Le document le plus important de l'histoire des avions furtifs n'a pas été rédigé en Californie ni sur un aérodrome secret en plein désert. Il a été écrit à Moscou, en russe, par un physicien soviétique – et l'Union soviétique a autorisé sa diffusion à l'étranger car elle estimait que ce travail était sans intérêt….
Share this story On the afternoon of 26 October 2001, Boeing chairman Phil Condit stood with his Joint Strike Fighter chief, Frank Statkus, in front of a television carrying a live feed from the Pentagon. The largest defence contract in history — one stealth fighter...
Share this story Walk up to the Dornier Do 335 and something looks wrong. There is a propeller on the nose, as expected — and then a second propeller on the tail, spinning behind the fin. The Germans called it the Pfeil, the Arrow. It was the fastest piston-engined...
Share this story Look at almost any jet airliner and the engines are in one of two places: slung under the wings, or bolted to the tail. Now look at the VFW-614. Its two engines sit on pylons on top of the wings — a layout almost no other airliner in history has ever...
Share this story For half a century, the West has tracked hostile aircraft the same way: a converted airliner with a radar dome, orbiting on station for hours at 9,000 metres (30,000 feet) while a crew in the back stares into scopes. On 29 May 2026, the U.S. Space...
Share this story On 28 July 1944, P-51 pilots of the 359th Fighter Group were escorting B-17s away from Merseburg when someone called out contrails high at six o’clock. Two stubby, tailless shapes came slicing down through the formation faster than anything the...
Share this story A few minutes past midnight on 24 January 1961, a Mark 39 hydrogen bomb drifted down through the winter darkness over Wayne County, North Carolina, swinging beneath a 30-metre (100-foot) parachute. It settled nose-first into a field near the hamlet of...
Share this story The US Army has looked hard at Ukraine and drawn a precise, uncomfortable conclusion: there is no longer any such thing as a safe place on a battlefield. Its answer, formalised in a redesignation ceremony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on June 18, is a...
Share this story Picture an aircraft that does not sit on a runway but stands upright on its tail, nose pointed at the sky like a rocket. Around its waist spins a three-bladed wing, driven not by an engine in the fuselage but by ramjets screaming at the very tips of...
Share this story On April Fools’ Day 2001, seventy miles off China’s Hainan Island, a Chinese fighter pilot misjudged his third close pass at an American spy plane by a few feet — and nearly started a war. The collision sheared his J-8 interceptor in...
Share this story On the night of 24 July 1943, 791 British bombers crossed the German coast toward Hamburg. In each aircraft, a crewman knelt by the flare chute with a stopwatch, shoving out one paper bundle every minute. Each bundle held 2,200 strips of...
Share this story 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...
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