Ukraine’s Deepest Strike Yet Hits a Rosneft Refinery
Share this story Ukraine mounted one of its deepest strikes of the summer overnight on 22 August 2026, sending long-range drones more than 1,000 kilometres into Russia’s Samara region. By morning two sites were burning: the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, part of...
The First Balloon to Circle the World
Share this story On 21 March 1999, two exhausted men brought a towering silver balloon down onto the Egyptian desert and stepped into the history books. Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones had just done what pioneers had tried and failed to do for decades: fly all the...
Bulgaria’s New F-16s Will Be Three Years Late
Share this story Bulgaria has spent years trying to drag its air force into the NATO era, and it has just been handed some unwelcome news. The second batch of eight brand-new F-16 Block 70 fighters, once promised by the end of 2027, may not arrive until 2030. Lockheed...
Saab Reveals Its Stealthy Supersonic Fighter Drone
Share this story 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...
Sweden’s Gripen Fires Its First Taurus Missile
Share this story 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,...
Norse Atlantic Draws Strong Takeover Interest
Share this story 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...
Aer Lingus Cuts Five US Routes
Share this story Aer Lingus began 2026 promising its largest-ever transatlantic schedule. It will end the year having quietly dismantled five of its US routes, a retreat that says as much about the economics of the North Atlantic as it does about one Irish carrier....
Sweden’s Flying Barrel Went to War for the UN
Share this story It looked like a beer barrel with wings, and the Swedes said so themselves — they called it Flygande Tunnan, the “Flying Barrel.” But behind that comical shape hid a serious pioneer: the first swept-wing fighter to enter squadron...
NATO Massed Its Jets Right Next to Kaliningrad
Share this story On Tuesday, 18 August 2026, a very unusual crowd gathered in the sky over northern Poland and the Baltic — and every serious flight-tracker in Europe stopped to watch. In a large, U.S.-led NATO air exercise, a dense package of allied aircraft...
A Budget Jet to Frankfurt: Air Arabia Goes Daily
Share this story The Gulf’s low-cost giant is about to do something low-cost carriers are not supposed to do: fly a narrowbody, non-stop, five and a half hours to the heart of Europe — every single day. On 19 August 2026, Air Arabia announced a new daily...
Recent Comments