Saab Reveals Its Stealthy Supersonic Fighter Drone
On Aug. 21, 2026, at Malmen Air Base in Sweden, Saab chose the Swedish Air Force’s 100th birthday to pull the cover off its vision of the next one hundred years. Standing on the floor was a full-scale mock-up of a tailless, stealthy, supersonic drone, an...
Qatar Lines Up a $4.5 Billion Tanker Fleet
Qatar is about to stop borrowing other people’s gas stations. On Aug. 20, 2026, the US State Department signed off on a possible $4.5 billion sale of four Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tankers to the Qatar Emiri Air Force, a deal that would let the small, cash-rich Gulf...
Sweden’s Gripen Fires Its First Taurus Missile
For the first time, one of the smallest and cheapest fighters in Europe has reached far beyond the horizon. On Aug. 21, 2026, a Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripen C released a live Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile over the Vidsel Test Range in Norrbotten, in the Arctic...
The Silent Skies: Payne Stewart’s Last Flight
On the morning of 25 October 1999, a small charter jet lifted off from Orlando bound for Dallas. It was an ordinary hop for six ordinary reasons, a golfer, his agents, a course designer, and two pilots, all with places to be. Within minutes, something went quietly and...
The Spruce Goose Flew Once To Win An Argument
Long Beach harbor, the morning of 2 November 1947, smelled of salt, diesel and quiet disappointment. Bobbing in the channel was the largest flying machine humanity had ever bolted together: a wooden flying boat the length of two-thirds of a football pitch, with a...
The 1969 EC-121 Shootdown: Cold War’s Deadliest Ambush
On the morning of 15 April 1969, a lumbering four-engine reconnaissance aircraft climbed away from a Japanese airfield on a mission its crew had flown, in one form or another, roughly 200 times in three months without incident. It was routine. It was rated minimal...
Navy Weighs Renaming Carrier CVN-81 for Trump
Breaking — The US Navy is internally weighing whether to rename the future aircraft carrier CVN-81, currently designated the future USS Doris Miller, and could potentially name it after President Donald Trump, CNN reported on 20 August 2026 in an exclusive that has...
How a Dead Canadian Jet Reached the Moon
On the morning of 20 February 1959, a factory outside Toronto was building the most advanced interceptor in the Western world. By that afternoon it was building nothing at all. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker had risen in the House of Commons and killed the Avro Arrow...
Seven MiGs, One Panther, Fifty Years’ Silence
Above the Sea of Japan the air was thin and lethally cold, the clouds below him packed like dirty cotton. It was Royce Williams’ second flight of the day, 18 November 1952, and his Grumman Panther was clawing past 12,000 feet when the radio crackled: bogeys,...
Norse Atlantic Draws Strong Takeover Interest
There is a particular kind of turbulence that never shows on the weather radar, and Norse Atlantic Airways flew straight into it this month. The Norwegian long-haul low-cost carrier used its second-quarter results, published on 20 August 2026, to confirm what much of...
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