UAE’s Shadow Airlift: 100+ Missions on Sanctioned Russian Il-76s
Share this story The aircraft are old, white and almost anonymous: four-engined Ilyushin Il-76 freighters with Russian registrations and no airline name on the side. According to a Defense News investigation published on 30 September, they have also flown more than...
F-15EX Missile Warning: USAF Seeks System It Skipped Buying
Share this story The US Air Force’s newest Eagle has a blind spot, and the service has just admitted it in writing. On 29 September the F-15 programme office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base published a sources-sought notice asking industry for a missile...
Azerbaijan Orders 14 Hürkuş-II Trainers in $500 Million Turkish Deal
Share this story Turkey’s newest military trainer has found a buyer next door. At the ADEX 2026 defence exhibition in Baku on 30 September, Turkey and Azerbaijan signed a package of defence contracts worth more than $500 million, and the headline item was an...
Autonomous Warfare Command: Pentagon Creates a Four-Star Drone Command
Share this story The Pentagon is getting a new four-star command, and its weapons don’t need pilots. Speaking to around 600 junior officers and senior NCOs at Marine Corps Base Quantico on 30 September, Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the Autonomous Warfare...
Ukraine’s F-16s: Half the Fleet Stuck in Maintenance, Guns Used on Drones
Share this story Ukraine finally has the jet it begged for. The problem is getting it out of the hangar. More than half of the Ukrainian Air Force’s F-16 Fighting Falcons are currently tied up in maintenance, according to a Wall Street Journal report published...
Sea Venom and NSM: Royal Navy Sinks Ex-USS Klakring
Share this story The sea off the Outer Hebrides in late September is the colour of wet slate, and roughly 150 nautical miles out into it sat a 43-year-old American frigate with nobody aboard. The former USS Klakring had been towed across the Atlantic from Philadelphia...
SBX-1, Cobra Dane and PAVE PAWS: The Biggest Radars Ever Built
Share this story The largest radar ever built does not sit on a mountain. It floats. Six diesel generators, two hulls, a crew of somewhere between 48 and 86 depending on which part of the US government you ask, and on top of it a white sphere 36.5 metres (120 ft)...
F-47 Production Line “Not Too Far Away”, Says USAF Fighter Chief
Share this story The man who buys the US Air Force’s fighters has a simple view of what matters most right now: factories. Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on 28 September 2026, Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich said the F-47 sixth-generation...
AMRAAM Deal: Pentagon Awards Raytheon Up to $20.7 Billion
Share this story The Pentagon has been shooting missiles faster than it can buy them, and it has decided to fix that with a very large cheque. On 28 September 2026, RTX’s Raytheon announced a multiyear contract worth up to $20.7 billion for the AIM-120 AMRAAM,...
F-16 Gets New Friend-or-Foe System: BAE AN/APX-127 Certified
Share this story Before a fighter pilot fires, one question has to be answered with certainty: is that contact a friend or a foe? On the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the box that answers it is about to change. BAE Systems announced on 29 September 2026 that its...
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