Ten Engines, One of a Kind
Count the engines on a Dornier Do 31 and you get to ten. Two of them are Pegasus turbofans, the same vectored-thrust engines that made the Harrier work. The other eight do nothing whatsoever in cruise. They sit in pods on the wingtips, four a side, pointing at the...
Five Went to the Bridge, One Came Back
On the morning of 12 May 1940, No. 12 Squadron was asked for volunteers. The target was a pair of bridges over the Albert Canal near Maastricht, across which the German Army was walking into Belgium. Everyone in the squadron volunteered.Five Fairey Battles went. One...
The Galaxy That Fell Out of Saigon
The cargo compartment of a C-5A Galaxy is the size of a small warehouse. On the afternoon of 4 April 1975, the crew at Tan Son Nhut filled the lower deck of one with cardboard boxes, and into the boxes they put babies — two and three to a box, strapped down with...
The Billion-Pound Radar That Never Worked
The radar worked. That was the strange part. It could see aircraft, track them, and hand the picture to the operators behind it. It simply could not do so reliably, or for long, or against the one category of target the entire programme existed to detect.On 18...
India’s Rafale Deal Hits a Firewall
India’s largest fighter purchase in a generation is not stuck on money. It is not stuck on delivery dates, offsets, or how many aircraft get built in Nashik rather than Bordeaux. It is stuck on lines of code.New Delhi wants access to the software architecture at...
Spain’s First Kill Over Romania
At 04:44 on Sunday morning, a Romanian radar operator watched a small, slow-moving return cross the Prut and slide into national airspace from Moldova, roughly 24 kilometres north of Galați. Seventeen minutes later it no longer existed.The aircraft that killed it...
The Pentagon Wants Lasers That Fly
Cheap drones have humbled expensive air defenses for years now. The Pentagon’s answer keeps coming back to the same idea: a weapon that fires light, costs pennies a shot, and never runs out of magazine. This week a senior Defense Department official told...
DARPA Wants a Revolutionary Hypersonic Missile
America already has hypersonic missiles on the way. DARPA has just told industry that “on the way” is not good enough. On 7 August 2026, the Pentagon’s far-out research agency released a notice for a possible new program — the Next-Generation...
The Huey’s Last Days Over Washington
For 55 years, the same stubby twin-engine helicopter has clattered over Washington, ferrying VIPs and standing ready to whisk officials out of the capital in a crisis. The UH-1N Huey’s watch is finally ending. On 12 August 2026, the Air Force confirmed Joint...
Kadena’s First New Eagle Shows Its Colors
A single Eagle rolled out of Boeing’s St. Louis plant this month wearing two small but loaded details: a “ZZ” tail flash and the badge of the 18th Wing. Translation — the first F-15EX Eagle II built for Kadena Air Base has finally broken cover....
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