On March 3, 2026, an Iranian ballistic missile got through the air defenses surrounding Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. No one was killed. But the message was impossible to ignore: the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East — home to the air operations...
For thirty years, Prince Sultan Air Base has been the quiet backbone of U.S. air power in the Gulf — a vast installation in the Saudi desert, three hours’ drive from Riyadh, that has hosted American forces through Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and every crisis in...
The U.S. military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran in four weeks of war. That number — buried in a Military Times report on March 27 — has set off alarm bells inside the Pentagon. Not because the campaign isn’t working. But because of...
Photographers watching the B-2 Spirits taxi out for another Iran mission on March 25 noticed something odd. Rows of white rectangular patches — uniformly sized, black-bordered — running along the leading edges of both wings. On two separate aircraft. Nobody at the Air...
Most aircraft are designed to fly straight and level by default. Take your hands off the controls and they glide on, stable, content, reassuring. The F-16 Fighting Falcon is not like most aircraft. Take your hands off the controls in an F-16 and it will try to kill...
January 2, 1967. Colonel Robin Olds — World War II ace, Vietnam War wing commander, and possibly the most dangerous man ever to strap into a fighter jet — had a problem. North Vietnam’s MiG-21s were shooting down American aircraft with near impunity. The rules...
Franz Stigler had one kill to go. One more aircraft, and he would earn the Knight’s Cross — the highest military honour the Luftwaffe could bestow. He had fought across North Africa and was now flying Bf 109s over Germany, defending the Reich from the waves of...
In the summer of 1951, American F-86A pilots over North Korea were dying. Not because the MiG-15 was faster. Not because the North Korean and Chinese pilots were better. They were dying because at around Mach 0.86 — the speed at which the Sabre’s tail control...
Thirteen miles above Southern California, moving at roughly a mile every two seconds, Major Brian Shul and his backseat reconnaissance officer Walt were monitoring Los Angeles Center radio traffic when the entertainment started. A Cessna pilot had asked for a ground...
In U.S. defence procurement, hitting your cost target is newsworthy. Beating it significantly is almost unheard of. Yet that is exactly what Air Force officials are claiming about the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme — the effort to build autonomous drone...
At Edwards Air Force Base in February 2026, an F-22 Raptor pilot did something no fighter pilot has done before in an official U.S. Air Force exercise: he commanded a drone wingman in combat-like conditions. From his cockpit, using a specialist interface on a tablet,...
Poland does not make fighter jets. It hasn’t produced a combat aircraft in decades. But right now, Warsaw is knocking on the door of one of the most exclusive clubs in aerospace — the Global Combat Air Programme — and asking to be let in. What Poland wants is...
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