Australia Gets America’s AMRAAM Killer First
Share this story America has been building a missile so secret it barely shows its face in public. Now it is letting a friend hold it — and Australia gets to go first. On 6 August, at Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister...
The Robot Wingman Grows Landing Gear — and Crashes
Share this story The Pentagon’s vision of cheap robot fighters flying shotgun for crewed jets took two big steps this week. One went forward. The other went straight into the Utah desert. Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has begun building the first...
The Hump: The Deadliest Airlift of the War
Share this story There was a stretch of sky between India and China so lethal that the men who flew it said you could navigate by the wrecks below. They called it the Hump — and for three years, an unbroken stream of transport planes crossed the highest...
The Skyshark: Doomed by Its Own Engine
Share this story On paper, it should have worked. Take the superb Douglas Skyraider, replace its thundering piston engine with a modern turboprop of more than 5,000 horsepower, and the U.S. Navy would have a carrier attack aircraft faster and harder-hitting than...
When America Built a Bomber Every Hour
Share this story An extension to The Race for the Bomb, our ten-part focus series. Part 7 told the engineering story of the B-29 — the pressurised cabin, the burning engines, the Battle of Kansas. This piece asks the question that story leaves hanging: how did America...
The Cactus Air Force: Flying From the Mud
Share this story Picture a single dirt runway hacked out of a jungle, ringed by palm stumps and bomb craters, with a handful of battered fighters parked in the mud. Every day it was bombed. Some nights it was shelled by battleships. And from it, a scratch force of...
The Swoose Goose: America’s Backwards Fighter
Share this story It had a propeller at the back, a nose that tilted up to lob its cannon shells, and a seat that dropped its pilot out through the belly in an emergency so he would not be chopped to pieces by his own engine. It was nearly as long as a DC-3. And it was...
Britain Hands Romania’s Skies to Spain
Share this story For four months, the job of guarding NATO’s eastern edge over the Black Sea fell to a handful of British fighters sitting at cockpit readiness in Romania. Last week, they handed the watch to Spain and went home. On July 31, 2026, Royal Air Force...
The Air Force Just Bought a 300-Mile JDAM
Share this story For thirty years, a JDAM was a dumb bomb with a brain bolted on: cheap, accurate, and useful only if you flew almost directly over the target. The Air Force just bought a version that can hit something more than 300 miles away. On August 5, 2026, the...
Twenty-One Air Forces, One Australian Sky
Share this story Every two years, the empty skies over Australia’s Top End fill with the noise of the largest air-combat exercise in the Southern Hemisphere. This year, for the first time, some of those fighters wore Japanese and Indonesian markings. Exercise...
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