Gold Canopy: The Conductive Film That Hides a Fighter Cockpit
Share this story Seen from a tanker’s boom, the pilot of an F-22 Raptor appears to sit beneath a sheet of gold leaf. The colour is not paint, and it is not a sun visor. It is an electrically conductive film on the canopy, thin enough to see through, and its job...
G-LOC and Auto-GCAS: Why Pilots Pass Out and Jets Now Pull Up
Share this story On 5 May 2016, somewhere over the southwestern United States, a student pilot in an Arizona Air National Guard F-16 rolled into a basic fighter manoeuvre, pulled more than 8 G and lost consciousness. There was no tunnel vision, no greying, no warning....
Leo Thorsness: The Wild Weasel Who Took On Most of North Vietnam
Share this story The fuel gauge read empty when the runway at Udorn, just across the Mekong in Thailand, came up in front of the nose. Maj. Leo Thorsness had pulled his F-105F back to idle with 70 miles to go, by his own account, and glided in. In the back seat, his...
Bud Day, Misty 01: The F-100 Pilot Who Escaped North Vietnam
Share this story The float was a few bamboo logs, and the man clinging to it had a right arm broken in three places, bare feet cut to ribbons and branches heaped over him for cover. He was crossing the Ben Hai, the river that divided North from South Vietnam. A sentry...
Embraer and Mahindra Earmark Nagpur for a C-390 Assembly Line
Share this story In February 2023 a Brazilian Air Force KC-390 stood on the static line at Yelahanka in Bengaluru, the type’s first appearance at Aero India. Embraer had nothing on the table. “There is no proposal, but the IAF chief, along with his...
RAF A400M Atlas: £190m to Get 13 of 22 Aircraft Ready Each Day
Share this story The Royal Air Force owns 22 A400M Atlas transports. On a typical day, ten of them are fully mission-capable. That is the baseline the Ministry of Defence itself published on 1 October, when it extended Airbus’s contract to maintain the RAF A400M...
AIM-260 Super Hornet Photo: RAAF Jet Carries Inert JATM at Gray Flag
Share this story Nothing in the US Navy’s caption mentions an AIM-260 on the Super Hornet in the frame. It describes a Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18F of No. 1 Squadron taking flight from Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu, California, on 11 September 2026,...
X-BAT Factory: Shield AI Builds in Des Moines, Wash., Flies in Kansas
Share this story Des Moines is getting a fighter factory. Not the one in Iowa: the Des Moines on Puget Sound, about 15 minutes south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where, GeekWire reports, the roof is going onto a 420,000-square-foot building due to open in...
Italian F-35B Gun Pod: First Sighting on a Non-US F-35
Share this story The jet came down the approach to Decimomannu with its gear out and a stranger under its belly. On the centreline of an Italian Air Force F-35B coded 32-14 hung a slim, angular fairing: the GPU-9/A gun pod, the only gun available to the short take-off...
Taiwan F-16 Block 70: First Two Jets Land After Six Weeks in Hawaii
Share this story Around noon on Friday, 2 October, an F-16 with a Republic of China flag spread across its instrument panel touched down at Chihhang Air Base in Taitung, on Taiwan’s Pacific coast. A second jet followed it in. After three years of slipped...
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