The Tanker That Flew Home on a Borrowed Tail

The Tanker That Flew Home on a Borrowed Tail

Look closely at the KC-135 that touched down at RAF Mildenhall on the afternoon of August 2 and something does not add up. The fuselage wears the serial 63-8017. The tail wears a different one: 63-8002. This is one airframe stitched together from two — a flying...
WestJet Grounds Its Entire Mainline Fleet

WestJet Grounds Its Entire Mainline Fleet

Just after midnight on Sunday, the busiest travel weekend of the Canadian summer fell silent. Roughly 150 WestJet aircraft that should have been shuttling holidaymakers between Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and a long list of sun destinations stayed exactly where they...
Japan Just Joined the Tomahawk Club

Japan Just Joined the Tomahawk Club

For decades Japan built warships bristling with missile cells and used them only to shoot things down. That just changed. On Jul. 29, 2026, the destroyer JS Chōkai fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into the Pacific — the first time a Japanese warship has ever...
Lasers Arrive in Europe to Kill Drones

Lasers Arrive in Europe to Kill Drones

The cheapest weapon on a modern battlefield is a drone you can buy online. The U.S. Air Force has just answered it in Europe with one of the most futuristic: a laser. Quietly, and at locations it will not name, U.S. Air Forces in Europe has fielded the Compact Laser...
Marine F-35B Goes Down at Miramar

Marine F-35B Goes Down at Miramar

Black smoke over San Diego is never a good sign. On Friday morning, it meant a stealth fighter was down. A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II crashed in the vicinity of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar shortly before 10 a.m. Pacific time, sending a column of black...
A US Drone Triggered a Korean Border Scare

A US Drone Triggered a Korean Border Scare

At about 2:30 in the afternoon on 30 July 2026, sensors along South Korea’s border with the North picked up something they couldn’t identify: an unmanned aircraft, near a frontline outpost, not squawking anything friendly. In the most heavily militarised...
A Falcon 50 Picks the Worst Place to Get Stuck

A Falcon 50 Picks the Worst Place to Get Stuck

Here is an aviation rarity: an incident where the scary part — a mechanical warning in flight — ended fine, and the embarrassing part happened on the ground, at walking pace.On the evening of 28 July 2026, a Dassault Falcon 50 three-engine business jet...
Japan Scrambles Over the East China Sea

Japan Scrambles Over the East China Sea

On 29 July 2026, Japan launched fighter jets over the East China Sea after picking up a suspected airspace violation. Then the Ministry of Defense did what it usually does with these events: said almost nothing.No aircraft type was named. No confirmation of whether...
Boeing’s Baby and Giant 737s Pass the Test

Boeing’s Baby and Giant 737s Pass the Test

They are the smallest and the largest members of the 737 MAX family, and for years they have been the two that would not cross the finish line. On 28 July 2026, Boeing said both the 737-7 (MAX 7) and 737-10 (MAX 10) have finally finished their certification flight...