Share this story It looked like a four-poster bed welded out of scaffolding, and it flew by balancing on a column of jet blast. When the Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig lurched into the air at Hucknall in 1954, it became the first jet-lift aircraft to fly anywhere in...
Share this story Take a V-1 flying bomb — the pilotless cruise missile that terrorised London in 1944 — and cut a small hole in the fuselage just ahead of the engine. Fit a plywood seat, a single control column, and a handful of basic instruments. Now put...
Share this story Somewhere over Germany in the last winter of the war, four P-51 Mustangs slid in behind a lone, unfamiliar fighter and prepared to pounce. The pilot did not turn to dogfight. He pushed the throttle to the stop, triggered a chemical boost that shoved...
Share this story On 30 April 1958, a gleaming four-engined jet was rolled out of a hangar in Dresden to great fanfare. It was called the 152, and it was meant to announce East Germany’s arrival as a builder of modern airliners — a socialist answer to the...
Share this story A stealth fighter’s first taxi run is not glamorous. It rolls out of the hangar, creeps down the taxiway under its own power, and stops. But for Turkey, the sight of its second Kaan prototype trundling along the apron at Ankara on Jul. 31, 2026...
Share this story For decades Japan built warships bristling with missile cells and used them only to shoot things down. That just changed. On Jul. 29, 2026, the destroyer JS Chōkai fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into the Pacific — the first time a Japanese...
Share this story France’s special forces are about to get a very different kind of helicopter. On Jul. 30, 2026, Airbus Helicopters announced the delivery of the first NH90 Caïman Standard 2 — a purpose-built special-operations version of France’s...
Share this story For four months, one of Europe’s larger air forces was fighting a quiet air-defence campaign over the Arabian Peninsula — and almost nobody noticed. Since the second half of March 2026, Italy has kept Eurofighter Typhoons, an early-warning...
Share this story Singapore has a habit of buying the best fighter it can find, years before it strictly needs it — and doing so quietly. So when reports emerged on 30 July that the city-state has opened exploratory talks around the Global Combat Air Programme,...
Share this story A stealth aircraft that hangs its bombs under the wings is not really a stealth aircraft. The whole point of a low-observable shape is undone the moment you bolt angular metal to the outside of it. That is why the milestone Baykar announced on 30 July...
Share this story The cheapest weapon on a modern battlefield is a drone you can buy online. The U.S. Air Force has just answered it in Europe with one of the most futuristic: a laser. Quietly, and at locations it will not name, U.S. Air Forces in Europe has fielded...
Share this story On Friday, the flags came down at Ämari. Portuguese airmen who had spent months guarding the Baltic sky handed the watch to a new crew, and for the first time the pilots taking over spoke Turkish. Five Turkish F-16 Fighting Falcons are now sitting...
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