{"id":70780,"date":"2025-07-16T15:28:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T15:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=70780"},"modified":"2025-07-16T15:28:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T15:28:33","slug":"nigerian-air-force-to-acquire-49-new-aircraft-by-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/07\/16\/nigerian-air-force-to-acquire-49-new-aircraft-by-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigerian Air Force to Acquire 49 New Aircraft by 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Anifowoshe Oladipupo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Nigerian Air Force (NAF), is set to boost its aerial strength with the acquisition of 49 new aircraft by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, made the announcement at the opening of the 2025 Aircraft Engineering Conference in Abuja.<\/p>\n<p>The new fleet will include three CASA 295 transport aircraft, 10 AW-109 Trekker Type B helicopters, 12 AH-1Z attack helicopters, and 24 M-346 fighter jets.<\/p>\n<p>The acquisition follows the delivery of 15 aircraft over the past two years, including six T-129 ATAK helicopters, two AW-109 Trekker Type A helicopters, three Beechcraft King Air planes, and four Diamond 62 surveillance aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>Air Marshal Abubakar said the growing fleet demands \u201cadvanced, data-driven maintenance practices,\u201d and stressed the need to enhance engineering capacity and support systems to match operational progress.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the NAF is investing heavily in logistics, spare parts, and ground support equipment to ensure all aircraft remain serviceable by the fourth quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Chief of Aircraft Engineering, Air Vice Marshal A.I. Amodu, described engineering as \u201cthe backbone\u201d of NAF operations, calling for innovation and excellence in aircraft maintenance to ensure readiness and efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Anifowoshe Oladipupo &nbsp; The Nigerian Air Force (NAF), is set to boost its aerial strength with the acquisition of 49 new aircraft by the end of 2026. Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, made the announcement at the opening of the 2025 Aircraft Engineering Conference in Abuja. The new fleet will include [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":70781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-and-security","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70782,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70780\/revisions\/70782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}