Drop Tanks Explained: Why Fighter Jets Throw Away Their Fuel Tanks
Share this story Look at almost any photo of a fighter on a real mission and you will see them: big, smooth, bullet-shaped pods hanging under the wings or the belly. They are not bombs or missiles. They are fuel tanks, and many of them are designed to be thrown away...
MiG-21 Nose Cone Explained: How the Shock Cone Feeds a Mach 2 Jet
Share this story Look a MiG-21 in the face and the first thing you see is a hole with a cone in it. The whole nose of the aircraft is one big round air intake, and sitting in the middle of it, like the stopper in a bottle, is a pointed cone. That cone is not...
Ted Swartz: The US Navy Skyhawk Pilot Who Downed a MiG-17
Share this story The A-4 Skyhawk was built to bomb things. It was small, light and nimble, and in Vietnam it hauled bombs and rockets into some of the most heavily defended airspace in history. Shooting down enemy fighters was the job of the Crusaders and Phantoms...
Operation Tagar and Dugman 5: Israel’s Worst Day Against the SAMs
Share this story On the morning of 7 October 1973, the second day of the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli Air Force set out to do the thing it had been planning for years. It would destroy the Egyptian surface-to-air missile belt along the Suez Canal, and with it the...
Kazakhstan’s Second Airbus A400M Rolls Out in Gloss Grey
Share this story Kazakhstan’s second Airbus A400M has its paint on. Airbus released photographs on 1 October of the airlifter at its final assembly line in Seville, Spain, finished in a glossy grey scheme with “Kazakhstan Air Force” on the forward...
SRC Ghost Mantis Picked for USAF Large Aircraft Missile Warning
Share this story Tankers, airlifters and airborne radar aircraft are big, slow and impossible to hide. They are also, increasingly, the targets that very-long-range air-to-air missiles are built to kill. On 1 October the US Air Force moved to give them a better chance...
Golden Arrows at 75: No. 17 Squadron, From MiG-21 to Rafale
Share this story Seventy-five years ago, on 1 October 1951, the Indian Air Force formed a new squadron equipped with Harvard trainers. Today No. 17 Squadron, the Golden Arrows, flies the Rafale out of Ambala, and on 1 October 2026 it celebrated its platinum jubilee...
KAAN P1 First Flight: Turkey’s Stealth Fighter Weeks Away
Share this story Turkey’s stealth fighter is about to fly again, this time in the form it is meant to be built in. Speaking at the TEKNOFEST Southeast technology festival on 2 October, Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ) general manager Mehmet Demiroğlu said all system...
114 Rafale Deal: India Expects a Decision by Year-End
Share this story India’s biggest fighter deal in a generation has a deadline. Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on 1 October that the bids for 114 more Dassault Rafale jets for the Indian Air Force are being evaluated, and that New Delhi expects to reach...
Su-35 Shoots Down Russian Mi-8 Over Voronezh, Channels Claim
Share this story Russia lost a helicopter and its crew over its own territory on the evening of 1 October. If the reports coming out of the Voronezh region are right, the missile or the shells that brought it down came from a Russian fighter. According to Telegram...
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