USAF Weighs Restarting C-17 Production: “Heck Yeah, But…”
Share this story Asked at a press roundtable whether the US Air Force would like to build new C-17s, the general in charge of American airlift did not hedge for long. “Heck yeah,” said Lt. Gen. Daniel Tulley, head of Air Mobility Command. Then came the...
Houthis Claim a Saudi F-15 Shot Down Over Marib, Yemen
Share this story The first thing the world saw was a tailfin. Scorched, standing upright in a burnt patch of Marib scrub, with the green and white of the Saudi flag still legible through the soot. On 16 September 2026, Yemen’s Houthi movement — formally Ansar Allah —...
The Top American Ace of Vietnam Never Flew the Aircraft
Share this story The highest-scoring American ace of the Vietnam War never flew the aeroplane. On 9 September 1972, Captain Charles B. DeBellevue shot down his fifth and sixth MiGs from the back seat of an F-4D Phantom. He was a weapon systems officer. The stick and...
Russia Beat GPS Jamming With a Two-Dollar Compass
Share this story Ukraine has spent this war building some of the densest electronic warfare cover on earth. Along much of the front line, GPS and GLONASS simply do not work. A drone that depends on satellite navigation arrives over the target having forgotten where it...
How a Heat-Seeking Missile Works, and Why Flares Stopped Saving You
Share this story A radar-guided missile announces itself. It has to: something has to illuminate the target, and the moment that happens the target knows it is being shot at.An infrared missile says nothing at all. It emits no signal, because it is not looking for a...
The Hardest Day: 18 August 1940 Cost More Than Battle of Britain Day
Share this story The Battle of Britain has a famous date, and it is 15 September. That is Battle of Britain Day, the climax, the one in the calendar.It is not the day that cost the most. That was Sunday 18 August 1940, when the Luftwaffe made an all-out attempt to...
The Doolittle Raid: Sixteen B-25s That Were Never Coming Back
Share this story At 07:38 on the morning of 18 April 1942, a 70-ton Japanese patrol boat called the Nittō Maru spotted an American task force about 650 nautical miles east of Japan and got a radio message off before the cruiser Nashville sank her.That message...
F-35 Readiness Surged in Epic Fury. The Trend Line Still Points Down.
Share this story Air Combat Command’s director of operations stood up at the Air, Space and Cyber conference this week and said the F-35 “absolutely proved itself” in combat over Iran.He is right. He also attached a condition to the sentence that is...
The Air Force Is Taking Air Base Defence Away From the Army
Share this story For as long as the United States has had an independent Air Force, defending its airfields against attack from the sky has been somebody else’s job. Specifically, the Army’s.That arrangement is quietly collapsing, and at the Air, Space and...
NATO Is Scrapping Air Policing: Inside Standing Defense Plan 12000
Share this story A Russian drone crossed into Lithuanian airspace overnight on 15 September, and NATO fighters shot it down. That part has happened before — by the alliance air commander’s own count, at least six times now.What is new is that the officer...
Recent Comments