Share this story For four short years in the mid-1950s, the U.S. Navy operated the strangest aerial-refuelling tanker it ever owned. It was a four-engined turboprop flying boat. It landed on water. It nose-loaded vehicles. It could refuel four jet fighters...
Share this story On 4 September 1949, the largest land-based aircraft ever built in Britain took off on its maiden flight from Filton, near Bristol. It had a wingspan of 70 metres — longer than a Boeing 747’s. Eight engines, buried in the wings in pairs,...
Share this story In the 1960s, American spy satellites scanning the Caspian Sea brought back pictures of something that should not have existed: a 92-metre, jet-powered hybrid of ship and aircraft, skimming the water at 500 km/h. The CIA called it the Caspian Sea...
Share this story The Bell AH-1 Cobra is the most consequential helicopter design in American military history. Before the Cobra, every armed helicopter in the world was a transport airframe with weapons bolted onto it — a Huey with door guns, a Mi-4 with rocket pods,...
Share this story When two aircraft collide in mid-air — as happened recently with an EA-18G Growler at Mountain Home Air Force Base — the debris field can stretch for miles. Pieces of aluminum, wiring, and avionics scatter across terrain in patterns that look random...
Share this story Most people assume that becoming a pilot requires good eyesight and a steady hand. That much is true. What most people don’t realize is just how deep the medical rabbit hole goes — and how some of the conditions that can ground you are genuinely...
Share this story The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the future of strategic bombing — a six-engine colossus that could outrun anything in the sky at three times the speed of sound. Instead, it became one of aviation’s most expensive...
Share this story The most ambitious naval aviation concept the United States ever fielded was not the nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was a 785-foot helium airship with an interior hangar bay full of biplane fighters that could be launched and recovered in flight....
Share this story On May 19, 2026, the United States Air Force ordered an operational pause for its entire fleet of T-38 Talon jet trainers. Every T-38 across every command—Air Education and Training Command, Air Combat Command, Air Force Materiel Command, and...
Share this story There is an aircraft that first flew when Harry Truman was president, that dropped conventional bombs over Vietnam and precision-guided munitions over Afghanistan, that practiced nuclear deterrence through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Desert Storm and...
Share this story There is a number that keeps the people who manage America’s drone fleet awake at night, and that number is 189. That is the minimum number of MQ-9 Reapers the Air Force says it needs to sustain its worldwide intelligence, surveillance,...
Share this story The B-1B Lancer is getting the biggest weapons upgrade in its operational history. The U.S. Air Force’s Load Adaptable Modular (LAM) pylon program will restore six dormant external hardpoints on the bomber, boosting its total precision weapons...
Recent Comments