Cobra Warrior 26-2: RAF Exercise Ends After 942 Sorties
Share this story For three and a half weeks this autumn, Britain’s skies hosted the RAF’s biggest homeland defence exercise. Now the Royal Air Force has published the final tally for Exercise Cobra Warrior 26-2: 942 sorties, more than 2,500 flying hours...
AN/ALE-50 and BriteCloud: How Towed and Expendable Decoys Work
Share this story There is a moment in the design of every defensive electronic warfare system where the engineering stops being intuitive. You are being tracked by a radar. The obvious response is to drown that radar in noise. And the moment you do, you have told...
Spitfire XIV vs P-51D Mustang: Which Was the Better Fighter?
Share this story Ask a room of warbird enthusiasts which was the best piston-engined fighter of the Second World War in Europe and you will start an argument that has been running for 80 years. Two names come up again and again: the American P-51D Mustang and the...
Gust Locks: The Forgotten Pin That Keeps Crashing Aircraft
Share this story Every parked aircraft has a problem: wind. A gust across the ramp can slam a rudder or an elevator against its stops, damaging the control system or hurting someone nearby. The fix is simple and almost as old as aviation itself. Lock the controls....
How Cheap Drone Interceptors Work: Sting, Coyote and Roadrunner
Share this story For most of the history of air defence, the target was worth more than the missile that killed it. A bomber, a fighter or a cruise missile cost millions, so a missile that cost hundreds of thousands was a bargain. Drones broke that arithmetic. A...
Superjet 100 Service Life Extended to 20 Years by Rosaviatsia
Share this story Russia’s most numerous home-built jet airliner has just been granted five extra years of life. On 12 October, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, approved an increase in the permitted service life of the Superjet 100 from...
Radar Jamming Techniques: Noise, Deception and DRFM Explained
Share this story A radar is a very simple liar detector. It shouts a pulse into the dark, waits, and measures how long the echo takes to come back. Distance is just time multiplied by the speed of light and halved. There is no judgement in it and no scepticism....
Dexedrine and Ambien: The Go Pills and No-Go Pills USAF Aircrew Carry
Share this story It begins with a reclining chair and an hour of pure oxygen. Before a U-2 Dragon Lady pilot climbs towards 70,000 feet, the physiological support team seals him into a yellow full-pressure suit, screws on the helmet and parks him in a lounger to flush...
FADEC Explained: The Computer That Really Runs a Jet Engine
Share this story When a fighter pilot slams the throttle into afterburner, it feels like a direct command to the engine. It is not. On a modern jet the throttle is a request, sent as an electrical signal to a box of electronics bolted to the engine, and that box...
PAC-3 Seekers: Boeing Has to Triple Output of the Patriot’s Eyes
Share this story Every PAC-3 interceptor fired by a Patriot battery depends on one component made in Huntsville, Alabama: the radar seeker in its nose. Boeing builds it as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, and with Patriot stocks drained by wars in Ukraine and the...
Recent Comments