GCAP Locked In: UK Pledges £8.6 Billion for Sixth-Gen Fighter
Share this story The world’s most ambitious sixth-generation fighter programme just survived its biggest political test. The United Kingdom has committed £8.6 billion over the next four years to the Global Combat Air Programme, as part of its new £298 billion...
How the Next-Gen Airlifter Will Land on Dirt Roads
A C-130J Super Hercules at a forward operating location. The Hercules has served as the backbone of tactical airlift for seven decades, but the Air Force is now planning its eventual replacement. (U.S. Air Force / Wikimedia Commons) Somewhere in the western Pacific,...
The Embraer-Northrop KC-390 Partnership: A Brazilian Tanker for American Skies
A Brazilian Air Force KC-390 Millennium (FAB 2858) on display at NATO Days 2023 in the Czech Republic. The aircraft has rapidly gained traction with European air forces. (Wikimedia Commons) In February 2026, Embraer and Northrop Grumman signed a memorandum of...
The V-22 Osprey: Why Congress Is Still Asking Questions
A Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey aboard a Navy amphibious assault ship. The tiltrotor has replaced the CH-46 Sea Knight in the assault role and the C-2 Greyhound in the carrier delivery role. (U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons) The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey was supposed to...
China’s PL-16: The Stealth Missile That Could Outshoot America Over the Pacific
Somewhere in China’s vast defence-industrial complex, a missile is being built that could fundamentally change the arithmetic of air combat over the Pacific. The PL-16 — Beijing’s next-generation beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile — has never been...
The F-104 Starfighter: How Germany Turned a Masterpiece Into the Widowmaker
Kelly Johnson built the F-104 Starfighter to do one thing: climb fast, fly high, and kill Soviet bombers before they reached American cities. The Lockheed engineer surveyed Korean War fighter pilots in 1951 and concluded that what they wanted was not another heavy,...
The TSR-2: The Best British Aircraft That Never Served
On the afternoon of 6 April 1965, test pilot Roland “Bee” Beamont was having lunch at a pub near Boscombe Down when the BBC news bulletin came through the radio. Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan, midway through his Budget Speech in the House of...
The AC-130: A Cargo Plane With More Guns Than a Destroyer
In September 1967, an ungainly four-engine turboprop lumbered off the runway at Nha Trang Air Base in South Vietnam. It looked like any other C-130 Hercules — the workhorse cargo plane that had been hauling troops, ammunition, and jeeps across theatre since the early...
Three Exocets That Terrified the Royal Navy
Argentina went to war in the Falklands in April 1982 with five air-launched Exocet missiles. Five. That was the entire stock — France had delivered the AM39 variant along with a handful of Super Étendard strike fighters just months before the conflict began, and the...
Operation Vengeance: 16 P-38s, 400 Miles, One Admiral
On the morning of April 18, 1943, sixteen P-38 Lightning fighters took off from Fighter Two airstrip on Guadalcanal and turned west over the Solomon Sea. Their mission was not to engage enemy formations or escort bombers. It was to kill one man: Admiral Isoroku...
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