Latest news with #McDonnellDouglas
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
12-07-2025
- Business
- First Post
Deepening China-Iran ties pose a new challenge for India
India, for its part, must keep a watch on the Beijing-Tehran-Islamabad nexus, though West Asia will not be an easy sail for China either read more Iran is still reeling from the 12-day conflict with Israel and the June 22 US Air Force and Navy strike on its nuclear facilities. The confrontation has pushed West Asia to the edge of a new regional order—one in which Israel sought to assert itself as an unrestrained military force. While framed as targeted attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, the Israeli offensive significantly degraded Iran's broader offensive and defensive military capabilities. Once reliant on American-made fighter jets and defence systems, post-revolutionary Iran pivoted to Soviet and later Russian military hardware while gradually developing a robust domestic defence industry. In recent years, Iran has also incorporated a growing number of Chinese weapons systems into its arsenal. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD China also has increasing interests in Iranian energy supplies. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently said in France, 'The United States shamelessly bombed the nuclear facilities of a sovereign country, Iran. This is a dangerous precedent. If it causes a nuclear disaster, the entire world will pay the price. If national power alone decides right and wrong, where are the rules? Where is justice? This so-called strength will not bring real peace. It will open Pandora's Box. Are weaker nations, especially small ones, just meals served up on the table for the powerful?' China's Energy Imports from Iran China is a major importer of Iranian oil, with figures reaching record levels in June 2025, averaging over 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd). Despite US sanctions aimed at limiting Iran's oil revenue, China continues to import a large volume of Iranian crude, with an estimated 90 percent of Iran's oil exports going to China. To circumvent US sanctions, China has been able to maintain and even increase its imports, largely through the use of 'shadow fleets' and other workarounds. China's reliance on Iranian oil has led to a complex trade relationship, with Iran heavily dependent on China for oil revenue. This dynamic has been described as a 'colonial trap' by some Iranian officials. Any disruption to Iran's oil exports, whether due to conflict or stricter sanctions, could have significant consequences for China's energy supply and economy. Conversely, it will also be bad for the Iranian economy. Iranian Defence Equipment—China Emerging as a Source Iran possesses a diverse range of military assets, including domestically produced and imported equipment. Iran has a substantial number of battle tanks, infantry vehicles, and artillery pieces of American, Russian, and local makes. These included American F-14 Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, and Northrop F-5 Tiger II fighters; Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft; and heavy and utility helicopters. They have Russian MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-24, and S-22 fighters; Mil Mi-17; T-72 tanks; S-400 AD systems; infantry fighting vehicles; towed howitzers; short-range ballistic missiles; KamAZ-43114 heavy trucks; and Russian Kilo-class submarines, among others. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Clearly, Iran's air force is severely outdated and ill-equipped to confront modern adversaries. Iran desperately needs fighter aircraft and air defence systems. Iran is grappling with the need to overhaul its shattered air defence system and intelligence apparatus. China has long supported Iran's ballistic missile program and backed it with dual-use industrial inputs for missile production. Iran has been inducting Chinese equipment for the last nearly three decades. These include Chengdu J-7 fighters, multiple rocket launcher systems, 155-mm howitzers, and anti-ship missiles. After suffering major losses in the recently concluded '12-day War', Iran is reportedly mulling the purchase of Chinese J-10C (Vigorous Dragon) fighter jets. They are looking at ground-based air-defence weapons and PL-15 class air-to-air missiles (AAM). In the spring of 2023, Iranian officials negotiated in Beijing and Moscow to replenish Tehran's stores of ammonium perchlorate, important for ballistic missile solid propellant. China has conducted regular maritime cooperation with Iran, boosting Beijing's presence in the Persian Gulf. China has provided material and intelligence support to the Iran-backed Houthis. Clearly China is emerging as a potential, perhaps even desirable, alternative to Russia. But China's attempt to keep channels open with the US and its relations with Iran's regional rivals contribute to its disinclination to beef up Iran's military. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Befriending Iran—Advantage China Benefits for Beijing from increased defence cooperation with Tehran in wooing a Middle Eastern partner, which is on its knees and desperately needs more powerful friends, are obvious. China would get to consolidate an alternative energy corridor that bypasses traditional maritime choke points like the Strait of Malacca and the Bab el-Mandeb. Iranian infrastructure can be connected to China through the already underway China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan. Iran could further be linked to Iraqi oil infrastructure. China could be a direct investor and ensure its security. Such routing will also support its 'Iron Brother', Pakistan. Increased defence ties with Tehran would give Beijing greater influence over the Strait of Hormuz. China would also be exercising a little greater control to support moderating Iranian foreign policy. It will also increase China's geopolitical status in Central and West Asia. It could serve both deterrence and stability. It would also help China partly reduce Russian and American influence in the region. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD China's Increased Influence Detrimental for India China's increasing influence over Iran could affect Indian influence across Central Asia. Iran is conscious of how India got pressured by the US-led sanctions in 2018 and halted oil imports from Tehran. India's pro-Israel ideological approach and close linkages with Tel Aviv in defence, cyber, and agriculture make Iran doubtful about India. Though Tehran would have preferred a much softer India, with which it has had civilisational linkages, current realpolitik realities have created space for Beijing to step in. China can more easily stand up to Iran's arch-opponent, the US. If Beijing becomes Tehran's significant defence partner, it would frustrate Indian attempts to penetrate this important defence exports market. If Iran joins the CPEC, Pakistan gets defence in depth. One can recall that in both the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan wars, Iran had offered shelter to Pakistani fighter aircraft. China's greater influence could adversely affect India's efforts to connect with Russia, Europe, Central Asia, and Afghanistan via the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the starting point for which is the India-funded 'Shahid Beheshti' terminal at Chabahar port. If Iran concedes to the Chinese request to invest its stake in Chabahar, the INSTC would be seriously affected. China could thus outmanoeuvre India and actually punish it for not supporting Xi Jinping's flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Currently, Iran has no choice but to align with China. The Beijing-Tehran-Islamabad nexus will surely complicate things for India. India has developed countervailing close relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. But Chinese economic and military might would make others cautious. With diminishing American power, its influence in the region is also likely to be reduced. A space that China is keen to occupy. Not All Smooth Sailing for China While China finds an opportunity in pushing its relations with Iran, getting into West Asia is a very complex power play, and many powers have trod very carefully in the past or burnt fingers. Getting openly closer to Iran could bother other equally important players in the region. Backing a theological, somewhat unpopular regime also doesn't go well with Communist Chinese thinking. What China is doing to Uighurs in its own backyard is indicative. China would also anger the US and Europe, both of which are important markets for China. Pakistan is already playing a very balancing game between China and the US and will be careful in this geo-play. The US president has already read the 'riot act' to the Pakistan Army chief in a luncheon meeting in Washington recently. Will China risk getting too close to a country at the threshold of getting a nuclear weapon or be seen as supporting such an activity? China also has to balance its relations with Israel, which has significant global influence and lobbies, and the two are involved in major economic and technological cooperation. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD To Summarise The China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed in 2021. Both are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). These two allow sufficient contact between the two. For China to get too close to Iran is like stepping into quicksand. Should it risk getting into the murky entanglement that could challenge its broader objectives in the region? Would China like to antagonise a significant part of the world, which would be happy to see a regime change and a more open and democratic Iran? China's increased relationship with Iran will also affect its economic ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. No act should allow Iran to get emboldened for regional adventurism. Even Russia has been cautious in its comments on the Iran-Israel conflict. Nearly a third of all Jews in Israel are of former Soviet origin. China and its firms would be concerned about US-backed sanctions. Engagement with Iran cannot be more important than its continued freer trade with the West. Backing the current regime can backfire. Conversely, some believe that with greater leverage over Iran, China could play a greater statesmanlike role in the region and also rein in Iran. Beijing is likely to be pragmatic and low-key. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD India-Iran relations have been vacillating and somewhat complex. India did not welcome the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran's continued support for Pakistan in the India-Pakistan conflicts and India's close relations with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War strained the bilateral ties. Though in the 1990s, both India and Iran supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the latter of which received overt Pakistani backing and ruled most of the country until the 2001 United States-led invasion. They continued to collaborate in supporting the broad-based anti-Taliban government, led by Ashraf Ghani and backed by the international community, until the Taliban captured Kabul in 2021 and re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. India and Iran signed a defence cooperation agreement in December 2002. Iran has historically been the third-largest supplier of petroleum to India; however, these exports have fallen dramatically within the past decade, and India imported a negligible amount of oil from Iran by the early 2020s. Instead, China has become the largest importer of Iranian oil, accounting for 90 per cent of Iranian oil exports. Despite the two countries having some common strategic interests, India and Iran differ significantly on key foreign policy issues. India has expressed strong opposition to Iran's nuclear programme and while both nations continue to oppose the Taliban, India supported the presence of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, unlike Iran. India has also consistently voiced stronger support for Israel than for Iran in the 2020s. There are differences between the two on Islamic terrorism. While India has made infrastructural (highway) investments in Iran, the connectivity dividend has yet to accrue. The completion and operationalisation of the North–South Transport Corridor seems far. For India, it is best to wait and watch. No need to get paranoid. Maintain good diplomatic contact with Iran, continue pushing economic engagements, and try to find areas of defence exports. Keep options and avenues for acquiring oil open. Keep people-to-people contacts going, and India must continue to export soft power. In a nutshell, India must keep monitoring China-Iran-Pakistan engagement, maintain good relations with Russia, Israel, the US, Europe, and all countries in West Asia, and retain strategic autonomy. The writer is former Director General, Centre for Air Power Studies. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Photos show RIAT's first year at RAF Fairford 40 years ago
The Royal International Air Tattoo marks 40 years at RAF Fairford this year - here's what it was like at the very first event. Known in 1985 as the International Air Tattoo, the weekend of aerial displays and moved to a new home in Oxfordshire. Photographer Jeremy Flack highlighted the histories of certain aircraft on display, such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms. The prototype first flew in 1958 and by the time production had ended 5,195 had been built. An extremely versatile aircraft- it has been operated as a fighter, attack, bomber, reconnaissance and flown from carriers as well as airfield. It has achieved numerous word records and is still operated by a number of air forces. Turkish and Greek examples are expected to be displayed it the 2025 RIAT. Be the first to know with the Swindon Advertiser! 📱 💡 Our flash sale brings the latest local happenings directly to you. Save over 50% on an annual subscription now. 🔗 #SpecialOffer — Swindon Advertiser (@swindonadver) July 4, 2025 Also on display was the RAF Handley Page Victor K.2. Various modifications were made resulting in sub-variants until a re-role saw the fleet gradually taking on the role of an aerial tanker. The Victor tankers were heavily used during the Falkand and Gulf wars and were retired in 1993. More details of each aircraft can be found in the picture captions.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
05-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Mines, magnets and Mao: How China built its global rare earth dominance
Rare earth metals were an afterthought for most world leaders until China temporarily suspended most exports of them a couple of months ago. But for almost half a century, they have received attention from the very top of the Chinese government. During his 27-year rule in China, Mao Zedong focused often on increasing how much iron and steel China produced, but seldom on its quality. The result was high production of weak iron and steel that could not meet the needs of the industry. In the late 1940s, metallurgists in Britain and the United States had developed a fairly low-tech way to improve the quality of ductile iron, which is widely used for pipelines, car parts and other applications. The secret? Add a dash of the rare earth cerium to the metal while it is still molten. It was one of the early industrial uses of rare earths. And unlike most kinds of rare earths, cerium was fairly easy to chemically separate from ore. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader in 1978, he moved quickly to fix the country's iron and steel industry. Deng named a top technocrat, Fang Yi, as a vice premier and also as the director of the powerful State Science and Technology Commission. Fang immediately took top geologists and scientists to Baotou, a city in China's Inner Mongolia that had vast steel mills and the country's largest iron ore mine nearby. Baotou had already made much of the iron and steel for China's tanks and artillery under Mao, but Fang's team made an important decision to extract more than iron from the mine. The city's iron ore deposit was laced with large quantities of so-called light rare earths. These included not just cerium, for ductile iron and for glass manufacturing, but also lanthanum, used in refining oil. The iron ore deposit also held medium rare earths, like samarium. The United States had started using samarium in the 1970s to make the heat-resistant magnets needed for electric motors inside supersonic fighter jets and missiles. 'Rare earths have important application value in steel, ductile iron, glass and ceramics, military industry, electronics and new materials,' Fang declared during his visit to Baotou in 1978, according to an exhibit at the city's museum. At the time, Sino-American relations were improving. Soon after his Baotou visit, Fang took top Chinese engineers to visit America's most advanced factories, including Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas assembly plants near Los Angeles. Rare earth metals are tightly bound together in nature. Prying them apart, particularly the heavier rare earths, requires many rounds of chemical processes and huge quantities of acid. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had each developed similar ways to separate rare earths. But their techniques were costly, requiring stainless steel vats and piping as well as expensive nitric acid. China ordered government research institutes to devise a cheaper approach, said Constantine Karayannopoulos, a chemical engineer and former chief executive of several of the largest North American rare earth companies. The Chinese engineers figured out how to separate rare earths using inexpensive plastic and hydrochloric acid instead. The cost advantage, together with weak enforcement of environmental standards, allowed China's rare earth refineries to undercut competitors in the West. Facing increasingly stiff environmental regulations, almost all of the West's refineries closed. Separately, China's geologists discovered that their country held nearly half the world's deposits of rare earths, including rich deposits of heavy rare earths in south-central China, valuable for magnets in cars as well as for medical imaging and other applications. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese refinery engineers mastered the task of prying apart heavy rare earths. That gave China an almost total monopoly on heavy rare earth production. 'The Middle East has oil,' Deng said in 1992. 'China has rare earths.' By then, he and Fang had already trained the next leader to guide the country's rare earth industry: a geologist named Wen Jiabao. He had earned a master's degree in rare earth sciences in the late 1960s at the Beijing Institute of Geology, when most of the rest of China was paralyzed during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Wen went on to become a vice premier in 1998 and then China's premier from 2003 to 2013. During a visit to Europe in 2010, he declared that little happened on rare earth policy in China without his personal involvement.
Boston Globe
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The ‘reverse discrimination' US Supreme Court ruling could've been much worse
I was struck by the fact that the opinion was written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's only Black woman and someone who was nominated after former President Joe Biden vowed to install a Black woman on the court. Chief Justice John Roberts, when he is in the majority of a decision of the court, is the one who decides which justice will write the opinion. Lots of considerations go into who an opinion's author is, including how many other cases that justice has written compared to others. Advertisement And, as 'It also was a strategic assignment by Roberts,' Coyle observed. 'Justice Jackson, a member of a minority group, led the court in a discrimination case involving a member of a majority group. It gave the final decision an extra dollop of credibility.' Advertisement So was it some kind of subtle troll by Roberts to assign an opinion that will likely open the door to more so-called reverse discrimination cases? Only Roberts knows his thought process. But what is clear is this: When it comes to protecting the ability of people to bring employment discrimination claims, this ruling could have been much, much worse. And for that, I'm grateful for Jackson's leadership. After all, some of her colleagues, like Justice Brett Kavanaugh, have gone on record questioning whether the framework for proving employment discrimination claims that the court established more than half century ago should be tossed out. That framework, established 52 years ago in Then, the burden of proof shifts to the employer to show a 'legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason' for the adverse employment action. Then the burden shifts back to the employee to prove that the employer's nondiscriminatory reason is a pretext for actual discrimination. But when Kavanaugh was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, he questioned whether that framework should come into play at all when an employer seeks to dismiss a case in the early stages of litigation before the case has a chance to go to trial. Advertisement But dropping the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting standard in such early challenges to litigation would risk slamming the door on many meritorious claims. That's because it is very hard, before the parties have had a chance to obtain and produce crucial evidence of their case, for an employee to make a full evidentiary showing that their case is likely to succeed if it goes to a jury. Burden-shifting schemes are meant to avoid this, and striking down McDonnell Douglas would have the immediate effect of making all discrimination claims more difficult to bring and prove. Enter Jackson, with a reasonable alternative that the court could unanimously back: applying the McDonnell Douglas framework to all cases, whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a minority group or not. After all, as Jackson reasoned, that is what the plain reading of Title VII — the civil rights-era law that federal employment discrimination claims are brought under — calls for. That is originalism in action — declaring that a statute says what it says, based on its plain text. And if that is the narrow holding that Jackson knew she could get everyone on board for, then good for her. There are bigger battles ahead to fight. This is an excerpt from , a newsletter about the Supreme Court from columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Advertisement Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Chicago didn't ruin Boeing, but the company paid a price for moving out of Seattle.
Seattle and Boeing were together for decades until Chicago came along. But after the company moved its headquarters from a cloudy city to a windy one, it struggled. Was it us? The deep-dish pizza and Italian beef? The ongoing wait for another Super Bowl title? As this iconic aerospace giant tries to regain altitude after yet another turbulent stretch, it's fair to ask if its move to Chicago in 2001 put it on the wrong course altogether. When then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that the city had won a bidding contest for Boeing's headquarters, this page joined in the celebration. The company got over $60 million in public incentives for moving its boardroom to the Loop. Chicago got bragging rights. The move made sense to us at the time. Chicago gave Boeing's leadership team the convenient, centralized transportation hub they were missing in the Pacific Northwest. Settling in a more global city with a financially savvy workforce was widely considered a plus as well. Moving out of Seattle also put almost 2,000 miles between the company's top brass and its restive unions, which might have been one of the biggest attractions from the corner-office point of view. As it turned out, though, the move seems to have undermined an engineering-friendly culture focused on design, safety and quality. In retrospect, separating from the critical mass of aerospace experts in Seattle isolated the company's leaders from the heart of their business. Apart from the move to Chicago, the other 'X factor' in that transformation was Boeing's 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, a company better known for financial engineering than the aerospace kind. Its priorities were quarterly profits and returning money to Wall Street shareholders — priorities Boeing embraced after the deal closed, appointing a string of chief executive officers who collected massive paychecks but cut corners in making planes. One outcome of this change was the decision to upgrade a popular passenger jet instead of designing a new one with all the latest advances, as the perfectionists at old-school Boeing no doubt would have preferred. Extending the life of its workhorse 737s helped Boeing's bottom line in the short run. Over time, that approach opened the company to serious problems, including the notorious 737 MAX crashes. In October 2018, this newly modified version of the old 737 jetliner crashed near Indonesia. Five months later, another new 737 MAX crashed in Ethiopia. Boeing had reconfigured the MAX model with bigger engines that affected its aerodynamics, and federal regulators had given the company too much control over certifying the new design. A faulty flight-control system forced down the two planes despite their pilots' desperate efforts to keep them aloft, killing a combined 346 aboard. Instead of taking responsibility, the company reportedly tried to blame the foreign airlines and resisted grounding its MAX fleet in the interest of safety. Then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg spouted insincere baloney about safety being a core value, until he was finally ousted by a board that paid him off with a $62 million exit package. In the waning days of the first administration of President Donald Trump, Boeing reached a settlement with the Justice Department that protected it from prosecution over the MAX crashes. Shortly after, in 2022, the company moved from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, closer to its No. 1 customer: Uncle Sam. Last year brought another shocking safety gaffe, when a door panel blew off in midair from a 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines. A few months later, federal prosecutors determined that Boeing had violated its deferred prosecution deal by failing to implement a compliance and ethics program. In response, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud, but a federal judge in Texas rejected the plea deal because it included diversity goals. Now, with Trump back in power, Boeing appears likely to receive a lighter settlement that avoids a criminal plea. During a recent Middle East trip, Trump also publicly promoted Boeing jets — a reminder of the company's political clout and close ties to its largest customer: the U.S. government. Cozying up to a pro-defense administration may be giving Boeing's stock a boost, but it won't restore public trust or prevent future failures. Boeing recently published the sad results of an all-employee survey, its first in years. Most Boeing employees said they lack faith in senior leadership, and barely a quarter recommend the company as a good place to work. That's a big comedown from the old days. Still, Boeing stock has bounced back strongly this year and its new-ish CEO, Kelly Ortberg, says he is putting the company's problems behind it. Earlier this month, Ortberg told Wall Street that he's introducing 'new values and behaviors to the entire organization,' vowing to 'seize the moment to make the necessary changes within the company.' Ortberg also reportedly bought a house in Seattle last year, which we consider a positive step. If Boeing was going to move the headquarters anywhere from Chicago, and if it was serious about rebuilding its culture, it probably should have moved back to Seattle. Still, its time here left a positive mark: Boeing supported civic institutions, hired local talent and helped elevate Chicago's stature as a center for global business. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
