Battle off Endau, 1942: Vildebeest Biplanes Against Japan’s Fighters
Share this story At around three o’clock on the afternoon of 26 January 1942, a formation of open-cockpit biplanes flew north up the coast of Malaya towards a Japanese landing at Endau. They were Vickers Vildebeests, torpedo bombers designed in the 1920s, with a...
FWD Supreme: India’s AI-Piloted Fighter Shown as a Full-Scale Prototype
Share this story In July, India’s first AI-piloted fighter existed as renderings and a doctrine with a memorable name. On 13 October 2026, it got a body. Bengaluru start-up Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace (FWDA) wheeled out a full-scale static prototype of...
Faith 7: How Gordon Cooper Flew His Mercury Capsule Home by Hand
Share this story On the final day of America’s last Mercury mission, the spacecraft’s brain went dark. One by one, the systems that were supposed to steer Faith 7 home failed. Gordon Cooper, alone in a capsule barely bigger than a telephone box, lined it...
Revolt of the Admirals: When the US Navy Fought the B-36
Share this story On 18 April 1949, workers at Newport News, Virginia, laid the keel of the biggest warship the US Navy had ever ordered: USS United States, a flush-decked supercarrier built to launch bombers big enough to carry atomic weapons. Five days later, the new...
Delta Delays Riyadh Flights to 2027 After Airport Attacks
Share this story Delta Air Lines was eleven days away from its first ever flight to Saudi Arabia. It is now five months away. On Monday, 12 October, Delta said it would delay the planned launch of nonstop service between Atlanta and Riyadh, which had been due to start...
Anduril Steelfin: A Cheaper Missile Interceptor to Rival PAC-3
Share this story Anduril has never built a surface-to-air missile. On Monday it announced a whole family of them. Steelfin, unveiled on 12 October as the US Army’s AUSA conference opened in Washington, is a two-stage interceptor designed to shoot down cruise...
Army Balloon Swarms: Dozens Flew for CENTCOM in the Middle East
Share this story The US Army had planned to fill the sky over the Pacific with more than a hundred high-altitude balloons this year, the biggest balloon swarm experiment it had ever tried. It never happened. The balloons went to the Middle East instead, and they went...
Coyote Block 2C+RM: Raytheon’s Rocket-Powered Drone Killer
Share this story The Coyote is the US Army’s go-to drone killer, and according to Raytheon it has more than 600 combat kills to show for it. On Monday the company revealed what comes next, and it has no jet engine. The new Coyote Block 2C+RM, unveiled on 12...
Sikorsky Nomad 100 Fast Pack: Four Drones in a Shipping Container
Share this story The US Army spent Monday at its biggest trade show of the year, and Sikorsky brought a shipping container. Inside it are four drones. The Nomad 100 Fast Pack, unveiled on 12 October at the Association of the US Army annual meeting in Washington, is a...
Rafale: Omnirole, Combat-Proven and Exported, but Not in Ukraine
Share this story A post circulating on Instagram sums up the Dassault Rafale as the ultimate “omnirole” fighter: carrier operations, nuclear strike, close air support and air superiority “from a single airframe without configuration changes”,...
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