Ukraine Hits Russia’s Deepest Refinery Yet
Just after dawn on Monday, air-raid sirens and the buzz of engines reached a city most of the war had never touched. Nizhnekamsk sits roughly 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) from the nearest Ukrainian-held ground, deep in the Russian republic of Tatarstan. By mid-morning...
The Silver Eagles Come Back for the Carrier
A Marine fighter squadron that flew its last Hornet into retirement in 2023 is coming back — and this time it is coming back for the carrier deck.On 31 July 2026, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 115, the “Silver Eagles,” flew the F-35C Lightning II...
Twenty-One Days to Rebuild the Arsenal
Wars are not won only by the jets on the ramp. They are won by the factories behind them, and by whether those factories can build missiles faster than a shooting war can burn through them. This week the Pentagon admitted, in writing, that America is not building them...
The Cessna That Found an F-16 on Its Wing
It is the kind of thing a weekend pilot never expects to see filling the windscreen: the grey nose of an F-16 Fighting Falcon sliding into formation a few wingspans away, wings heavy with missiles. On Sunday, at least one general-aviation pilot over New Jersey got...
An F-35, a MiG-17, and a Faked Pearl Harbor
For two days this weekend, the flattest stretch of Nebraska turns into the loudest. Offutt Air Force Base throws open its gates on 8 and 9 August for the 2026 Defenders of Freedom Air & Space Show, and the headline act is the one everyone came to see: a...
The Little Warplane That Wouldn’t Die
Most Vietnam-era warplanes are long gone — melted into scrap or bolted to a museum pole. The OV-10 Bronco keeps refusing to leave. Built to fight guerrillas in the 1960s, the funny little twin-boom turboprop has come roaring back again and again: over the Mekong...
The Army’s Spy Plane With Three Tails
By a decades-old agreement between the U.S. services, the Army isn’t really supposed to fly its own combat aeroplanes — that job belongs to the Air Force. The Grumman OV-1 Mohawk is the great exception: a stubby, triple-tailed, bug-eyed turboprop built for...
The Jet James Bond Parked at a Gas Station
In the opening minutes of Octopussy (1983), Roger Moore’s James Bond escapes an exploding hangar in a jet barely bigger than he is, outruns a heat-seeking missile, then coasts up to a petrol station and deadpans: “Fill her up, please.” The joke works...
A Robot Built the Part That Saved This C-17
A hailstorm, two runaway business jets, and a nose panel that nobody would build. That is the short version of how a U.S. Air Force C-17 ended up grounded for the better part of a year and a half. The long version ends with a robot, a research lab in Ohio, and the...
Iran Puts a Downed Strike Eagle on Display
Iran has turned a hole in the ground into a trophy case. This week the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threw open an underground “exhibition” of American and Israeli aircraft it says its air defences knocked out of the sky. The centrepiece is a mangled...
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