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.
SUBMARINE BUY: Indonesia plans to buy a Russian submarine, the first of three that a senior official says the western Pacific country needs. Yusron Ihza, deputy chief of an Indonesian House of Representatives commission, says he has inspected several “submarine factories” in Moscow. It isn’t clear exactly what plants these were. The Russian capital is well inland. The Indonesian purchase will be made in stages, Yusron says.
South Korea is laying the ground-work for a more independent combat aircraft capability by launching a program for a domestically developed air-combat model and associated simulators.
Singaporean budget carrier Tiger Airways will relax its resolutely low-cost business model by adding more service in order to get rights to fly to Indonesia. Indonesian authorities, resisting intrusions by budget carriers, will allow Tiger to fly the lucrative route between Singapore and Indonesian cities, including Jakarta and Denpasar, only by designating it as a “boutique” airline — which means one that offers more service than Tiger traditionally does in the business that it has modeled on Southwest Airlines and Ryanair.
