Carrier Barricade Explained: The Nylon Net That Catches Jets
Share this story Every carrier landing is designed around a hook and a wire. The pilot flies the jet onto the deck, the tailhook snags one of the arresting cables, and the aircraft stops in a couple of seconds. But what happens when the hook will not come down, or the...
Operation Enduring Freedom at 25: The First Night of Air Strikes on Afghanistan
Share this story Twenty-five years ago this Wednesday, on the night of 7 October 2001, the first bombs of the war in Afghanistan began to fall. Some of them had been carried by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers that had flown all the way from Missouri, aircraft that would...
Eugene Hasenfus: The C-123 Shootdown That Exposed Iran-Contra
Share this story The old cargo plane was down to about 2,500 feet over the Nicaraguan jungle on 5 October 1986, lining up to drop its load, when a teenage Sandinista soldier raised a Soviet-made SA-7 missile launcher to his shoulder and fired. The missile hit the...
Two US F-15E Strike Eagles Divert to Shannon After Fuel Emergency
Share this story Twelve Strike Eagles set off across the Atlantic on Saturday, 3 October 2026, heading home to North Carolina after a deployment to the Middle East. Two of them ended the day in County Clare. One of the US Air Force F-15Es developed a fuel problem over...
Spitfire MK356 Crash: RAF Inquiry Blames Decades-Old Carburettor Debris
Share this story Fifty-six seconds. That is how long Spitfire MK356 had been airborne on the afternoon of 25 May 2024 before it came down in a field near RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, killing its pilot, Squadron Leader Mark Long of the Battle of Britain Memorial...
P1-SUN JetKiller: Ukrainian Interceptor Drone Downs a Second Geran-5
Share this story The target flies faster than the hunter. That is the problem Ukraine’s newest interceptor drone was built to solve, and according to its maker it has now solved it twice. On 3 October 2026, Ukrainian company SkyFall told Militarnyi that its...
Poland’s FA-50GF Fighters Enter Combat Duty After Three Unarmed Years
Share this story For almost three years they were trainers with nothing to fire. On the evening of 2 October 2026, Poland’s Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz announced that the country’s FA-50GF light fighters had finally entered combat duty,...
IAF Chief A.P. Singh: India Needs 36 to 40 New Fighters a Year
Share this story Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh did not use his farewell press conference to celebrate. With four weeks left before he retires, the head of the Indian Air Force sat down in New Delhi on 3 October 2026 and laid out, in unusually plain words, how far his...
YFQ-48A Talon Blue First Flight: Northrop’s Drone Wingman Flies Itself
Share this story Nobody was at the controls, and nobody was meant to be. On 3 October 2026, a grey, shovel-nosed jet registered N444LX rolled out at Mojave Air and Space Port in California, took off, flew, and landed again entirely on its own. Northrop Grumman’s...
Cóndor: Chile’s Boeing 707 With a Radar for a Nose
Share this story Most airborne early-warning aircraft announce themselves with a giant spinning disc on their back. The Chilean Air Force’s Cóndor did it with its face. Where a Boeing 707 should have a slim, pointed nose, this one had a huge rounded bulge, as if...
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