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LOCATIONS
LAND
30 Apr 15. Airbus Group has agreed with the Aquitaine region to build the Final Assembly Line (FAL) for the E-Fan 2.0 all-electric aircraft in Pau, southwest France. The decision was announced by Airbus Group Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Jean Botti and Alain Rousset, President of the Aquitaine region, during a press conference in Bordeaux, the capital city of Aquitaine.
“We have reached the next milestone in our Airbus Group E-Aircraft roadmap. The industrialisation of our E-Fan aircraft will help us to advance electric flight and also to gain experience to scale up the technology,” said Jean Botti, Airbus Group CTO. “With this new assembly line, Airbus Group is preparing for the future and creating new jobs and business in the Aquitaine region,” he added.
Voltair SAS, created in 2014 and owned 100 percent by Airbus Group, will manage the E-Fan development, production and delivery in the Pau area. Voltair will also be in charge of selling and providing services like maintenance for the E-Fan aircraft. Airbus Group will invest €20m in the overall design and development of the E-Fan 2.0 aircraft, in addition to contributions from Airbus Group’s partners. The consortium is supported by La Nouvelle France Industrielle. The Aquitaine region is also supporting the project through a regional subsidy and the FEDER (Le Fonds Européen de Développement Regional) investment for a total of €2.25m.
23 Apr 15. Hizbullah airstrip revealed. Key points:
* Located in a remote and sparsely populated area 10 km south of the town of Hermel and 18 km west of the Syrian border, the airstrip was built sometime between 27 February 2013 and 19 June 2014, according to imagery that recently became publicly available on Google Earth.
* The short length of the runway suggests the facility is not intended to smuggle in weapons shipments from Syria or Iran as it is too short for nearly all the transport aircraft used by the air forces of those countries.
* An alternative explanation is that the runway was built for Iranian-made UAVs, including the Ababil-3, which has been employed over Syria by forces allied to the Syrian regime, and possibly the newer and larger Shahed-129.
Analysis:
Lebanon’s militant Shia group, Hizbullah, has constructed an airstrip in the northern Bekaa Valley for its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), an analysis of satellite images suggests.
Located in a remote and sparsely populated area 10km south of the town of Hermel and 18km west of the Syrian border, the airstrip was built sometime between 27 February 2013 and 19 June 2014, according to imagery that recently became publicly available on Google Earth.
It consists of a single unpaved strip with a length of 670 m and width of 20m. Material has been excavated from a nearby quarry to build up the northern end of the strip so that it is level. It is built over a shorter strip that had been in existence since at least 2010.
The short length of the runway suggests the facility is not intended to smuggle in weapons shipments from Syria or Iran as it is too short for nearly all the transport aircraft used by the air forces of those countries. One exception could be the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC’s) An-74T-200 short take-off transports, but landing one with a useful load on a 670m strip in the mountains would be considered dangerous by most operators. An alternative explanation is that the runway was built for Iranian-made UAVs, including the Ababil-3, which has been employed over Syria by forces allied to the Syrian regime, and possibly the newer and larger Shahed-129. Hizbullah sources have confirmed to IHS Jane’s that the organisatio