Three Biplanes Against an Air Force
On 11 June 1940, the people of Malta looked up at a sky suddenly full of Italian bombers and saw, rising to meet them, a handful of fabric-and-wire biplanes that looked like relics from the last war. They were relics. And for ten desperate days, they were all the...
The 670-Ton Boat Armed Like a Frigate
An offshore patrol vessel is, as a rule, a modest thing: a hull built for endurance, a single medium gun, a job description that runs to fisheries protection and chasing smugglers. The United Arab Emirates has looked at that formula and, politely, ignored it. New...
The Last Warthogs Leave Tucson – Special Ops Moves In
For nearly half a century, the growl of the A-10 Warthog was the soundtrack of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. On 29 July, that sound faded for good — and now the Air Force is moving fast to fill the silence with something very different. With the last Warthogs...
The Smallest 737 MAX Is Finally Certified
After a certification saga that outlasted a pandemic, three Boeing CEOs and the better part of a decade, the smallest jet in the 737 MAX family is finally legal to carry passengers. On 3 August, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration granted Boeing an amended type...
The Poseidon Learns to Fly Its Own Drone
The U.S. Navy’s two great ocean-watchers already work as a pair. Now they are learning to talk directly to each other — and one of them is about to start taking orders straight from the other’s cockpit. On 5 August, Boeing and Northrop Grumman...
A Bomb Drone Beside Europe’s Cargo Giant
Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, an airport worker at Leipzig/Halle spotted something that should not have been there: a drone, sitting on the tarmac near the south runway, carrying an explosive device. It was resting a short distance from one of the largest...
US-Bangla’s $1.5 Billion Bet on Boeing
Bangladesh does not often make the big Boeing headlines. That changed at a hotel ballroom in Dhaka, where the country’s largest private airline quietly placed the biggest bet of its twelve-year life. At the “Beyond with Boeing” event on 29 July,...
Australia Gets America’s AMRAAM Killer First
America has been building a missile so secret it barely shows its face in public. Now it is letting a friend hold it — and Australia gets to go first. On 6 August, at Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles...
The Robot Wingman Grows Landing Gear — and Crashes
The Pentagon’s vision of cheap robot fighters flying shotgun for crewed jets took two big steps this week. One went forward. The other went straight into the Utah desert. Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has begun building the first XQ-58A Valkyries...
The Skyshark: Doomed by Its Own Engine
On paper, it should have worked. Take the superb Douglas Skyraider, replace its thundering piston engine with a modern turboprop of more than 5,000 horsepower, and the U.S. Navy would have a carrier attack aircraft faster and harder-hitting than anything afloat....
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