Every July, a quiet corner of Gloucestershire becomes the busiest military airfield on Earth. Fighters, bombers and display teams from dozens of nations pack the ramp at RAF Fairford for the Royal International Air Tattoo — the largest military airshow in the world....
For twenty years, the Western answer to Chinese air power was simple: our jets are better. The F-22 and F-35 out-sense, out-stealth and out-network anything Beijing could field. That may still be true of any single aircraft. It may also be about to stop mattering....
For decades, one rule has sat quietly at the centre of Western air power: a human being decides when a weapon kills. On June 30, 2026, Britain edged away from it. Buried inside a sweeping Defence Investment Plan — more than £5 billion for drones, the largest such...
Somewhere on the ramp at Paine Field in Washington State sit rows of enormous, finished airliners with nowhere to go. They are Boeing 777Xs — the biggest twinjets ever built — and most of them have never carried a paying passenger. In 2026 they are still waiting,...
For months, Europe’s most ambitious fighter programme had a hole in the middle of it: the money. On July 3, 2026, that hole was filled. The United Kingdom, Italy and Japan signed a £4.6 billion ($6.1 billion) contract to push their sixth-generation combat aircraft...
It is 107 degrees on the range tower at Gila Bend, and a photographer is shielding his camera in the shade between passes so it will not overheat. Then the sound arrives — that unmistakable, chest-rattling BRRRT — and an A-10C Thunderbolt II drops out of the Arizona...
Somewhere over the Florida coast, at better than a thousand miles an hour, a man in an oxygen helmet unwrapped a cheesesteak, took a bite, and pulled a face you don’t usually see outside a rollercoaster. That, apparently, is what it now takes to sell a sandwich....
The first eight came in before sunset on 1 July, dropping onto RAF Lakenheath’s runway one after another. The last three arrived in the dark, their names unreadable. Eleven F-15E Strike Eagles of the 48th Fighter Wing, home from the Iran air war — and...
In the spring of 2023, Poland became the first NATO country to send fighter jets to Ukraine — fourteen MiG-29s, handed over while other capitals were still debating. Three years later, the last fourteen Fulcrums in Polish service were supposed to follow them...
For fifteen years, Iron Dome has answered incoming rockets with a $50,000 interceptor. Now it has a second option on the trigger: light. Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced on 30 June that a comprehensive Iron Dome test series has, for the first time, folded...
One photo, two aircraft, and a very large hint about the future of air combat. On 1 July, Pacific Air Forces posted imagery of a US Air Force F-15EX Eagle II flying over the Philippine Sea in close formation with something no American fighter had been photographed...
At 3:30 in the morning Eastern time on 1 July, an MH-60S Sea Hawk from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush went into the water of the Arabian Sea. Three of the four crew members were pulled out and are in stable condition aboard the carrier. As of publication,...
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