Share this story Every second a Saab Gripen is in the air, a computer is quietly stopping it from tumbling out of the sky. The Gripen was designed to be aerodynamically unstable, because an unstable jet turns harder and faster, and it only flies straight because its...
Share this story It does not look like a doomsday aircraft yet. Tail number 510 is a plain grey Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, four propellers and a long fuselage, sitting on the ramp at Marietta, Georgia. But on 15 October the US Navy accepted it as the...
Share this story The car drove up a ramp that curled over until it was hanging upside down, stuck to the concrete by its own suction. Then it ran off the end into thin air, fired its thrusters, flipped itself upright and settled onto its wheels. That was the opening...
Share this story Somewhere over the Mojave Desert, in the first week of October, a Raptor pilot did something no fighter pilot had done before: sending a new mission plan to a combat drone flying alongside, and letting the drone take it from there. The US Air Force...
On 27 January 1982, the nosewheel of a top-secret F-117 bounced down the runway at Area 51 as it took off. Lockheed test pilot Tom Morgenfeld was told to eject. He finished his test flight instead and landed on the bare strut.
On 14 October 1961 North America grounded its airliners for twelve hours while NORAD fought a mock nuclear attack. Eight RAF Vulcans played the Soviet bombers, flying higher than anyone else, and most of them were never touched.
Share this story Somewhere over the Sonoran Desert there is a yellow and blue two-seater turning in the evening light, and the person who owns it also built it. Not assembled it from a crate over a weekend. Built it, over several years, in a garage, with a rivet gun....
Share this story A Reaper does not sneak. It orbits. For twenty hours at a stretch it flies long, patient racetracks over somebody else’s country at the speed of a fast train, hauling a sensor turret and a pair of Hellfires, in full view of anything with a radar...
The R-360 Neptune was built to sink ships. Now the Long Neptune hits refineries and airbases 1,000 km away. How Ukraine’s cruise missile works.
Off-duty pilots, FAA inspectors and now air traffic controllers: who may sit in an airliner’s cockpit jumpseat, and why the captain always has the final say.
From desert storage to parting out and recycling: what happens to an airliner after its last flight, and why the engines are worth the most.
Nevada, White Sands, China Lake and Utah: the desert ranges where America tests its weapons, and why they are no longer big enough.
Agile Combat Employment spreads fighters across civil airports, small strips and roads. How ACE works, and why Sweden was doing it in the Cold War.
On 1 June 2025 Ukraine launched 117 drones from trucks parked near Russian air bases. How Operation Spiderweb worked, and what it really destroyed.
From 1959 to 1964 the RCAF’s Golden Hawks flew gold Canadair Sabres in 317 shows. The story of Canada’s first great jet display team.
In 1985 France quit the five-nation fighter that became the Eurofighter. A year later the Rafale A flew to Mach 1.3 on its first flight.
Trump says the Pentagon will build a “super range” in Montana to test hypersonics, autonomous weapons and electronic warfare. No site, cost or timeline yet.