China

Japan filed a strong diplomatic protest against China following two separate radar targeting incidents involving military aircraft over international waters southeast of Okinawa on December 6, 2025. According to Japan’s Ministry of Defense, Chinese Navy J-15 fighters launched from the aircraft carrier Liaoning intermittently illuminated Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15 fighters with fire-control radar during the encounters. The first incident occurred between 16:32 and 16:35 local time, when a People’s Liberation Army Navy J-15 directed radar emissions toward an F-15 conducting routine airspace monitoring and interception duties. A second encounter followed between 18:37 and 19:08, involving a different JASDF F-15 responding to continued Chinese flight operations in the area.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took center stage at California’s Reagan National Defense Forum to solidify the Trump administration’s strategic pivot, endorsing the recently released Natio...

The U.S. Navy faces an increasingly urgent modernization challenge that threatens American naval aviation dominance in the Pacific. Admiral James Kilby, acting Chief of Naval Operations, made the Navy’s position unmistakably clear during June testimony: “We need F/A-XX in the United States Navy. We’re talking about a fight in the Pacific.” Yet despite this clarity, Pentagon leadership has imposed successive delays on the F/A-XX program, citing various justifications from concerns about carrier survivability to questions about manned versus unmanned aviation.

China’s aerospace industry is making a strategic push into the small turboprop market with the development of the AEP20, a lightweight engine designed to challenge the dominance of piston engines in light aircraft and unmanned systems. Developed by Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) at its Hunan Aviation Powerplant Research Institute in Zhuzhou, the engine represents a significant engineering achievement aimed at capturing growing demand in China’s rapidly expanding aviation sectors.