Spitfire MK356 Crash: RAF Inquiry Blames Decades-Old Carburettor Debris
Share this story Fifty-six seconds. That is how long Spitfire MK356 had been airborne on the afternoon of 25 May 2024 before it came down in a field near RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, killing its pilot, Squadron Leader Mark Long of the Battle of Britain Memorial...
P1-SUN JetKiller: Ukrainian Interceptor Drone Downs a Second Geran-5
Share this story The target flies faster than the hunter. That is the problem Ukraine’s newest interceptor drone was built to solve, and according to its maker it has now solved it twice. On 3 October 2026, Ukrainian company SkyFall told Militarnyi that its...
Poland’s FA-50GF Fighters Enter Combat Duty After Three Unarmed Years
Share this story For almost three years they were trainers with nothing to fire. On the evening of 2 October 2026, Poland’s Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz announced that the country’s FA-50GF light fighters had finally entered combat duty,...
IAF Chief A.P. Singh: India Needs 36 to 40 New Fighters a Year
Share this story Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh did not use his farewell press conference to celebrate. With four weeks left before he retires, the head of the Indian Air Force sat down in New Delhi on 3 October 2026 and laid out, in unusually plain words, how far his...
YFQ-48A Talon Blue First Flight: Northrop’s Drone Wingman Flies Itself
Share this story Nobody was at the controls, and nobody was meant to be. On 3 October 2026, a grey, shovel-nosed jet registered N444LX rolled out at Mojave Air and Space Port in California, took off, flew, and landed again entirely on its own. Northrop Grumman’s...
Cóndor: Chile’s Boeing 707 With a Radar for a Nose
Share this story Most airborne early-warning aircraft announce themselves with a giant spinning disc on their back. The Chilean Air Force’s Cóndor did it with its face. Where a Boeing 707 should have a slim, pointed nose, this one had a huge rounded bulge, as if...
Bolter: What Happens When a Carrier Jet Misses Every Wire
Share this story A carrier landing is the only landing in aviation where the pilot pushes the throttles forward at the moment of touchdown. The jet slams onto the deck, the tailhook drags across the steel, and the engines are already screaming at full power. If the...
Su-27 Tail Stinger: What Is Inside the Flanker’s Tail Boom?
Share this story Every Su-27 Flanker has a tail that does not quite end. Between the two big engine exhausts, the centre of the fuselage keeps going, a long pointed boom sticking out behind the jet like a sting. Spotters call it the “stinger”, and it is...
Drop Tanks Explained: Why Fighter Jets Throw Away Their Fuel Tanks
Share this story Look at almost any photo of a fighter on a real mission and you will see them: big, smooth, bullet-shaped pods hanging under the wings or the belly. They are not bombs or missiles. They are fuel tanks, and many of them are designed to be thrown away...
MiG-21 Nose Cone Explained: How the Shock Cone Feeds a Mach 2 Jet
Share this story Look a MiG-21 in the face and the first thing you see is a hole with a cone in it. The whole nose of the aircraft is one big round air intake, and sitting in the middle of it, like the stopper in a bottle, is a pointed cone. That cone is not...
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