Battle Damage Assessment: Why the First Number Is Always Wrong
Share this story In March 2026, Israel said it had destroyed Iran’s F-14 Tomcat fleet at Isfahan. Three months later Iranian state television showed a Tomcat coming home from a mission. Six months later, social media is still confidently announcing that the last...
Fighter Jet Takeoff and Landing: The Real Numbers, F-104 to F-35
Share this story A Lockheed F-104 Starfighter came down final approach at 175 knots with full flaps, and that was the basic number. The pilot then added five knots for every 1,000 pounds of fuel still in the tanks above the first thousand. On a typical recovery that...
CAD/PADs: Every Fighter Jet’s Explosives Have an Expiry Date
Share this story In August 2026 the US Air Force posted a contracting notice so dull that almost nobody read it. It concerned cartridge- and propellant-actuated devices for the F-117 Nighthawk — an aircraft officially retired in 2008. The internet noticed the...
FAR 91.117: Why Airliners Slow to 250 Knots Below 10,000 Feet
Share this story Sit at the front of a descending airliner and you can feel the moment. The nose comes up a fraction, the engines spool, and a low rumble rises through the floor as the speedbrakes bite. The aeroplane has just arrived at 10,000 feet with too much...
De Havilland Venom: Switzerland Flew It Until 1983
Share this story In 1971 a Swiss fighter jet landed on a motorway. Not in an emergency — on purpose, as part of a doctrine that assumed Swiss airfields would be cratered within hours of a war starting, and that the air force would therefore have to operate from...
Northrop N-9M: The Flying Wing That Led to the B-2
Share this story In April 1980 a very ill old man was wheeled into a room at Northrop and shown a model of an aircraft. He had spent his career insisting that the ideal aeroplane was a wing and nothing else — no fuselage, no tail, no drag it did not need —...
Akinci UAV-300: A Drone Just Fired a Ballistic Missile
Share this story A propeller-driven drone took off from a test centre in Tekirdag on Friday, flew out over the Black Sea, and put a ballistic missile through a ship more than 250 kilometres away. Then it turned round and flew home along its planned route. That is not...
Swiss F-35: The US Non-Paper That Savic Never Passed On
Share this story Shortly before Christmas 2024, a document arrived at the Swiss Federal Department of Defence (VBS) from Washington. It was a non-paper — the diplomatic instrument governments use to float a position without formally committing to it. Its message...
Inkspot 59: The B-47 That Vanished With Two Nuclear Cores
Share this story On 10 March 1956 a six-engined American bomber descended through a solid deck of cloud over the Mediterranean to meet a tanker. It never arrived. No wreckage was found. No bodies were found. And neither were the two containers of nuclear weapon...
Korean Air Switches On Free Starlink Wi-Fi on 15 September
Share this story Korean Air will switch on free Starlink Wi-Fi on 15 September 2026, and in doing so becomes the first full-service airline in East Asia to put SpaceX’s low-Earth-orbit network into its cabins. It starts small: four aircraft. It is meant to...
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