The WW2 Lesson Russia Is About to Learn: When the Fuel Runs Out, the War Stops
Share this story RAND analysis argues that oil shortages alone can grind Russia’s war machine to a halt — just as strikes on fuel infrastructure crippled Nazi Germany in the Second World War. An army that runs out of fuel cannot keep fighting.Michael Bohnert —...
500 Drones in a Shipping Container: The Pentagon’s Race to Master Swarm Warfare
The Pentagon wants 500 drones in a single swarm. Not someday. Not in theory. Right now, DARPA is soliciting proposals for containerised autonomous drone systems capable of launching, recovering, and coordinating constellations of up to 500 unmanned aircraft from...
America’s Fighter Factory Problem: Why the World’s Largest Air Force Can’t Build Jets Fast Enough
Yesterday, we reported on a remarkable letter from the nation’s Adjutants General to Congress, demanding the Air Force buy at least 72 — and ideally 100 — new fighters per year to prevent the force from shrinking below the threshold needed to fight a major war....
Tomcats 4, Gaddafi 0: The Gulf of Sidra Shootdowns
Share this story Muammar Gaddafi drew a line across the Mediterranean and dared the United States Navy to cross it. The Navy crossed it twice. Both times, F-14 Tomcats answered. The two Gulf of Sidra incidents — 1981 and 1989 — are the only American air-to-air kills...
What Actually Happens Inside a Wind Tunnel
Share this story Every aircraft you have ever seen in the sky was first tested in a room where nothing flies at all. Wind tunnels are, conceptually, the simplest tools in aerospace engineering: take a tube, put air in one end, put a model in the middle, and measure...
The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel
Share this story Sit in a window seat over the wing of almost any modern airliner and you will see it: the wingtip, instead of ending in a clean point, bends sharply upward into a fin. It looks like a small design flourish. It is not. That upturned tip is quietly one...
The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards
Share this story Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead...
A Robot Boat Just Rescued Two Downed Pilots
Share this story Somewhere off the coast of Oman, in the dark, two U.S. Army aviators are treading water. Their AH-64 Apache is gone — minutes ago it was flying a patrol near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, and now it is at the bottom of the Gulf. They are alive,...
Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet
Share this story On the first morning of June, an Air Canada jet pushed back at Montreal and pointed its nose at Nantes, a tidy French city on the Loire that no Canadian airline had ever served nonstop. Two days later, a widebody lifted off from Toronto bound for...
A Czech Trainer Just Joined the Wright Flyer
Share this story A small white jet with a chequered flag down its flank taxied to a stop outside the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center on a bright Saturday in June, and a 9-year-old’s dream from 1962 finally landed. The pilot who climbed down was Ed Noel. The aircraft...
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