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In this episode, Amber Elias is joined by Craig Hoyle.

2026 World Air Forces directory

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First Flight is a production of FlightGlobal, an award-winning aviation media company, and is executive produced by Amber Elias. Audio editing by Lucy Johnson.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome to Flight Global Focus. My name is Amber Elias and
joining me for this News Focus episode is Craig Hoyle, Flight
Global's European Defence Editorand Flight International Editor.
Hi Amber, thanks a lot for having me on this week.
Let's take a look at the top aviation stories this week on
flight Global investigators havedetermined that the first

(00:30):
officer of a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus
A320 selected the wrong ILS frequency before a wrong runaway
landing at Lahore. The twin jet had been operating
flight PK150 from Demam in SaudiArabia to Maltan on 17 January.
But the Pakistani Investigation Authority, in findings released
on 4N, says adverse weather at Multan with visibility down to

(00:53):
50 metres prompted the crew to divert.
Although the initial diversion airport was Karachi, where
visibility was good, the crew instead opted for Lahore after
considering such factors as passenger convenience and cabin
crew duty time. However, low visibility
procedures were in place at Lahore owing to fog.
Czech investigators have disclosed that a Whizzer UK

(01:14):
Airbus A321 XLR's descent rate increased by 60% in the last few
seconds but for a hard touchdownand tail strike at Prague.
It had been conducting an ILS approach to runaway 24 following
a service from London Gatwick on11 September.
Weather conditions at the time were normal, says Czech
Investigation Authority. Used PLN with good visibility,

(01:35):
although the 10 knot wind was variable from 150 to 220°.
Rolls Royce has revealed a new build standard for the Trent
1000 engine, the XE, which incorporates improved parts that
will double time on wing alongside inclusion of the
manufacturer's Total Care Support package.
An option on the Boeing 787 where it is offered against the
GE Aerospace Genx. The Trent 1000 has suffered from

(01:59):
poor availability issues for a number of years, linked to
premature degradation of certainparts, particularly high
pressure turbine blades. Leonardo has given the clearest
warning yet that the future of its Yeovil factory in southwest
England is under threat if it does not win an order from the
UK through the ongoing new medium helicopter competition.
Following a submission deadline last year, Leonardo is the sole

(02:21):
remaining bidder for the NMH with its AW149 Super medium
twin. If successful, the airframer has
promised to build the helicopterat Yeovil.
Although the company submitted abest and final offer in April,
the deadline for a decision fromthe UK Ministry of Defence has
been repeatedly pushed back. EasyJet intends to have largely
retired its fleet of elderly Airbus A319 S by 2030 as the

(02:44):
budget carries refleeting programme accelerates.
At present, the airline retains 82 A 319 S 89 and 64 Unleash,
around 23% of its total 356 strong fleet.
But EasyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis says the small
aircraft will be progressively retired over the coming years,
with the new A320 Neo and A321 Neo jets taken from its

(03:07):
outstanding 290 unit firm order book.
Its 100th Neo family jet will arrive next year, he points out.
Speaking to Fleck Global's Dominic Perry on 10N to mark the
carrier's 30th anniversary, Jarvis said the A 319 fleet
would be really all gone by 2030.
Craig, let's chat about the 2026World Air Force's directory

(03:28):
which came out this week on Flight Global.
As always, it's a very comprehensive report detailing
the military aircraft of 161 nations all the way from
Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and it'stotalling just over a combined
52,200 in service assets. All that data paints quite a
picture, but how did it come together and what did you see as

(03:50):
the stand out part? Yeah.
So this is my biggest individualproject every year and I'd say I
equally dread and look forward to doing it.
It's pretty much a one month task from doing my original data
pool to the actual report, getting out online.
It's a big job and there's a lotof data in there.
So I would stay right at the start.

(04:10):
We need to thank our sponsor Embraer and also Syrian, which
is our data partner for the project.
We couldn't, couldn't do it without them.
So their support's invaluable. So there's a lot of hours that I
spend on editing everything to get it into the category that we
use. My first raw data pool is about
50,000 aircraft and they are usually down to the individual

(04:32):
tail number detail with Cerium. So I need to sort of strip a lot
of that information out so I canjust do summary, summary level
on each of the air forces. There's some bits I will just
leave at entirely. So there's some categories like
VIP transport, paramilitary airlines, border guards, and

(04:52):
then we get into really little niche rolls like hurricane
hunting, target towing, firefighting.
I don't include those because they're not sort of frontline
military tasks. And then there's some other sort
of oddities like aerobatic display teams or experimental
aircraft that that we won't put in there.
So the big report is all done inExcel.

(05:13):
So you end up with a massive spreadsheet and I have to each
year come up with the dark arts of how I managed to get through
and do things like creating the top ten lists for the types and
nations. So I write myself notes each
year so I can remember what on earth I did and somehow it comes
together. So there's a few stand out items

(05:34):
this time. Most notably, we lost the
country entirely from our listings.
So Syria's fleet was destroyed when the Assad regime collapsed
at the end of 2024. So that removed about 400
aircraft, and they were either destroyed by opposition forces
or as the regime change happened, the USA and Israel did

(05:57):
some airstrikes to stop the equipment falling into the wrong
hands. It was quite a big change for
the Middle East region. So that ended up about 4200
aircraft, down 9% year on year. And that's really significant.
The last time we saw a change like that was when the Taliban
took control of Afghanistan again in 2021.

(06:18):
On the actual sort of fleets themselves, one I'd highlight is
we've really significantly uppedour listing for the Chinese Air
Force's Chengdu J20 fighter. Data is very hard to come on
that, but there's a lot of sources now that suggest it's
probably got about 250, maybe even 300 examples in use.
This is one of the challenging areas with doing a directory

(06:40):
like this because understandably, knowing exactly
what the air forces of China, Russia, North Korea, even
Ukraine, which is at war, it's very hard to actually get a
really firm detail on on exactlywhat they have.
So there's a there's a few bits where you might see the numbers
don't change, particularly year on year.

(07:01):
It's just hard to get that data.And the last thing I'd sort of
flag on it all is this is a snapshot review.
So we only do this once a year and it's madding.
Every time you send one to press, within a couple of days
something big happens that doesn't make it in.
Polish Navy just retired at Sea Sprite helicopters, so they'll
stay on the listing, although they've now gone out of use.

(07:23):
It's a big project, but it's onethat I think sets us apart and
we'll we'll carry on doing it. Yeah, it's certainly one of the
flagship reports that Flag Global produces and does give a
snapshot of the industry from anannual perspective.
Obviously doesn't always includethat my new show of changes that

(07:44):
happen post production, but it does give a very interesting
insight year on year especially.And the directory breaks down
the fleet sizes for different countries by role across 6
categories. Combat aircraft, special mission
tanker, transport, Combat helicopter and training
aircraft, Slash helicopters. And we can see that the USA is

(08:06):
top of all six lists. But were you surprised that
China wasn't top of any list? No, not at all.
I mean, I've, I've been doing this directory for more than the
years and I care to remember probably 15 plus years.
And what we see is it changes a bit year on year, but not
massively obviously. But the USA lead is so big,

(08:27):
there's just no danger of it being overtaken.
So in the sort of summary level,the US military's got just over
13,000 military aircraft. That's 1/4 of the entire global
fleet, and it's also more than the combined inventories of the
next ranked countries, Russia, China, India, South Korea and

(08:49):
Japan. China's actually closest in
combat aircraft, so US has about2700, China's got about 1800.
But when you look across the other categories, say special
mission, the USA has about 1/3 of the global figure and a
roughly 500 more aircraft in that category than China.

(09:12):
But the one that really jumps off the page every year is in
flight refuelling. So there are just over 800
tankers in use around the globe and the US military has 75% of
them, just over 600 aircraft. And Beijing's total is still in
single figures. As I said, getting to know
exactly what their fleet is is difficult.

(09:32):
So in reality, it might have a few more than the nine we show,
but the shortfall in that area is is really operationally
significant and. We know that lots of aircraft
are facing retirement in the coming years and air forces
globally are investing heavily in new technology like Uncrude
aircraft. How do you expect to see the top
aircraft type shift as new generations come into service?

(09:55):
Yeah, this is a really fascinating area for military
air power at the moment. So you've got the coming era of
depends how you call them. So variously referred to as
collaborative combat aircraft orCcas, then autonomous
collaborative platforms, unmanned combat air vehicles or
loyal wingmen used to be the phrase that was used, I think

(10:16):
along with the use of AI. This is still very much in its
infancy and it's hard to tell what impact it's going to have
on future fleets. So the sort of early increment
Ccas that are in development nowgoing to provide an add on
capability for piloted aircraft.So you're going to be using them

(10:37):
to do some of the jobs that we refer to as dull, dirty and
dangerous. So things that you maybe don't
want to risk a crude aircraft with.
So that's going in close to enemy air defence systems to
suppress them and jam them, maybe doing some close in strike
missions. It's difficult that at the
moment looking at concept of operations, how the air forces

(10:59):
are going to do this and very interestingly, how today's
fighter pilots are actually going to train to do this.
So although these are sort of, it's implied they're sort of
sitting on the wing tip of your fighter, they, they may be many
kilometres away doing their own job.
So I think there's a lot of workbehind the scenes that air
forces have got to do while the technology is sort of coming

(11:24):
along, the people of flying demonstrators for our review, we
actually don't include unmanned aircraft at all in our review.
So that would be have something we'd have to consider if any
fleet details emerge about things like CCAS.
But I think that's a long way inthe future.
For the rest of you know, the rest of the time I'm doing the
directory, we're still going to have things like F15, F-16, F18

(11:47):
and F35 dominating the top ten lists for combat aircraft,
certainly. Yes.
And although you know, Ccas do get a lot of attention at the
moment, that does seem to be a lot of development, new test
flights, a lot of talk in the industry and from the
manufacturers about production and putting them in service.
It does actually feel like they are further away than we

(12:10):
actually think, and particularlyfurther away in having a
meaningful impact in Air Force fleets globally and replacing
more traditional fighters. So when you look at something
like Ukraine and Russia being atwar, we've certainly seen drones
coming into that in a really bigway and doing jobs that piloted
fighters would never have done. I think, as I said, there's a

(12:32):
lot of work that needs to be done around concepts of
operations. There's considerations in things
like ethics and proportionality when you're using AI.
And the worry I think is that some nations will be very sort
of conservative and how they adopt this sort of technology,
while others, particularly likesof China, Russia, may just

(12:53):
decide to use it to its full potential and and get some sort
of an advantage. Absolutely.
It is fascinating to have a lookat these directories year on
year because the changes are subtle, but you know, looking
back a decade ago, they are meaningful.
And I think we do see the changes in the fleet playing out

(13:14):
in real life world events. Yeah, I, I sometimes will go
back and look 10 years back, what was the nation flying and,
and what have they retired? And when you look parochially
looking at the UK today, we fly F30 fives in Typhoons.
A few years ago we had Jaguars, Tornadoes, Harriers.
So you do see the fleet changes a lot.

(13:37):
We were seeing a lot in Europe that fleet sizes were getting
smaller with the Russia, Ukrainewar that is being reversed a
bit. So we're seeing some nations now
are buying more F30 fives than they originally planned.
And you've got nations like Poland who are really
significantly upping, upping their their spend.
And yeah, once, once we look at Poland's inventory in maybe five

(13:59):
years time, once it's brought F30 fives in, it's going to look
very, very different to how it did 15 years ago when they were
still flying Soviet era jets primarily.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me
on this episode, Craig. And we will link directly to the
directory in the show notes. Thank you for having me.
And yeah, I, I only get to do sort of data geek once a year

(14:21):
and that's, that's probably enough for me.
But it's, it's a good it's a good project.
And like I say, equally dread and look forward to it.
Flag Global Focus is your new essential podcast for trusted
aviation insight. We publish new episodes twice
weekly. Join us on Friday for a concise
news briefing and on Monday for in depth analysis covering

(14:42):
airlines, defence and aerospace.Flag Global Focus is a
production of Flag Global with audio editing by Lucy Johnson.
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or for
commercial opportunities, pleasee-mail podcast at Flightglobal.
Com and more information can be found in the show notes.
Listeners can get a discount to a new subscription to Fly Global
with the code FG. Podcast terms and conditions

(15:05):
apply. And if you listen on Spotify,
leave us a comment and let us know what you think of the show
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