Belgium Raises F-16 Pledge: Ten Jets for Ukraine
Share this story Two weeks ago the number was three. On Thursday evening in Brussels, over a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the EU summit, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever more than tripled it. Belgium, he said, will hand Ukraine ten F-16 fighters before...
HMS Prince of Wales Sails for the High North With F-35Bs
Share this story Families lined the Round Tower in Old Portsmouth on Sunday afternoon, 18 October 2026, as HMS Prince of Wales slipped out of harbour. The 65,000-tonne carrier, Britain’s biggest warship, was due to leave at 17:00, weather permitting, and the...
Romanian F-16s Shoot Down Two Geran Jet Drones Off Sulina
Share this story The sun was going down over the Danube Delta when the radar picture filled with targets. A group of aircraft was moving southwest across the Black Sea, about 120 kilometres east of Snake Island, on a course that pointed straight at the Romanian coast....
Dassault Étendard IV: France’s First Carrier Strike Jet
Share this story In the mid-1950s Dassault built a small strike jet that nobody wanted. The French Air Force was not interested, and neither were the NATO air forces it had been pitched to. Then the French Navy took a look at a bigger, more powerful version, and...
Alpha Jet: The Franco-German Trainer That Went to War
Share this story Ask a Patrouille de France pilot about the jet they fly, and you may get an unexpectedly modest answer. They all come from the Rafale or the Mirage 2000, one of them told British forces broadcaster BFBS this year, and by comparison the little red,...
Rafale A: When France Walked Out of the Eurofighter in 1985
Share this story On 4 July 1986, a white delta-winged jet with canards and two American engines lifted off from Istres in the south of France. Test pilot Guy Mitaux-Maurouard climbed to 11,000 metres and pushed it to Mach 1.3 on its very first flight, which lasted...
ACF Fighter: France Goes It Alone on the Rafale’s Successor
Share this story France has made up its mind. The fighter that will one day replace the Rafale will be French, designed and built at home, with partners invited only on France’s terms. General Jérôme Bellanger, chief of staff of the French Air and...
How Hollywood Hid Lockheed’s Burbank Factory Under a Fake Suburb
Share this story In early 1942, a pilot flying over Burbank, California, would have seen rows of houses, trees, lawns and a few parked cars. Underneath, thousands of people were building warplanes. The suburb was made of canvas, netting, chicken wire and paint, and...
Dassault Mirage IIIV: The Nine-Engine VTOL Fighter That Hit Mach 2
Share this story In September 1966 a French prototype that could take off vertically flew at Mach 2.04 in level flight. Nothing that could hover had ever gone that fast. To manage it, the Dassault Mirage IIIV carried nine jet engines: one large turbofan for forward...
FAA Grounds the Elixir Trainer After a Fatal Flap Failure in France
Share this story The FAA has grounded the Elixir, the French two-seat trainer that only won its US type certificate last year. An emergency airworthiness directive published in the Federal Register on 13 October 2026, effective the next day, bars every Elixir in the...
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