Skybolt and Blue Streak: How the RAF Lost Britain’s Bomb
Share this story Britain spent the 1950s building three superb bombers and then discovered it had nothing worth putting in them. The Vulcan, the Victor and the Valiant were designed to fly over the Soviet Union and drop free-fall bombs. By the time they were in...
The Snark: America’s Nuclear Cruise Missile That Flew Into the Amazon
Share this story On 5 December 1956 the United States Air Force launched a nuclear-capable cruise missile from Cape Canaveral, sent it towards Puerto Rico, and then lost it. Not lost as in crashed. Lost as in it kept flying, ignored every command including the...
Su-27 vs MiG-29: The Only War They Fought Each Other
Share this story The Su-27 and the MiG-29 were designed in the same country, in the same decade, against the same American threat. They were never supposed to meet. They met exactly once, in February 1999, over a stretch of scrub on the border between Ethiopia and...
Operation Provide Comfort: When Two F-15s Shot Down Two Black Hawks
Share this story The helicopters had American flags painted on the fuel tanks, on both cabin doors, on the nose and on the belly. It was a clear spring morning in northern Iraq with good visibility. The lead F-15 pilot passed 1,000 feet to their left and 500 feet...
Three Killed as a Cirrus SR22T Hits a Slope Above Leukerbad
Share this story Three people were killed on Tuesday afternoon when a Cirrus SR22T struck a mountainside above Leukerbad, in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Kantonspolizei Wallis said the aircraft had taken off from Lugano and made an intermediate landing at Sion...
Bell Starts Building Nigeria’s AH-1Z Vipers
Share this story In a hangar in Amarillo, Texas, on 16 September 2026, a delegation from Nigeria signed their names on a metal beam. The beam is the spine of the first AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter being built for the Nigerian Air Force. There will be twelve, and the...
F135 Engine Core Upgrade Clears Its Design Review
Share this story The F-35’s problem was never thrust. It was electricity, and the heat that comes with it. On 15 September 2026, Pratt & Whitney announced from East Hartford that it had completed the Risk Reduction Design Review for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade...
SPICE 1000 on the F-35I Adir: Israel Arms Its Lightning
Share this story Israel’s F-35s have been flying the hardest missions of the last two years with somebody else’s bombs. That is about to change. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced at the Air, Space & Cyber conference on 15 September 2026 that it is...
NATO’s Drone Wingmen: USAFE Prepares for Allied CCAs
Share this story Europe has spent three years arguing about whether it should build its own fighters or keep buying American ones. The answer taking shape is neither, and it is not really about fighters at all. At the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space...
F-47 and F/A-XX: The Industrial Base Problem Nobody Solved
Share this story When the Pentagon shelved the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter last year, the official reason was that American industry could not develop and build two of them at once. A lot of people did not believe it. The Air Force general who advises the Pentagon...
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