Share this story There are 96 military veterans in the United States Congress. Forty-five served in the Army, twenty-four in the Navy, twelve in the Marine Corps and fifteen in the Air Force. Of those fifteen, exactly one flew fighters. Rep. August Pfluger of Texas...
Share this story Every December, C-130Js from Yokota fly to Guam and spend a fortnight pushing bundles out of the back over the Federated States of Micronesia. Operation Christmas Drop has run for seventy-four years and reaches sixty islands. It is charming, and it is...
Share this story Somebody has flown every tanker the U.S. Air Force has ever operated. The new head of Air Mobility Command would like to know whether that needs to stay true. “I do not believe that it has to be a manned future air refueling solution,” Lt....
Share this story The United States fired 1,100 JASSMs at Iran in the first 39 days of the war. That is not a stockpile being drawn down. That is a stockpile being emptied. Lockheed Martin’s answer, unveiled this week, is not a better missile. It is a missile you...
Share this story She had been in the Space Force for two years. She was somewhere in the Middle East, at a console, with a trailer-mounted dish pointed at the sky. Within hours of Operation Epic Fury beginning she was handed a priority target package and told to...
Share this story The U.S. Air Force has been flying its fighter drones for over a year. It has tested them, taxied them, launched them from austere strips and flown one alongside an F-35. What it has never done is put them into a proper war. In December, it will....
Share this story The crew were already aboard. The maintenance team was about to launch the jet. Then the base alarm went red and everybody ran for a bunker. When they came back out, the KC-135 Stratotanker was smoking, punched full of shrapnel holes, and sitting on...
Share this story Twelve F-15E Strike Eagles came down the approach at RAF Lakenheath on 16 September, six at a time, callsigns TREND 11 to 16 and then TREND 21 to 26. The tailcodes read MO. Mountain Home, Idaho. They were not stopping long. What made ground crews and...
Share this story The AIM-260 was supposed to be in squadron service in 2022. It is September 2026, the missile is still in development, and the first photograph of one only surfaced four months ago. For a weapon the U.S. Air Force calls essential to winning the next...
Share this story The ramp at Pituffik is wet, grey and running with meltwater. Behind it a ridge of bare rock streaked with old snow. A marshaller in olive fleece walks backwards with both arms up, and an F-35A Lightning II rolls towards him with WI stencilled on the...
Share this story Somewhere over the North Atlantic, in late 1973 or early 1974, a US Air Force F-4C Phantom flew a barrel roll around a Soviet Tu-95 Bear. The Soviet crew had asked for it, by hand signal, through the glass. The photographs were taken by Robert M....
Share this story On 10 February 1995, over a stretch of Amazon jungle that neither country could reach easily on foot, four Ecuadorian fighters shot down three Peruvian aircraft in about fifteen minutes. The Cenepa air battle is the only time an IAI Kfir has scored an...
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