The largest radar ever built does not sit on a mountain. It floats. Six diesel generators, two hulls, a crew of somewhere between 48 and 86 depending on which part of the US government you ask, and on top of it a white sphere 36.5 metres (120 ft) across held up by...
Within nine hours of flydubai FZ1073 landing at Tabuk, an Israeli cabinet minister had called it a jihadist terror attack, a finance minister had said the perpetrator should pay as though he had murdered, and the airline flying the aircraft had asked everybody to stop...
The Horten Ho 229 was the first jet flying wing to fly, in February 1945. It was not a stealth fighter, and it is not the ancestor of the B-2. The full story.
The man who buys the US Air Force’s fighters has a simple view of what matters most right now: factories. Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on 28 September 2026, Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich said the F-47 sixth-generation fighter is heading...
The Pentagon has been shooting missiles faster than it can buy them, and it has decided to fix that with a very large cheque. On 28 September 2026, RTX’s Raytheon announced a multiyear contract worth up to $20.7 billion for the AIM-120 AMRAAM, the West’s...
Before a fighter pilot fires, one question has to be answered with certainty: is that contact a friend or a foe? On the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the box that answers it is about to change. BAE Systems announced on 29 September 2026 that its AN/APX-127(V)1 Combined...
flydubai FZ1073 dived from 34,000 feet during a violent cockpit fight. The captain was stabbed, off-duty pilots subdued the first officer, and Israel is investigating a suspected attempt to crash the jet.
The passengers were in their seats. The bags were in the hold. The Boeing 737 was ready to push back for Iran. Then, on Monday evening, 28 September 2026, lawyers and court enforcement officers walked up to the aircraft at Istanbul Airport with a seizure order, and...
When the first F-16 Fighting Falcons arrived in Ukraine in the summer of 2024, a lot of people expected dogfights. What Ukraine got instead was a night shift. Its F-16s have spent most of the war hunting cruise missiles and attack drones over Ukrainian cities, and on...
Germany builds a great deal of aircraft structure. Fuselage sections, wings, cabins and engines leave German factories every day. What it has not done for a very long time is design, certify, assemble and support a complete airliner of its own. On 29 September 2026,...
China has very few military footholds abroad, and on 29 September 2026 it quietly added one more. Beijing’s Ministry of National Defence announced that a China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center and a China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy are now operating...
Volotea built its business on the routes nobody else wanted: Nantes to Palma, Bilbao to Athens, Verona to Catania. Small cities, medium-sized airports, very orange-and-white checkerboard tails. On 29 September 2026, the Spanish low-cost airline asked a commercial...
Belgium promised Ukraine fighter jets more than two years ago. On 29 September 2026, Volodymyr Zelensky finally put a number and a date on the first of them: three Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcons, to be handed over before the end of this year. Zelensky announced the...
Toulouse has seen a great many first flights, but few in a paint scheme that looks like a cardboard box. On 29 September 2026, the first Airbus A350F, MSN700, registered F-WXLD, lifted off from Toulouse-Blagnac in its brown test livery with bright orange wingtips and...
Boeing had a good Tuesday. A very good Tuesday. On 29 September 2026 the Pentagon handed the company the Navy’s sixth-generation F/A-XX fighter, and on the very same day the Department of the Air Force quietly signed for 22 more F-15EX Eagle II fighters. One...
Boeing has won the US Navy’s F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter competition over Northrop Grumman, with a development contract worth more than $20 billion.
On 28 December 1944 a kamikaze Zero hit the ammunition-laden Liberty ship SS John Burke. The explosion killed all 68 aboard. What the viral film posts get wrong.