The first Kaman Kargo in flight-testing at an undisclosed Pennsylvania site. (Kaman)

Kaman's Kargo medium-lift unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been in flight-testing since December 2023, the company's general manager, Romin Dasmalchi, told Janes in advance of Modern Day Marine on 24 April.

The UAV first flew while tethered to the ground for safety reasons. The tether has since been removed, Dasmalchi said, and the first Kargo is free-flying at an undisclosed UAV testing site in Pennsylvania.

Following a flight, Dasmalchi said, “You would make an adjustment – call it a tuning adjustment – and then you fly it for a short period. You give it some inputs manually to see how it handles, then you land and you make adjustments. We probably did hundreds of those evolutions.” The Kargo might undergo 20 to 30 flights per day.

As of 26 April the first Kargo craft had accrued around 50 hours of flight time, Dasmalchi said, and hundreds of ignitions of its Rolls-Royce RR300 engine. Aside from changes to antenna placement, Dasmalchi anticipated no major changes to Kargos in production based on the results of flight-testing to date.

RFA Cardigan Bay will support the US military personnel by providing temporary offshore accommodation as they build a new temporary pier to deliver aid directly into Gaza. (UK MoD/Crown Copyright)

The UK Royal Navy's (RN's) Bay-class landing ship dock auxiliary (LSD(A)) vessel Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Cardigan Bay (L 3009) has been deployed to the coast of Gaza where it will provide support to US military building a new temporary floating pier that will facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into the country directly by sea, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed.

Cardigan Bay , which is en route to Gaza from Cyprus, will provide temporary offshore accommodation for personnel working on the offshore pier project, the MoD said.

The initiative will enable cargo ships to deliver pre-screened aid from Cyprus directly to the pier, where it will be loaded onto trucks to transfer across Gaza. It forms part of wider international efforts to expand the delivery of aid into Gaza and will complement efforts to get more aid in via land routes and the Port of Ashdod.

US military vessels, including USNS Benavidez,

A pair of Norwegian F-35A Lightning IIs. In Polish service, the type will be named Husarz. (Royal Norwegian Air Force)

Poland has assigned the name Husarz to the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) in national service, the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces announced on 29 April.

The name, which translates in English to Hussar, has been given to the ‘fifth-generation' stealth fighter following a public competition.

At the same time as the new national name was disclosed, the Polish Ministry of National Defence (MND) said that the country's F-35As will receive low-visibility greyed-out checkerboard markings in place of the traditional red and white checkerboard. This will be a first for the Polish Armed Forces and has been decided to fully preserve the aircraft's low observability characteristics.

The new name and national marking disclosures coincided with the announcement by Lockheed Martin that the first F-35A for Poland, aircraft AZ-01, had stood on its own wheels at the assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas. It will be delivered to Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas for pilot training later in 2024.