Share this story The U.S. Air Force has been flying its fighter drones for over a year. It has tested them, taxied them, launched them from austere strips and flown one alongside an F-35. What it has never done is put them into a proper war. In December, it will....
Share this story The crew were already aboard. The maintenance team was about to launch the jet. Then the base alarm went red and everybody ran for a bunker. When they came back out, the KC-135 Stratotanker was smoking, punched full of shrapnel holes, and sitting on...
Share this story For years the argument about the world’s best-connected airport was really an argument between Heathrow, Schiphol and Frankfurt, with Dubai lurking. On 16 September that stopped being true. OAG published Megahubs 2026 and Istanbul is first. Not...
Share this story Twelve F-15E Strike Eagles came down the approach at RAF Lakenheath on 16 September, six at a time, callsigns TREND 11 to 16 and then TREND 21 to 26. The tailcodes read MO. Mountain Home, Idaho. They were not stopping long. What made ground crews and...
Share this story The AIM-260 was supposed to be in squadron service in 2022. It is September 2026, the missile is still in development, and the first photograph of one only surfaced four months ago. For a weapon the U.S. Air Force calls essential to winning the next...
Share this story The ramp at Pituffik is wet, grey and running with meltwater. Behind it a ridge of bare rock streaked with old snow. A marshaller in olive fleece walks backwards with both arms up, and an F-35A Lightning II rolls towards him with WI stencilled on the...
Share this story Three people were killed on Tuesday afternoon when a Cirrus SR22T struck a mountainside above Leukerbad, in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Kantonspolizei Wallis said the aircraft had taken off from Lugano and made an intermediate landing at Sion...
Share this story In a hangar in Amarillo, Texas, on 16 September 2026, a delegation from Nigeria signed their names on a metal beam. The beam is the spine of the first AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter being built for the Nigerian Air Force. There will be twelve, and the...
Share this story The F-35’s problem was never thrust. It was electricity, and the heat that comes with it. On 15 September 2026, Pratt & Whitney announced from East Hartford that it had completed the Risk Reduction Design Review for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade...
Share this story Israel’s F-35s have been flying the hardest missions of the last two years with somebody else’s bombs. That is about to change. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced at the Air, Space & Cyber conference on 15 September 2026 that it is...
Share this story Europe has spent three years arguing about whether it should build its own fighters or keep buying American ones. The answer taking shape is neither, and it is not really about fighters at all. At the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space...
Share this story When the Pentagon shelved the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter last year, the official reason was that American industry could not develop and build two of them at once. A lot of people did not believe it. The Air Force general who advises the Pentagon...
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