The $3,500 Drone That Kills Without a Pilot
The buzz of a Shahed over Kharkiv has become one of the most dreaded sounds of this war. On the night of 8 June 2026, something answered it that no human was flying. A small fixed-wing interceptor lifted off, climbed to its waiting altitude, picked the incoming drone...
The Caspian Sea Monster That Spooked the CIA
In the late 1960s, a CIA analyst sat staring at a grainy satellite photograph of the Caspian Sea and could not make the numbers work. The machine in the frame was nearly 100 metres long — longer than a Boeing 747 — yet it was clearly skimming the water,...
The Jet That Took Off Hanging From a Hook
Picture a flatbed trailer tilting slowly skyward in the California desert until it stands almost vertical, and clinging to it nose-up like a wasp on a windowpane, a stubby silver dart of an aircraft. There is no runway in sight. There is no landing gear worth the...
China’s Cargo Drone Just Flew Itself
On a grey morning in Pucheng, in China’s Shaanxi province, a chunky white-and-blue aircraft with two propellers and a twin-boom tail rolled down the runway, lifted off, and flew a full 22-minute circuit — climb, manoeuvre, approach and landing. Nothing...
Hornet Down: Marine Jet Crashes, Sparks Wildfire
Just after noon on June 13, 2026, residents around Rimrock Lake heard the kind of sound that doesn’t belong over a quiet stretch of the Washington Cascades: a fighter jet, low and fast, then a series of sharp pops. Seconds later a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet...
The Fighter With Its Wings On Backwards
Picture a desert morning at Edwards in 1949: dust, sagebrush, and a fighter that looks like someone bolted the wings on the wrong way round. Most aircraft wings are fat where they meet the fuselage and slim to a graceful point at the tip. The Republic XF-91...
South Korea Reveals an Air-Launched Hypersonic Ship-Killer
South Korea just put the world on notice. In a slickly produced video released in February 2026, defence and rail group Hyundai Rotem revealed a concept for an air-launched hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile, built on the same scramjet technology that powers the...
Singapore Joins the Stealth Club
Singapore is about to do something only a handful of air forces on Earth can claim: fly a fifth-generation stealth fighter. After years of paperwork, options and parliamentary debate, the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) is on track to take delivery of its first...
Brazil Builds Its First Supersonic Fighter
Brazil just did something only a handful of countries on Earth can claim: it built its own supersonic fighter jet. On 25 March 2026, Embraer, Saab and the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) pulled the covers off the first Gripen E assembled on Brazilian soil at Embraer’s...
Japan Wrapped a Jet in White. Why?
On a humid June afternoon, a Japanese plane-spotter pointed a long lens at the flight line of Gifu Air Base and froze. Tucked against a hangar wall sat something large, the size of a fighter, and it was wrapped from nose to tail in white fabric like a piece of...
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