Germany is looking at different locations for its Tornado aircraft and service members as a dispute between the country and Turkey has prevented lawmakers from being able to visit Incirlik Air Base. Germany early this year deployed Tornado ECR reconnaissance and electronic warfare aircraft and an A310 tanker to Incirlik to contribute to the coalition’s fight against ISIS. However, Ankara has blocked German lawmakers from visiting the base after the German parliament passed a resolution stating that a 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces is a genocide, according to Reuters. Some German lawmakers are threatening to pull the aircraft and end the mission unless they can visit the base, and the German Defense Ministry said this week it is studying other base options for the aircraft. The current authority for the deployment ends in December, Der Spiegel reported.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
