Checked Baggage: What the FAA and IATA Allow in the Hold
Share this story Everyone knows the cabin rules. Liquids in a bag, laptop out of the case, no knives. The hold feels like the forgiving place, the hole in the aeroplane where the awkward things go once the security theatre is over. It is the opposite. For an entire...
Why the Houthis Are So Hard to Defeat From the Air: Seven Reasons
Share this story In October 2026 Houthi missiles are again falling on Saudi Arabia. On 10 October a ballistic missile hit terminals 3 and 4 at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, killing at least 13 people. Saudi investigators say drones went in first to...
Hypersonic Weapons Explained: Boost-Glide, Scramjet and Ballistic
Share this story On 13 October Pakistan announced a test of its Fatah-2 ER and called it a hypersonic missile. Russia calls the Kinzhal hypersonic. So does China with the DF-17, and so does the US Air Force with the HACM it hopes to field later this decade. The word...
Hawker Hart: The 1930 Bomber That RAF Fighters Could Not Catch
Share this story Imagine running an air force whose newest bomber is faster than every fighter you own. That was the problem facing the Royal Air Force at the start of the 1930s, and the aircraft that caused it was a sleek silver biplane from Sydney Camm’s...
Fatah-2 ER: Pakistan Tests a Longer-Range “Hypersonic” Missile
Share this story Pakistan’s Army Rocket Force fired another missile on Tuesday, and this one comes with a word that every defence ministry now likes to use: hypersonic. The military’s media wing, ISPR, announced on 13 October 2026 that the army had...
Cobra Warrior 26-2: RAF Exercise Ends After 942 Sorties
Share this story For three and a half weeks this autumn, Britain’s skies hosted the RAF’s biggest homeland defence exercise. Now the Royal Air Force has published the final tally for Exercise Cobra Warrior 26-2: 942 sorties, more than 2,500 flying hours...
AN/ALE-50 and BriteCloud: How Towed and Expendable Decoys Work
Share this story There is a moment in the design of every defensive electronic warfare system where the engineering stops being intuitive. You are being tracked by a radar. The obvious response is to drown that radar in noise. And the moment you do, you have told...
Spitfire XIV vs P-51D Mustang: Which Was the Better Fighter?
Share this story Ask a room of warbird enthusiasts which was the best piston-engined fighter of the Second World War in Europe and you will start an argument that has been running for 80 years. Two names come up again and again: the American P-51D Mustang and the...
Gust Locks: The Forgotten Pin That Keeps Crashing Aircraft
Share this story Every parked aircraft has a problem: wind. A gust across the ramp can slam a rudder or an elevator against its stops, damaging the control system or hurting someone nearby. The fix is simple and almost as old as aviation itself. Lock the controls....
How Cheap Drone Interceptors Work: Sting, Coyote and Roadrunner
Share this story For most of the history of air defence, the target was worth more than the missile that killed it. A bomber, a fighter or a cruise missile cost millions, so a missile that cost hundreds of thousands was a bargain. Drones broke that arithmetic. A...
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