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.
Australia will powerfully strengthen and reorient its defense forces in the face of a rising China that it expects to wield an increasingly long reach. Assessing risks in the changing Asian balance of power out to 2030, a defense white paper sets out plans for land-attack missiles as a strategic strike force based on a fleet of larger and more numerous warships.
Australia will help develop upgrades to the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patroller under an agreement that Canberra says is its first step toward buying the aircraft. The country’s defense white paper released last week (Aerospace DAILY, May 4) set out a plan to replace the Royal Australian Air Force’s P-3C Orions with eight manned aircraft, presumed to be Poseidons, and up to seven large drones, possibly Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawks.
BOC Aviation, extending its campaign of sale-and-leaseback deals, has bought four Boeing 777s from Air France and leased them back to the airline. The agreement, for two 777-200LR freighters and two 777-300ER airliners, is the latest in a string of such financing contracts that the lessor, a subsidiary of Bank of China, began signing in December. In announcing the deal, Air France Senior VP Pierre Vellay says the carrier “like many airlines, is feeling the impact of the global economic slowdown.”
