The An-225 Mriya: The Largest Aircraft Ever Built
There are big aircraft, and then there was the Mriya. Stand under a Boeing 747 and you feel small. Stand under an An-225 and the 747 starts to look like the small one. For 33 years exactly one of these machines existed — a six-engined Soviet giant built for a single,...
The Duels That Decided American Air Power
On the afternoon of 26 October 2001, Boeing chairman Phil Condit stood with his Joint Strike Fighter chief, Frank Statkus, in front of a television carrying a live feed from the Pentagon. The largest defence contract in history — one stealth fighter for four armed...
From Bombers to the Vespa to Drones
In the spring of 1946, in a factory near Pisa that Allied bombers had flattened only months before, an engineer wheeled out a strange little machine — a step-through scooter with a rounded steel body and a small engine tucked by the rear wheel. Enrico Piaggio walked...
Pakistan Bets on China’s Stealth Fighter
Pakistan is on course to fly something no air force outside China has ever operated: a Chinese stealth fighter. The Pakistan Air Force has moved to acquire the Shenyang J-35 — reportedly up to 40 jets — in what would be the first export sale of a Chinese...
Batik Air Links Kuala Lumpur to Sydney
Sydney has a new way to reach Asia, and it comes wearing a splash of Malaysian batik on its tail. From 1 July 2026, Batik Air Malaysia flies a daily Airbus A330 between Kuala Lumpur and Sydney — the airline’s fourth city in Australia and a fresh shot across the bows...
China’s B-2-Sized Drones Step Into the Open
In the desert of far-western China, a passing satellite caught something Beijing would much rather keep in the shadows: two enormous stealth flying wings, sitting in the open on a remote airfield — the larger of them nearly as wide as an American B-2 bomber. The...
The Navy’s New Doomsday Plane Is Late
There is one aircraft the United States hopes it never has to use for its real job: the plane that would relay the order to launch nuclear missiles from America’s submerged submarines. Its replacement is now running late — and the government watchdog that warned about...
What Buzzed a Private Jet Over New York?
Ten minutes after lifting off from New York on Independence Day, climbing through 15,800 feet, the crew of a NetJets business jet saw something big and silver flash past their windscreen — close enough to report it. Then it was gone. They keyed the radio and told air...
Britain’s £298 Billion Bet on the Next War
Britain has put a number on its future: £298 billion. That is the size of the Defence Investment Plan unveiled at the end of June, the government’s four-year blueprint for rebuilding an armed forces bent on fighting “the wars of today and tomorrow.” It is a genuinely...
Alone, the J-20 Loses. With Drones, It Wins.
A number from a Chinese laboratory has been making the rounds, and it is a striking one: 95 percent. That, according to a computer simulation, is how often a Chengdu J-20 beat an American F-22 Raptor in a fight north of Taiwan. Read a little closer, though, and the...
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