A Ship-Killer That Fits Inside the F-35
Share this story For all its sophistication, the F-35 has carried an awkward secret: it could not sink a ship without compromising the one thing it is famous for. Any missile big enough to threaten a modern warship had to hang under the wings — and the moment it...
Wrong Airspace Over Maryland, Meet an F-16
Share this story Somewhere over western Maryland on Saturday, a private pilot was having an ordinary flight — right up until a fighter jet appeared off the wingtip. Around 12:20 p.m. on 20 June 2026, a small general-aviation aircraft wandered into a Temporary...
Britain’s New Spy Drone and Its Secret Pod
Share this story Most of what an air force does in secret stays secret. Occasionally, though, the secret taxis past a photographer in broad daylight. That is what happened at RAF Akrotiri, where the British Ministry of Defence has just released official photographs of...
Britain’s Cheap Deep-Strike Weapons Head to Ukraine
Share this story British defence programmes are not, as a rule, famous for speed. The Ajax armoured vehicle spent eight years mired in delay; the RAF’s Wedgetail radar aircraft arrived three years late. So when three new long-range strike weapons go from a sheet...
The Hypersonic Missile Built to Be Cheap
Share this story Here is America’s hypersonic problem in one sentence: the missiles work, but the factory doesn’t. The United States has spent years and billions proving it can build weapons that scream through the sky at more than five times the speed of...
A Submarine-Hunting Eurodrone, Built for Japan
Share this story Hunting a modern submarine is one of the most demanding tasks in military aviation. It means hours of patient, fuel-hungry orbits over empty ocean, listening for a contact that may never appear. It is precisely the kind of dull, exhausting,...
Hanoi’s Hard Choice: Rafale or Su-57
Share this story For sixty years, the answer to the question “what does Vietnam fly?” has been simple: whatever Moscow sold it. MiGs, then Sukhois — a proud, entirely Russian air force. In 2026, for the first time, that answer is genuinely in doubt,...
Putin Dangles His Stealth Jet Before India
Share this story At Aero India 2025, on a warm February morning at Yelahanka Air Force Station near Bengaluru, a small boy tips his head all the way back. Above him a Russian Su-57 hauls itself into a vertical climb, rolls over the top, and falls back toward the...
The Drone Ukraine Sang About Is Killing Again
Share this story The footage is grey and silent. A drone’s electro-optical camera holds a small boat in its crosshairs somewhere in the middle of the Black Sea; a laser spot blooms on the hull; the picture shudders. To anyone who lived through the spring of...
Wings of War: From Zeppelin to Sixth Generation
Share this story The opening chapter of Wings of War — From Zeppelin to Sixth Generation, our series on how military aviation was invented, one breakthrough at a time.It is the first of November, 1911, and a young Italian lieutenant named Giulio Gavotti is...
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