China Drills a Deck Crew for Its Newest Carrier
Share this story A carrier is only as capable as the people who work its deck. On 14 July 2026, the People’s Liberation Army Navy released imagery that made this point plainly: J-15-family fighters running full-cycle takeoff and landing training on land, methodically...
South Korea Hardens 59 F-15Ks Against the Missile
Share this story South Korea just made its most battle-tested fighter a great deal harder to shoot down — and it did so not with a shiny new jet, but with a box of very clever electronics bolted deep inside the ones it already flies. On 13 July 2026, BAE Systems...
Pentagon Buries Its Own F-35 Report Card
Share this story For two decades, the taxpayers who foot the bill for the most expensive weapon in human history got one honest annual accounting of it: the Government Accountability Office’s yearly review of the F-35. This year, the Pentagon locked it in a drawer....
France Commits 16 Rafales to Ukraine
Share this story It was fitting that the promise came in Paris. On 14 July — France’s national day — President Emmanuel Macron stood alongside Volodymyr Zelensky at the close of a “Coalition of the Willing” summit and announced that Ukraine had agreed a plan to...
Germany’s First Quadriga Eurofighter Flies
Share this story At 34 minutes past the hour on 14 July, a single-seat Eurofighter in plain grey primer rolled down the runway at Airbus’s Manching site in Bavaria, lit its two EJ200 engines and climbed away. The aircraft carried the German military registration...
A European Bastille Day Over Paris
Share this story At 10:25 on the morning of 14 July, the Patrouille de France swept over the Arc de Triomphe and unrolled three ribbons of blue, white and red down the length of the Champs-Élysées. Behind them came a river of jets. And for the first time in the long...
The Record No Carrier Wanted to Break
Share this story Somewhere in the northern Arabian Sea, a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered supercarrier is doing something no American warship has done in the modern era: it simply will not stop. The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego before Christmas, touched a pier...
Ottawa Arms Its F-35s With a Norwegian Missile
Share this story Ottawa has made a choice that says as much about politics as it does about firepower. Canada will arm its future F-35A fleet with the Joint Strike Missile, the Norwegian-built cruise weapon that tucks inside the Lightning II’s belly without spoiling...
Farnborough 2026 Sold Out — Twice Over
Share this story Every couple of years a former RAF airfield in Hampshire becomes the centre of the aviation universe for five days. From July 20, it happens again — and the 2026 edition of the Farnborough International Airshow is shaping up to be the biggest in the...
Ten Battered Raptors Come Home From Iran
Share this story Just after first light on July 10, ten F-22 Raptors dropped out of the English sky and rolled onto the runway at RAF Fairford under the callsign TREND. They looked like they had been to war. That is because they had. These were the 1st Fighter Wing’s...
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