Australia Gets America’s AMRAAM Killer First
America has been building a missile so secret it barely shows its face in public. Now it is letting a friend hold it — and Australia gets to go first. On 6 August, at Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles...
The Robot Wingman Grows Landing Gear — and Crashes
The Pentagon’s vision of cheap robot fighters flying shotgun for crewed jets took two big steps this week. One went forward. The other went straight into the Utah desert. Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has begun building the first XQ-58A Valkyries...
The Air Force Just Bought a 300-Mile JDAM
For thirty years, a JDAM was a dumb bomb with a brain bolted on: cheap, accurate, and useful only if you flew almost directly over the target. The Air Force just bought a version that can hit something more than 300 miles away. On August 5, 2026, the U.S. Air Force...
A Jet Got Too Close to Marine One
For about ninety seconds on Tuesday afternoon, the most protected passenger in the world and a planeload of holidaymakers bound for Florida were sharing a narrow slice of Washington sky that the rules say they never should have. On August 4, 2026, Marine One lifted...
A Warthog Rode Shotgun for a Nuclear Missile Sub
A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II was built to kill tanks. Late last month it was flying cover for something far more valuable than any tank column: a submarine carrying enough firepower to end a war. On July 28, 2026, the Navy photographed one of its Ohio-class...
The Space Force’s Mystery Spaceplane
Somewhere above your head, right now, there is a small robotic spaceplane that the United States has been flying for more than fifteen years — and the government will not tell you what it does. It looks like a Space Shuttle that shrank in the wash. It launches...
The Spy Who Gave Stalin the Bomb
The finale of The Race for the Bomb, an Afterburner focus series. Nine parts brought the bomb from a London traffic light to Nagasaki. The last part answers the question Washington asked in September 1949: how did Stalin get it so fast? Somewhere between Japan and...
One Last Photo Before the Boneyard
It was never glamorous. It never dropped a bomb, never dogfought, never broke the sound barrier. But for 32 years the T-1A Jayhawk did the quiet, essential job of turning student pilots into the people who fly America’s tankers and transports — and now it...
AI Flew 27 Live Intercepts by Itself
An artificial-intelligence agent just strapped into a fighter, stared at an enemy jet through an infrared eye, and ran it down twenty-seven times — and no human touched the stick.Lockheed Martin Skunk Works pulled the curtain back on August 4, 2026, revealing...
The B-21 and F-47 Are Reportedly Ahead of Schedule
Big American weapons programs have a reputation, and it is not for finishing early. So when the general in charge of the two most important jets in the U.S. Air Force’s future stands up and says both are running ahead of schedule, it is worth a second look. That is...
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