Cessna SkyCourier UX: Textron Takes the Pilots Out of the Freighter
Share this story Most of the autonomy on display at National Harbor this week was fighter-shaped. Stealthy wings, missile bays, names like Vengeance and Fury. Textron brought a box. Specifically, it brought the Cessna SkyCourier UX: a certified, in-service, thoroughly...
Operation Thursday: The Night Gliders Landed in Burma
Share this story At half past four on the afternoon of 5 March 1944, a photographic officer landed at Lalaghat in Assam with a three-foot-square print under his arm and ninety minutes to spare. Captain Charles Russhon had flown over Burma that morning in a B-25...
KG 200: The Luftwaffe Squadron That Flew Captured B-17s
Share this story Ask an aviation enthusiast about Kampfgeschwader 200 and you will probably hear a version of the same story: that the Luftwaffe flew captured B-17 Flying Fortresses in American markings, slid them into USAAF bomber streams, and shot the formations...
Swiss F-35: Parliament Approves 394 Million Francs More
Share this story In September 2020 Swiss voters approved a new fighter fleet by 8,515 votes out of more than three million cast. It was the narrowest margin in modern Swiss defence politics, and the case for it rested heavily on one reassuring word: the price was...
863 Drones in 24 Hours: Russia Attacked Under the Cloud
Share this story Air defence against a Shahed-type drone is, more often than not, a human being looking up. The aircraft is small, slow, made largely of composite and plywood, and flies low enough to disappear into ground clutter. Radar helps. Thermal sights help. But...
A Russian Frigate Fired Flares at a Danish Helicopter
Share this story A Royal Danish Air Force Fennec helicopter was photographing a Russian frigate over the Baltic on Monday evening when the frigate fired two flares at it. One passed close to the aircraft. Nobody was hurt and the helicopter was undamaged. It was flying...
F-117 Nighthawk 85-0818: The Smithsonian Gets The Overachiever
Share this story The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has the 1903 Wright Flyer. It has the Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 command module, a Concorde, a Space Shuttle and an SR-71 Blackbird. What it has never had, in all the years since the...
FQ-42 Vengeance and FQ-44 Fury: USAF Wants 500 CCAs by 2032
Share this story Three numbers changed on Monday morning, and one name. Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s conference in National Harbor, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said the service now intends to have at least 500 Collaborative...
Space Force On-Orbit Weapons: America Admits It Has Them
Share this story For decades the American position on weapons in orbit was a careful non-answer. Officials talked about resilience, about protecting assets, about counter-space capability in the abstract. Nobody said the United States had put weapons up there. On...
Swarm Aero Gamera: A $10 Million Drone That Carries Bomber Missiles
Share this story The United States bought 337 MQ-9 Reapers over the nineteen-year life of the programme. After the fighting with Iran, the Air Force has roughly 135 left, against a floor it says should be 189. That is the arithmetic behind everything that happened on...
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