 

Rotary-wing hexacopter 

Enhancing airspace security, Serbia has introduced the IKA-ROCKET drone system, an advanced configuration of its IKA-20-M multirotor combat drone, in April. 

Developed by indigenous aerospace company, Pink Research and Development Center (PR-DC), the rotary-wing hexacopter can fire three standard 57mm aircraft rockets during both hover and forward flight, which makes it the world’s first military-certified drone with such defence ability, according to the PR-DC. The platform can sustain up to 30 minutes and carry aerial bombs with precise responses compared to the traditional artillery.