Macron Offers Greece Rafales for Its Mirages — Bound for Ukraine
Emmanuel Macron arrives in Athens today with a proposal that reads like a Cold War arms bazaar: give us all 43 of your Mirage 2000 fighters, and we will sell you Rafales at a discount. The Mirages? They are going to Ukraine. The deal, first reported by Le Parisien,...
Rafales Over the Baltic: France Rehearses Nuclear Strikes
French Rafale fighters armed with nuclear-capable ASMP cruise missiles will soon rehearse strikes on targets near St. Petersburg. The exercise partner is Poland. The theatre is the Baltic Sea. And the message is aimed squarely at Moscow. According to the Polish news...
Peru’s F-16 Deal Sparks Cabinet Revolt
Two cabinet ministers are out. A president is backpedalling. And at the centre of it all sits a $3.5 billion order for 24 fighter jets that Peru’s military desperately wants — and Peru’s politicians can’t agree on. On April 22, Peru’s Defence...
Richard Bong: America’s Ace of Aces with 40 Aerial Victories in the Pacific
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories40 (US all-time record)Aircraft FlownP-38 LightningWarsWorld War II (Pacific)Born / Died24 Sep 1920 – 6 Aug 1945 (age 24)Unit9th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force Lockheed P-38 Lightning –...
SpaceShipOne: The Day a Private Team Beat NASA to Space for 1.5% of the Cost
On October 4, 2004 — the 47th anniversary of Sputnik — a small, white aircraft climbed to 112 kilometres above the Mojave Desert, briefly reached space, and returned safely to Earth. It was the third such flight in five days. The pilot was different each time but the...
Yekaterina Budanova: The Forgotten Soviet Fighter Ace Who Flew Alongside a Legend
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories11 (aerial victories + ground)Aircraft FlownYak-1, LaGG-3WarsWorld War IIBorn / Died7 Jul 1916 – 19 Jul 1943 (age 27)Unit586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment...
$6 Billion GPS Ground System — Canceled
The Pentagon just killed a $6 billion programme that was supposed to modernise the ground infrastructure controlling every GPS satellite in orbit. The Next Generation Operational Control System — OCX — has been cancelled after years of cost overruns, schedule slips,...
Iran’s F-14 Tomcats: American Cats Against American Jets
While American F-15Es and F/A-18s bomb Iranian military targets from the Persian Gulf, a handful of Grumman F-14A Tomcats sit in hardened shelters at Iranian air bases — the last operational Tomcats on earth. Built in the United States, sold to the Shah, abandoned by...
El Al’s Longest Flight: 16 Hours to Buenos Aires
El Al is stretching its wings to the bottom of the world. Israel’s flag carrier has announced its longest-ever scheduled route: a 7,604-mile nonstop from Tel Aviv to Buenos Aires, operated by Boeing 787 Dreamliners with three classes of service. At 16.5 hours...
Qatar’s VIP 747 Becomes Air Force One
It has marble showers, plush VIP suites, and a price tag approaching $400 million for the conversion alone. It was built as a flying palace for the Emir of Qatar. And by this summer, it will carry the President of the United States — with one critical capability...
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