Trent 900 Blade-Off Test: How Rolls-Royce Proved the A380 Engine Could Contain a Fan Blade
Share this story The most violent test an airliner engine ever faces happens on the ground. With the engine running at its maximum permitted speed, a small explosive charge at the root of one fan blade cuts it loose. The blade must be stopped by the engine casing, and...
How Does a Radar-Guided Missile Work? From Sparrow to AMRAAM
Share this story A heat-seeking missile chases something it can feel: the hot exhaust of an engine. A radar-guided missile chases something it cannot see at all until a radar wave bounces off it. That difference is why radar missiles can kill from beyond visual range,...
KJ-3000: Four Y-20 Radar Jets at Xi’an Hint at Serial Production
Share this story Counting aircraft from orbit is a strange way to follow a weapons programme, but with China it is often the only way. On 5 October 2026 a commercial satellite passed over Xi’an-Yanliang airfield in Shaanxi province and photographed four KJ-3000...
How Does a Laser-Guided Bomb Work? Paveway Explained
Share this story For seven years the Thanh Hoa Bridge simply refused to fall. American aircraft flew more than 870 sorties against the “Dragon’s Jaw” south of Hanoi and lost 11 aircraft doing it. Then, in the spring of 1972, a handful of Phantom...
AIM-174B and AIM-260 Seen Together on a Navy Super Hornet
Share this story A grey Super Hornet over the Mojave, blue-banded test rounds under its wings, and a first for US naval aviation. On 14 October 2026, an aviation photographer caught a US Navy F/A-18F from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31 over Ridgecrest,...
Su-30 Crash in Kaliningrad: Both Crew Eject on Training Flight
Share this story A two-seat Flanker down in a field, two pilots on the end of parachutes, and an empty patch of countryside in Russia’s Baltic exclave. On 21 October 2026, a Russian Su-30 crashed during a scheduled training flight in the Kaliningrad region. Both...
Boeing 737 MAX 10 Certified: FAA Clears the Largest MAX at Last
Share this story Nine years after its launch at the Paris Air Show and more than six years after its original service-entry target, the Boeing 737 MAX 10 finally has its paperwork. On 20 October 2026 the US Federal Aviation Administration approved the amended type...
HAARP Over-the-Horizon Radar Test Detects Aircraft by Skywave
Share this story For three decades, the antenna field outside Gakona, Alaska, has been the most misunderstood radio transmitter in the world. Now the US military has given it a job conspiracy theorists never predicted: lighting up aircraft far beyond the horizon so...
SR-71 at the Air Show: Why the Blackbird’s Low Passes Were So Rare
Share this story Almost nobody ever saw an SR-71 at work. On operational missions the Blackbird cruised at more than three times the speed of sound and above 80,000 feet, far beyond the view of anyone on the ground. Which is why footage of it making low passes at air...
Weight and Balance: The Load Sheet That Doomed Air Midwest 5481
Share this story At three seconds past 0847 on 8 January 2003, the captain of Air Midwest flight 5481 said two words into the cockpit voice recorder: “help me.” The Beech 1900D had just left runway 18R at Charlotte and the nose would not come down. Ten...
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