When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine found itself holding the third-largest nuclear arsenal on Earth, from ICBMs to the world’s biggest fleet of Tu-160 bombers. Within a decade all of it was gone. Here is what Ukraine had, what it gave up, what the Budapest Memorandum actually said, and where the bombers are now.
Ivy Mike was not a weapon but a building-sized experiment. On 1 November 1952 it yielded 10.4 megatons and left a crater where the island of Elugelab had been. An hour and a half later, four F-84G pilots flew into its cloud to collect samples. Here is the story, and what the viral version gets slightly wrong.
On 12 January 2024, as a snowstorm hit Selfridge Air National Guard Base, a 127th Wing photographer walked out to the flight line. His picture of a snow-covered A-10C looked so much like a pencil drawing that people online refused to believe it was a photograph. It went on to win Air National Guard Feature Photo of the Year.
The Convair B-36 was so long that its crew lived in two separate pressurised cabins, with the unpressurised bomb bays in between. The only way across in flight was an 85-foot tube, two feet wide, travelled lying on your back on a wheeled cart.
Starship hits the atmosphere at nearly orbital speed and the air in front of it turns to glowing plasma. A shell of hexagonal ceramic tiles keeps the stainless-steel hull alive. Flight 13 brought one back intact for the first time, but the tiles are still the hardest part of making Starship reusable.
On 4 October 1989 a B-1B from Dyess AFB found its nose gear would not extend. Hours later, after a flight of more than 1,100 miles, the crew set it down on the Edwards lakebed on its main wheels and lowered the nose into the dust. Nobody was hurt. Here is what happened, and what to make of the most quoted line in the story.
Seconds after launch on 5 November 1959, one chamber of the X-15’s lower rocket engine exploded. Scott Crossfield shut down, dumped what propellant he could and put down on Rosamond Dry Lake. The rocket plane buckled behind the cockpit. It went on to become the fastest aircraft ever flown.
On 30 October 1961 a specially modified Tu-95 bomber dropped the largest bomb ever detonated over the Soviet Arctic. A giant parachute slowed its fall so the crew could escape. Here is what happened, and which of the famous numbers hold up.
A bogus aircraft part rarely looks fake. How suspected unapproved parts are spotted, quarantined, reported on FAA Form 8120-11 and chased, and what the AOG Technics case showed.
Before a new airliner carries a passenger, a committee of manufacturers, airlines and regulators has decided what gets inspected, and how often. Here is how MSG-3 and the MRB work.
Stelio Frati drew it as a sporty three-seater. Air forces turned the SIAI-Marchetti SF-260 into a trainer and light attack aircraft flown on several continents.
Twenty hours, a driver’s licence and, since October 2025, four-seat airplanes and night flying. What the sport pilot certificate allows after MOSAIC, and what it still does not.
Built to be faster than the 707 and DC-8, the Convair 880 sold just 65 copies, was tangled up in Howard Hughes’ TWA saga and became ‘the Flying Edsel’.
Safe-life, fail-safe and damage tolerance are three answers to one question: what happens when metal cracks? The Comet, the B-47 and the F-111 forced each change.
Built without a government contract, first flown in 1981 and sold to Singapore, the Philippines and Haiti, the little S.211 became the ancestor of today’s M-345.
14 CFR 91.157 lets a VFR pilot work inside a surface area in one mile and clear of clouds, with a clearance. Here is what it allows, who can use it and where it is banned.
China’s AutoFlight says five uncrewed eVTOLs, led by its five-tonne V5000 Matrix, flew a 47-minute autonomous formation over Kunshan, a claimed world first.