The Indian Air Force (IAF) will commission its first four Rafael fighters in Dassault’s Bordeaux-Mérignac facility on 8 October, an event to be attended by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. This follows the symbolic handing over by Dassault of a first Rafale on 19 September in France.
However, the first Rafales are not expected to reach Indian shores until April or May next year. They will be assigned to 17 Squadron ‘Golden Arrows’, which is located at Ambala Air Force Station in Haryana in northwest India. The squadron was stood up on 10 September, eight years after the former MiG-21 squadron
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The US Army and USAF are evaluating an AI-enabled imaging capability from Deepnight designed to enhance low-light and no-light operations across multiple platforms and environments.
The fast-tracked emergency approvals come as the conflict in the Middle East stretches out into its third month, after Iranian attacks depleted US allies’ missile stockpiles and testing air defence systems.
As militaries face an overwhelming flow of data, the challenge is shifting from collection to delivering fast, actionable insights that drive decision-making. Advances in AI and data integration are helping armed forces move beyond siloed systems to generate real-time intelligence across domains and allies.
SAHA 2026 brings global defence and aerospace leaders to Istanbul for partnerships, launches, panels and high-value meetings.
In a partnership with Emesent, Teledyne FLIR will equip its autonomous air, ground and detection systems with the Hovermap LiDAR payload in a move that highlights a broader market shift towards modular architectures, shared payloads and interoperability across platforms.
The Pentagon’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes an impressive increase in the procurement of interceptors, with the number of the US Army’s PAC-3 MSE rounds expanding by 683%, the US Navy’s Standard Missile by 365% and the MDA’s SM-3 IIA by more than 1,000%.
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