I Get A Flypast Every Morning

      On the day of the London flypast 9 July 2018 I was having a flypast of my own, to be honest a fairly regular occurrence, as I live in the Lake District, a low-flying training run for the RAF. I've long given up worrying about a Hercules Transport colliding with my Gable End! Don't know if they fly the F-35 through here, I keep hearing a screech of engines in the sky and by the time I look up the planes are gone. On that particular day I was surprised to see one of these, can't say I'd seen such a craft before,
      In the London Flypast, they were using only and all aircraft currently in service with the RAF and not the one above, so could only assume the aircraft I saw was the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey or some variant. Which has the traditional or vertical take-off capabilities and may well have been doing some training for President Trump's visit to the UK two days later on 11 July.
      The said aircraft could possibly have been a CV-22 as I noted the propellers were in the "normal" horizontal flight position. Something which is favoured by the USAF with extra fuel tanks for increased range missions and special operations. 

New Frigates for the Australian Navy

      This is the Type 26 Frigate, which will be the new generation of fighting ships entering service with the Royal Austrailian Navy. The order is for nine ships, which will be built in Australia, but using a design engineered by BAE Systems, ahead of other potential European designs.
      The new ships will give the Australian Government a cutting-edge force to act as deterrent and security of her coastline and are seen as a suitable replacement for the "Anzac" group of frigates.
     The ships will be built at the Government's yard in Adelaide by ASC shipbuilding and is expected to create around 4000 jobs in Australia. Although there shouldn't be many extra jobs in the UK there will be a large increase in exports and military equipment supply. And also scope for future orders with other nations.
      The military capabilities of the Type 26 have already been discussed in a previous article, but the ships are designed for anti-submarine and air-defence activity.
      The Royal Navy currently has eight of the Frigates on order, being built on the Clyde and are expected to begin entering service sometime in the 2020's.