Share this story At Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Florida, a winging ceremony builds to one moment: family members step forward and pin a small gold badge on the chest of a newly graduated naval aviator. Years of flight training come down to that. In April 2026,...
Share this story Every fighter engine that comes out of the repair shop has to prove itself before it goes back into a jet. That means running it at full power, afterburner included, for as long as the technicians need to check it. Do that in the open, next to a base...
Share this story It looked like the future: a long, polished needle of a fuselage, four jet engines tucked into two slim nacelles, and a tandem bubble canopy perched on top. On 2 April 1947, the Convair XB-46 took off from San Diego and flew for 90 minutes to Muroc...
Share this story On 7 July 1962, Georgy Mosolov flew a sleek Soviet delta-winged jet down a measured course twice, once in each direction, and averaged 2,681 kilometres per hour. That made it the fastest aircraft in the world. The paperwork sent to the Fédération...
Share this story In January 1956, Kelly Johnson walked into the Pentagon with an offer the Air Force could not refuse. The man who had just built the U-2 proposed a successor that would cruise at Mach 2.5 and nearly 100,000 feet, and he promised the first of two...
Share this story The part cost about 1.2 million won to make, roughly 900 US dollars. By the time it reached a South Korean KF-16, it was being billed as a genuine American component at around 100 million won. According to South Korean prosecutors, that markup ran for...
Share this story Japan’s next jet trainer may come with an instructor who is not in the cockpit at all. In an investor presentation dated 6 October 2026, Kawasaki Heavy Industries showed a concept for a next-generation trainer aircraft, built around an AI...
Share this story The Gripen E is a Swedish fighter with an American heart. Its engine is a General Electric F414, the same family that powers the Super Hornet. On 8 October 2026, Saab and GKN Aerospace signed an agreement that gives Sweden a bigger hand in looking...
Share this story Canada has ordered only 16 F-35s so far, and it still has not decided whether it will buy the rest. It is, however, building the house for them. On 7 October 2026, Defence Minister David McGuinty announced nearly $4 billion for fighter capabilities at...
Share this story Somewhere in a freight system, an email arrived that said, in effect: do not send this box through Hong Kong. Nobody at the other end read it. The box contained a cockpit canopy and a weapons-bay door from an F-35 Lightning II, and it went through...
Share this story At 10:21 on Tuesday morning, according to Air Data News, a single-engine fighter with the number 4109 on its tail rolled down the runway at Gavião Peixoto, in the interior of São Paulo state, and climbed away. On the face of it, it was a routine first...
Share this story Every fighter pilot is taught to respect the stall. Pull too hard, raise the nose too far, and the wing stops producing lift and the aircraft stops doing what you want. On 29 April 1993, over the Mojave Desert, the second Rockwell-MBB X-31...
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