Cold Lake F-35 Base: Canada Puts $4 Billion Into Its Fighter Hub
Share this story Canada has ordered only 16 F-35s so far, and it still has not decided whether it will buy the rest. It is, however, building the house for them. On 7 October 2026, Defence Minister David McGuinty announced nearly $4 billion for fighter capabilities at...
F-35 Parts in China: A Missed UPS Email Sent Them via Hong Kong
Share this story Somewhere in a freight system, an email arrived that said, in effect: do not send this box through Hong Kong. Nobody at the other end read it. The box contained a cockpit canopy and a weapons-bay door from an F-35 Lightning II, and it went through...
Brazil-Built Gripen E Flies: Embraer’s First F-39 Takes Off
Share this story At 10:21 on Tuesday morning, according to Air Data News, a single-engine fighter with the number 4109 on its tail rolled down the runway at Gavião Peixoto, in the interior of São Paulo state, and climbed away. On the face of it, it was a routine first...
Herbst Maneuver: How the X-31 Turned on Its Tail in 1993
Share this story Every fighter pilot is taught to respect the stall. Pull too hard, raise the nose too far, and the wing stops producing lift and the aircraft stops doing what you want. On 29 April 1993, over the Mojave Desert, the second Rockwell-MBB X-31...
McDonnell Douglas X-36: The Tailless Fighter Drone of 1997
Share this story Every fighter you have ever seen has a tail. Fins keep it pointing forward, rudders turn it, and for a stealth aircraft those same fins are big flat radar reflectors. In 1997, NASA and McDonnell Douglas flew a small, sinister-looking jet over the...
X-51A Waverider: 210 Seconds Above Mach 5 on a Scramjet
Share this story The X-43A proved a scramjet could work for ten seconds. The question the US Air Force asked next was harder: could one keep working for minutes, burning the kind of fuel a real aircraft could carry? On 1 May 2013, over the Pacific, the Boeing X-51A...
X-24B Lifting Body: How a Wingless Plane Taught the Shuttle to Land
Share this story It had no wings worth the name, no engine running at touchdown and only one chance to get it right. On 5 August 1975, NASA test pilot John Manke brought the X-24B lifting body down from 60,000 feet without power and landed it on the concrete main...
Bell X-1A: Chuck Yeager’s Mach 2.44 Record and 50,000-Foot Tumble
Share this story On 12 December 1953, Chuck Yeager pushed the Bell X-1A to Mach 2.44, faster than any human had flown. Seconds later the rocket plane went completely out of control. It rolled, yawed and tumbled end over end, slamming Yeager’s helmet into the...
X-43A Hyper-X: NASA’s Scramjet That Hit Mach 9.6 in 2004
Share this story Off the coast of southern California on 16 November 2004, a NASA B-52B released a rocket with a strange, flat, surfboard-shaped object bolted to its nose. The Pegasus booster lit, climbed to about 110,000 feet and let go. For roughly ten seconds, the...
Indonesia’s J-10CE Fighters Due in Six Months, Air Chief Says
Share this story Asked when Indonesia’s Chinese fighters will finally show up, the head of the Indonesian Air Force smiled and gave a two-word answer. “Just wait,” Air Marshal Mohamad Tonny Harjono told Republika on 5 October 2026, on the sidelines...
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