The United States Department of Defence has awarded Cessna a $24 million contract to supply six Caravan aircraft for Cameroon, Chad and the Philippines. They will be configured for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). This follows two contracts in May this year covering the modification of Caravans to ISR configuration for Cameroon, Chad, Niger and the Philippines.

The US Department of Defence on 21 September said Cessna will provide six Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX aircraft, three spare Pratt & Whitney PT6A-140 engines, and aircraft spares and ground handling equipment to the US Africa Command and Pacific Command areas of responsibility in support of counterterrorism measures in Chad, Cameroon, and the Philippines.

Work is expected to be complete by 30 September 2017. Under the May 2016 contracts, L-3 Communications Corporation – Communication Systems West was awarded a $14 185 927 contract for ISR equipment and spares. North American Surveillance Systems of Titusville, Florida, was awarded $39 983 647 for the modification of the aircraft and integration of ISR capabilities, together with training and field support. Financing for both contracts came from Fiscal Year 2016 counter-terrorism partnership funds.

The contract announcements did not indicate how many aircraft each country would be getting, but it now appears Cameroon and Chad will each receive two. The US military in September 2014 awarded Cessna a $13.67 million contract to provide three Grand Caravan EX aircraft to Niger, Kenya and Mauritania in support of counter-terrorism operations, but it is believed this contract is unrelated to the most recent ones. L-3 Communications Systems West also received a $31.2 million contract in 2014 to add intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to the three Cessna 208Bs.

The United States has donated a number of Caravans to African countries in support of peacekeeping and counter-terror operations. The Niger Air Force received two donated Cessna 208Bs in July 2013, but configured for transport tasks. In June 2014 the US government donated two new Caravans to the Mauritania Islamic Air Force to boost its capacity to conduct patrols to counter maritime crimes and regional terrorist groups.

Another recipient of Caravans from the United States is Uganda, which received two aircraft on 16 March 2015, to support the Ugandan contingent battling al Shabaab militants in Somalia. The aircraft, worth $15 million including spare parts and training, were donated by the US Department of Defence.

Culled from Defenseweb

Over the next year, Russian Helicopters will deliver Mi-8/17 transport and Mi-24/35 attack helicopters to Nigeria, Mali, Angola and Sudan. This is according to Yury Demchenko, Rosoboronexport delegation head for the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition, which took place at Air Force Base Waterkloof between 14 and 18 September. He said that Russia exported helicopters to Angola, Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda over the last five years. “In 2016-2017, we plan to continue exporting these helicopters to Angola, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria. Our position in the African helicopter market is solid, so we are optimistic about the prospects of cultivating it further.”

Nigeria is set to receive 12 Mi-35M helicopters by 2018, according to Anatoly Punchuk, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. He told RIA Novosti that the helicopters were ordered in October 2015. Demchenko said during AAD that he predicts further business from Africa, especially with regard to peacekeeping missions on the continent. He also sees the defence and security market growing due to terrorism, piracy, smuggling and trafficking.

“The share of Africa in the world export of weapons is relatively small. For instance sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about 2%, but the statistics of Russian weapons sales by Rosoboronexport in Africa showed steady growth for several years. A similar situation can be observed in northern Africa, where a number of countries in recent years considerably built up purchases of Russian weapons to have entered the list of our main partners in the sphere of military-technical cooperation.

“Besides, African states have been building up their participation in regional and international peacekeeping missions,” he said. Rosoboronexport has an order backlog of more than $21 billion, Demchenko told IHS Jane’s during AAD. He added that the drop in oil prices has not affected exports to oil producing African nations.  The day before AAD, Russia and South Africa held the first bilateral seminar on defence industrial cooperation. Punchuk told TASS that “South Africa has a major industrial potential while Russia can offer a lot in the sphere of defence, security and law enforcement. We proposed long-term hi-tech cooperation.”

“We discussed what to begin with, i.e. various models of industrial cooperation, including financial aspects. We have high-tech platforms which can be integrated with existing South African systems or maybe even with future jointly created new technologies,” Punchuk said. South Africa’s Secretary for Defence, Dr Sam Gulube, said he was enthusiastic and interested in defence industrial cooperation but cautioned that contracts would only come with time.

Defenseweb

A white Memphis police officer, who fatally shot an African-American man, will not face federal civil rights criminal charges, a prosecutor says. On July 17, 2015, Officer Connor Schilling shot and killed 19-year-old Darrius Stewart after he engaged in a confrontation with the officer.

Schilling stopped a car for a broken headlight, issued a ticket and let the driver go, but the officer had arrest warrants for Stewart, who was sitting in the car.

Stewart was then placed in the police car and, according to prosecutors, when Schilling wanted to open the door to his car to handcuff Stewart, he kicked the door and snatched the officer’s handcuffs. The officer grabbed his own gun and shot the black man two times.

On Tuesday, US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee Edward Stanton told reporters that a federal review found no sufficient evidence to prove the officer was guilty.

“We found insufficient evidence to support federal, criminal civil rights charges against Connor Schilling,” Stanton said, adding, “To establish willfulness, federal authorities must show that the officer acted with a deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids.”

Presstv

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have both performed predictably at their first presidential debate, an American political analyst and activist says. “Trump was Trump. Clinton was Clinton. He bragged. He lied. He bullied,” Myles Hoenig, a Green Party candidate for Congress, told Press TV on Tuesday.

The analyst said former secretary of state Clinton was prepared. “She evaded questions regarding the emails. She hid her own history as she claimed she cared for workers, families, others.” “In the end, she stole Green Party’s Jill Stein’s usual closing line, ‘…like your life depends on it, because it does,” he stated.

During the debate at Hofstra University in Hampstead, New York, Trump attacked Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state and she criticized him for not releasing his tax history. “I’m not going to make any excuses, it was a mistake,” Clinton said referring to her use of private email.
She also said Trump is “trying to hide” his tax history, adding, “it must be something really important, even terrible.” Trump reacted by saying, “I will release my tax returns against my lawyer’s wishes when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

Green Party presidential nominee Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson were not invited to participate in the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The commission said the two candidates had failed to garner the 15 percent support in five polls required to qualify for the debate. But Stein rejected the standards set by the commission and staged her own live stream Q&A session on social media on Monday evening from outside the presidential debate venue in New York.

Presstv

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has held some regional countries and world powers liable for the ongoing crisis in Syria, saying terrorism must be fought in practice and on the ground and not on paper. “The fight against terrorism will not be possible through statements and genuine measures must be carried out in practice,” Larijani said in a meeting with Syrian Parliament Speaker Hadiya Khalaf Abbas in Tehran on Monday. Pointing to Riyadh’s support for militants wreaking havoc in Syria, he added, “Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia has created many problems in the region and is not behaving correctly.”

He said the Islamic Republic has always contended that the crisis in Syria can be solved through political approaches and Syrian-Syrian negotiations. Larijani stressed the importance of reinforcing unity among Muslim nations to solve problems in the Muslim world and said, “Only major and colonial powers benefit from the existing divisions among Muslim states to serve their own interests.”
The top Iranian parliamentarian emphasized that Syria is on the frontline of the campaign against terrorism and Zionism and hailed the “very judicious” bids by the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad in particular in finding diplomatic solutions to the crisis in the country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s policy is [based on] fighting terrorism and restoring security in the region,” Larijani pointed out. Pointing to “cordial and historical” relations between Tehran and Damascus, the Iranian parliament speaker said, “Iran and Syria, as two important and major countries in the region and the Muslim world which enjoy rich civilizations and history, have profound and strategic ties.”

The Syrian parliament speaker, for her part, said the Israeli regime is supporting the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the southwestern city of Quneitra. She added that the US recent airstrikes against the Syrian army indicated Washington’s support for terrorism and said the United States is pursuing double-standard policies in Syria.

Khalaf Abbas praised Iran’s full support for her country and expressed hope the Syrian people would achieve a final victory over terrorists soon. The Syrian parliament speaker arrived in Tehran on Monday at the invitation of her Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, to hold talks with senior Iranian officials. Earlier in the day, she attended a joint press conference with Larijani and held talks with Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Back in 2014, the UN said it would no more update its death toll for Syria because it could not verify the figures that it received from various sources.

A week-long truce, brokered by Russia and the US, came to an end across Syria on September 19. Damascus refused to extend the deal after its military base was hit by US-led airstrikes near the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr in violation of the agreement. In recent months, the Takfiri militants have suffered major setbacks as the Syrian army has managed to liberate several areas.