Japan Wrapped a Jet in White. Why?
On a humid June afternoon, a Japanese plane-spotter pointed a long lens at the flight line of Gifu Air Base and froze. Tucked against a hangar wall sat something large, the size of a fighter, and it was wrapped from nose to tail in white fabric like a piece of...
Indonesia Gets Its First Rafales: Three Down, 39 to Go
It is official: Indonesia is now a Rafale operator. The first three Dassault Rafale fighters touched down at Roesmin Nurjadin Air Base in Pekanbaru, Sumatra, on 23 January 2026 — the opening batch of an eventual 42-jet fleet that will become the sharpest edge of...
Switzerland’s First F-35A Is Now Being Built — As the Order Shrinks
It is officially happening: the first jet that will one day wear a Swiss cross is now bolted together on a factory floor in Georgia. After years of votes, lawsuits and price rows, Switzerland’s F-35A has stopped being a PowerPoint slide and started being an...
Turkey Says It’s Building an F-35-Class Jet Engine
Turkey has just told the world it’s building a fighter jet engine in the same thrust class as the one inside the F-35 — and the claim is equal parts genuinely impressive and quietly confusing. The short version: Turkey’s indigenous-engine ambitions...
After the Iran War, Israel Orders More Stealth
The order came not from a battlefield but from a committee room. On a Sunday in early May 2026, a panel of senior Israeli ministers signed off on a plan that had been gathering urgency for the better part of a year: buy two more squadrons of American fighters, and buy...
Singapore Airlines Eyes 50 New Widebody Jets
When Singapore Airlines goes shopping for aircraft, the rest of the industry leans in to watch. The Changi-based carrier has spent decades building a reputation as a benchmark for premium long-haul flying, and the jets it chooses tend to become the jets everyone else...
India and Brazil Plot a Jet-for-Jet Swap
Two of the world’s biggest emerging powers are quietly negotiating one of the most unusual arms deals of the decade — and almost no Western capital is in the room. India and Brazil are working toward a barter: India would hand Brazil its homegrown Tejas...
They Tried to Kill the Warthog. Iran Saved It.
The U.S. Air Force has been trying to kill the A-10 Warthog for the better part of two decades. Budget after budget, the brass penciled in its funeral. And every time, something refused to let it go quietly. This time it was Iran. After weeks of Warthogs hammering...
267 Eagles: The Air Force’s Big Bet
For a decade the U.S. Air Force kept trying to bury the F-15. The plan was to buy a token batch of new Eagles, then let the production line die quietly while everything went to stealth. The Eagle was the past. The F-35 and the secret sixth-generation jet were the...
The Man Who Jumped From the Edge of Space
On 16 August 1960, a tiny open gondola hung beneath an enormous helium balloon, 102,800 feet above the New Mexico desert. That is more than 31 kilometres up — high enough that the sky overhead is black, the horizon curves, and there is almost no air left to breathe....
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