A Robot Tanker Sails Into New York
Share this story Among the tall ships and grey hulls that filled New York Harbor for America’s 250th birthday, the strangest silhouette wasn’t a ship at all. Lashed to the flight deck of USS Nimitz, between rows of Super Hornets, sat a windowless grey machine with...
The Stealth Bomber That Stayed Home
Share this story On July 4, virtually everything in the US military that flies made an appearance over Washington. Three bombers in one formation. Eight Thunderbirds. A brand-new Air Force One with a Raptor escort. The one aircraft everybody on the internet was...
The Day the Air Force Bombed Los Angeles — and Missed
Share this story On the afternoon of August 16, 1956, residents of the Los Angeles suburbs looked up to a strange and frankly alarming sight: two jet fighters chasing a lone, pilotless aircraft in tightening circles, hurling rockets at it — and missing, again and...
The 1980s Nuke Missile the B-52 Can’t Retire Yet
Share this story The AGM-86B was designed when the Soviet Union still existed, gas cost about a dollar a gallon, and the B-52 crews loading it were younger than the bomber. More than four decades later, the United States has decided it cannot let the missile retire...
Boeing or Northrop: Who Builds the Navy’s Next Fighter?
Share this story Two companies. One contract. Decades of consequences. Sometime around August 2026, the US Navy is expected to decide who will build the F/A-XX — its sixth-generation carrier fighter and one of the most important American aircraft programmes of the...
China Doesn’t Need the Best Stealth Jet — Just the Most
Share this story For twenty years, the Western answer to Chinese air power was simple: our jets are better. The F-22 and F-35 out-sense, out-stealth and out-network anything Beijing could field. That may still be true of any single aircraft. It may also be about to...
One Last Growl: The Warthog’s Final Range Day
Share this story It is 107 degrees on the range tower at Gila Bend, and a photographer is shielding his camera in the shade between passes so it will not overheat. Then the sound arrives — that unmistakable, chest-rattling BRRRT — and an A-10C Thunderbolt II drops out...
A Cheesesteak, a MiG-21, and Mach 1
Share this story Somewhere over the Florida coast, at better than a thousand miles an hour, a man in an oxygen helmet unwrapped a cheesesteak, took a bite, and pulled a face you don’t usually see outside a rollercoaster. That, apparently, is what it now takes to...
The Strike Eagles Came Home as Monsters
Share this story The first eight came in before sunset on 1 July, dropping onto RAF Lakenheath’s runway one after another. The last three arrived in the dark, their names unreadable. Eleven F-15E Strike Eagles of the 48th Fighter Wing, home from the Iran air war...
An Eagle and a Ghost Fly Together
Share this story One photo, two aircraft, and a very large hint about the future of air combat. On 1 July, Pacific Air Forces posted imagery of a US Air Force F-15EX Eagle II flying over the Philippine Sea in close formation with something no American fighter had been...
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