Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
SEOUL — Korea Aerospace Industries will deliver 16 T-50 Golden Eagle supersonic trainers to Indonesia in 2013 under a $400 million contract. The deal further deepens defense technology ties between the two countries. It is a breakthrough for Korea Aerospace, whose previous attempts at exporting the T-50 have all failed. In this case, it prevailed over two other shortlisted candidates, the Yakovlev Yak-130 and the Czech Aero L-159B.
BEIJING — China plans to launch five or six satellites for its Compass navigation constellation in 2012, as it moves toward offering an initial service in some of its own territory this year. With eight Compass satellites already in orbit and two or three more to come this year, the system should have at least 15 spacecraft by the end of 2012. It is supposed to have 35 when complete. The ground system has been completely installed, tested and found to be fully functional, says the PLA Daily, the official Chinese military newspaper.
The liberalization of general aviation in China has reached the northernmost part of the country, with the civil aviation administration approving a trial of sight-seeing flights at Gegeen-gol in Inner Mongolia. The trial, however, is of exactly the type that aircraft manufacturers are least interested in seeing—one that is in a remote part of the country where the authorities see minimal safety challenges but where demand for aircraft will be slight.
