Share this story On 23 May 1943, a German fighter ace named Adolf Galland climbed into an aircraft with no propeller. He opened the throttles, felt a shove of thrust unlike anything a piston engine had ever given him, and afterwards reached for the only words that...
Ask which is better, the MiG-29 or the Su-30, and you have already misunderstood the question. They were never meant to compete. They are the two halves of a single idea — the Soviet Union’s deliberate decision to build one small fighter and one big one, each...
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….
Lorsque l'An-225 Mriya a été détruit en 2022, le monde a perdu son plus gros avion. Mais l'Occident conserve lui aussi un géant des airs, qui transporte des chars, des hélicoptères et des satellites à travers le monde depuis avant les premiers pas sur la Lune, et qui est….
Dans l'histoire des avions de chasse, on oublie presque toujours le finaliste. L'appareil qui perd la compétition se voit attribuer une plaque commémorative dans un musée, s'il a de la chance, tandis que le vainqueur obtient la production en série. Le Northrop YF-17 Cobra est la grande exception. Il a perdu – et pourtant….
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 Pakistan is on course to fly something no air force outside China has ever operated: a Chinese stealth fighter. The Pakistan Air Force has moved to acquire the Shenyang J-35 — reportedly up to 40 jets — in what would be the first export sale of a...
Share this story In the desert of far-western China, a passing satellite caught something Beijing would much rather keep in the shadows: two enormous stealth flying wings, sitting in the open on a remote airfield — the larger of them nearly as wide as an American B-2...
Share this story There is one aircraft the United States hopes it never has to use for its real job: the plane that would relay the order to launch nuclear missiles from America’s submerged submarines. Its replacement is now running late — and the government watchdog...
Share this story Ten minutes after lifting off from New York on Independence Day, climbing through 15,800 feet, the crew of a NetJets business jet saw something big and silver flash past their windscreen — close enough to report it. Then it was gone. They keyed the...
Share this story Britain has put a number on its future: £298 billion. That is the size of the Defence Investment Plan unveiled at the end of June, the government’s four-year blueprint for rebuilding an armed forces bent on fighting “the wars of today and tomorrow.”...
Share this story A number from a Chinese laboratory has been making the rounds, and it is a striking one: 95 percent. That, according to a computer simulation, is how often a Chengdu J-20 beat an American F-22 Raptor in a fight north of Taiwan. Read a little closer,...
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