The Test Pilot of a Hundred Firsts
Before there was radar, before there were reliable instruments, before anyone had crossed the United States without landing, there was a quiet Army lieutenant named John Macready — a man who spent the early 1920s collecting aviation “firsts” the way other...
He Folded His Wing Back On — In Mid-Air
At a thousand feet over Wiltshire, pulling out of a vertical dive at five times the force of gravity, Neil Williams heard a bang and felt the airframe lurch. His left wing had begun to fold up. In the next few seconds, the British aerobatic champion did something so...
A Startup Just Won $500M to Flood the Army With FPV Drones
Three years ago, Neros was two former teenage drone racers in a workshop. This week the U.S. Army handed the startup a contract worth up to $500 million to build first-person-view attack drones — the cheap, expendable weapons that have rewritten the rules of war in...
No Robot at the Controls: The B-21 Keeps Two Pilots
For years, one of the more futuristic rumours about America’s new stealth bomber was that it might not need much of a crew at all — that the B-21 Raider could fly with a single pilot, or eventually none. This month the Air Force put that speculation to rest with a...
America’s $175 Billion “Golden Dome” Gets Its General
The most expensive defence project in American history now has a single name attached to it. On 17 July 2026, the Senate confirmed Space Force General Michael A. Guetlein to run Golden Dome — President Trump’s plan to throw a missile shield over the entire United...
Britain’s Tankers Can’t Refuel Its Own Spy Planes
Britain owns a fleet of the most capable aerial tankers on the market — and cannot use them to refuel some of its own most important aircraft. It is one of the quiet embarrassments of the Royal Air Force, and after fifteen years the RAF has finally said out loud that...
India Buys the “AWACS Killer”: 300 Russian Super-Missiles
For years the Indian Air Force could see the enemy long before it could hit him. Chinese fighters and airborne radar planes carry missiles that reach out past 200 kilometres; India’s Su-30MKI fleet, its heaviest hitter, had nothing that could match them. That gap is...
The Air Race That Built the Spitfire
Before the Spitfire, before the Battle of Britain, there was a series of air races over water — gaudy, dangerous, and watched by hundreds of thousands. The Schneider Trophy looked like pure spectacle. In fact, it was quietly forging the engine and the designer...
The 1949 Jet Bomber Still Flying Today
In May 1949, a test pilot was reminded that the day chosen for his aircraft’s maiden flight — the 13th — fell on a Friday, and that no one would blame him for waiting. He was unmoved. The aeroplane he flew that day went on to serve for fifty-seven...
The Skyjacker Who Jumped Into Thin Air
On the afternoon of 24 November 1971, a quiet man in a business suit walked up to the Northwest Orient counter in Portland, Oregon, and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle. He gave his name as Dan Cooper. A few hours later he would step out of the back of a...
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