USAF Wants a $10 Million Reaper Replacement by 2029
The United States Air Force has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reapers since the Iran war began. That is roughly a quarter of the fleet, gone, in about a year. The service has now decided that the answer is not a better Reaper. It is a cheaper one — and it wants it four...
Air India A320neo Lost All Three Hydraulic Systems at 36,000 Feet
The Airbus A320 has three hydraulic systems, and they are separate on purpose. Green, blue and yellow. Three reservoirs, three pressure sources, no fluid shared between them. The architecture exists so that no single failure can take away the flight controls. On 4...
Kamov Ka-22 Vintokryl: The Soviet Record Breaker That Killed Nine
On 24 November 1961, a machine that looked like somebody had bolted two helicopters to the wingtips of a transport aircraft lifted 16.4 tonnes to two and a half kilometres, set six world records in one flight, and landed thirty minutes later with its fuel warning...
HAP-alpha: DLR’s 138-Kilogram Solar Aircraft Takes Off
An aircraft with three quarters the wingspan of an Airbus A320 and the weight of two adults took off from a runway in Saxony-Anhalt on 2 September, flew a wide, careful circuit for seventy minutes, and landed again. It never went higher than 180 metres. That is not a...
Su-57E: Russia Will Unveil a Secret Weapon in Egypt
Russia is taking its export fighter to the Egyptian coast next week, and it is bringing something it has never shown anyone. Rostec, the Russian state defence conglomerate, says the Su-57E will fly at the El Alamein International Airshow from 8 to 10 September...
Khagantak-243: India Tests a Private-Sector Glide Bomb
Share this story On 2 September 2026 the Indian Air Force released two photographs on X: a bomb in mid-glide, and the detonation that ended its flight. The accompanying text announced the successful drop of an indigenously designed long-range glide bomb called the...
Junkers G.38: The Airliner With Passenger Seats Inside the Wing
Share this story The Junkers G.38 had a wing two metres thick at the root. Junkers, being Junkers, looked at that volume and decided it was a waste to fill it with nothing but structure. So they put passengers in it. On the second aircraft, six people sat inside the...
Blohm & Voss BV 141: The Asymmetric Warplane That Flew Well
Share this story Look at a Blohm & Voss BV 141 head-on and your brain files a complaint. The engine and the tail are on the left. The crew sit in a glass pod on the right. There is no fuselage in the middle, because there is no middle. It looks like two different...
Operation Frantic: The Poltava Raid That Burned 43 B-17s
Share this story On 2 June 1944, B-17s of the Fifteenth Air Force bombed marshalling yards in Hungary and then kept going east. They landed in Ukraine, at three Soviet airfields the Red Army had handed over to the Americans. It was the first time in the war that a...
Alexa Spatium: Ukraine’s Jet Interceptor Answers the Jet Shahed
Share this story Ukraine spent three years learning how to shoot down Shaheds cheaply. Machine guns on pickup trucks. Electronic warfare. Then, cleverest of all, small propeller-driven interceptor drones that cost a few thousand dollars and rammed a target worth far...
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