The 1980s Nuke Missile the B-52 Can’t Retire Yet
The AGM-86B was designed when the Soviet Union still existed, gas cost about a dollar a gallon, and the B-52 crews loading it were younger than the bomber. More than four decades later, the United States has decided it cannot let the missile retire just yet. In 2026,...
flydubai Opens Bangkok’s Other Airport to Dubai
Bangkok has two airports, and for years the glamorous international arrivals went to just one of them. On July 1, 2026, flydubai bet on the other. Dubai’s low-cost carrier launched a daily service to Don Mueang — Bangkok’s original airport and now the largest low-cost...
Boeing or Northrop: Who Builds the Navy’s Next Fighter?
Two companies. One contract. Decades of consequences. Sometime around August 2026, the US Navy is expected to decide who will build the F/A-XX — its sixth-generation carrier fighter and one of the most important American aircraft programmes of the century. The choice...
Real Bombers Grounded the World’s Biggest Airshow
Every July, a quiet corner of Gloucestershire becomes the busiest military airfield on Earth. Fighters, bombers and display teams from dozens of nations pack the ramp at RAF Fairford for the Royal International Air Tattoo — the largest military airshow in the world....
China Doesn’t Need the Best Stealth Jet — Just the Most
For twenty years, the Western answer to Chinese air power was simple: our jets are better. The F-22 and F-35 out-sense, out-stealth and out-network anything Beijing could field. That may still be true of any single aircraft. It may also be about to stop mattering....
The UK’s Drones Won’t Always Ask Permission to Fire
For decades, one rule has sat quietly at the centre of Western air power: a human being decides when a weapon kills. On June 30, 2026, Britain edged away from it. Buried inside a sweeping Defence Investment Plan — more than £5 billion for drones, the largest such...
The Boeing 777X Slips Into 2027 — Again
Somewhere on the ramp at Paine Field in Washington State sit rows of enormous, finished airliners with nowhere to go. They are Boeing 777Xs — the biggest twinjets ever built — and most of them have never carried a paying passenger. In 2026 they are still waiting,...
The £4.6 Billion Cheque That Starts a Sixth-Gen Fighter
For months, Europe’s most ambitious fighter programme had a hole in the middle of it: the money. On July 3, 2026, that hole was filled. The United Kingdom, Italy and Japan signed a £4.6 billion ($6.1 billion) contract to push their sixth-generation combat aircraft...
One Last Growl: The Warthog’s Final Range Day
It is 107 degrees on the range tower at Gila Bend, and a photographer is shielding his camera in the shade between passes so it will not overheat. Then the sound arrives — that unmistakable, chest-rattling BRRRT — and an A-10C Thunderbolt II drops out of the Arizona...
The Gap in the Formation
Tomorrow, as America’s 250th birthday flyovers thunder across the country, watch for the moment the crowd goes quiet. Four jets approach in perfect formation — and then one pulls up, streaming away from the others, climbing alone toward the vertical until...
Recent Comments