Hawkeye’s Eyes Get Sharper: E-2D Radar Overhaul
The US Navy’s most important aircraft isn’t a fighter. It’s a turboprop with a dinner-plate radar on its back — and it just received the most significant upgrade in 25 years. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have completed testing of the Digital...
3D-Printed Cruise Missile Hits Tomahawk Range
A cruise missile the size of a 500-pound bomb, manufactured almost entirely by 3D printers, can now fly over 1,000 nautical miles. CoAspire unveiled the RAACM-ER — the extended-range variant of its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile — at the Sea-Air-Space...
Ukrainian F-16 Pilots Rewrote the Playbook
The tactics manual was wrong. The Western instructors who trained Ukraine’s first F-16 pilots handed them a playbook forged in Desert Storm, honed over Iraq and Afghanistan, and perfected against adversaries who couldn’t shoot back from beyond visual...
Izumo Gets a New Bow: Japan’s Carrier Reborn
For the first time since the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carriers were sent to the bottom of the Pacific, Japan has a warship designed to launch fixed-wing combat aircraft. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force released photographs on April 20 showing JS Izumo with...
Australia’s Growlers Get Next-Gen Jammer Pods
The Royal Australian Air Force just received the most advanced electronic warfare system ever mounted on a fighter jet. Raytheon confirmed on April 22 that the RAAF has taken delivery of ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer — Mid Band (NGJ-MB) pods for its fleet of EA-18G...
GBU-75: The Bomb That Grew a Jet Engine
A 500-pound bomb flew 200 nautical miles, hit within metres of its target, and cost a fraction of a cruise missile. Boeing’s GBU-75 Joint Direct Attack Munition — Long Range didn’t just extend the range of a dumb bomb. It turned one into a powered,...
Ford-Class Carriers on the Chopping Block
The most expensive warship ever built might not get any siblings. Navy Secretary John Phelan announced on April 21 that the service is conducting a comprehensive review of the Ford-class aircraft carrier design — and he pointedly refused to rule out canceling future...
Iran Seizes Two Ships Hours After Ceasefire Extension
The ceasefire was barely twelve hours old when Tehran made its answer clear. On April 22, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats seized two commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and opened fire on a third — all within hours of President Trump...
Eagle II Bonanza: USAF Doubles F-15EX Fleet to 267
The Air Force just placed the biggest bet on a fourth-generation fighter in decades. In its fiscal 2027 budget request, the service revealed plans to buy a total of 267 F-15EX Eagle IIs — more than doubling the previous target of 129 jets and signaling that the...
Nine Days in a Cockpit the Size of a Bathtub: The Voyager’s Round-the-World Flight
On December 14, 1986, a strange-looking aircraft — long, thin, with two fuselages, a pusher engine, a puller engine, and wings so flexible they bent visibly under their own weight — rolled down a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California and lifted off. It was...
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