Why Every Air Force Wants Drones That Die
The most important aircraft in modern warfare costs less than a pickup truck. It flies once, hits something, and ceases to exist. No pilot, no ejection seat, no maintenance schedule. Just a motor, a warhead, a guidance chip, and a mission. From Iran’s Shahed-136...
ILA Berlin Opens: Ravenstorm, AW249, and Europe’s Defence Pivot
ILA Berlin 2026 opens today under the shadow of the biggest upheaval in European defence aviation in a generation. The Franco-German FCAS is dead. Team Gen 6 is born. And around 750 exhibitors have descended on the German capital to show what comes next. This is not a...
Team Gen 6: Eight German Companies Build a Fighter Without France
It took two days. On Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed publicly that the Franco-German FCAS — Europe’s most ambitious combat aircraft programme since the Eurofighter — was dead — after privately telling President Macron on Saturday. On Tuesday, on the...
A French Rafale Just Fired NATO’s First Shot Over Latvia
At five minutes past ten on the morning of 8 June, the quiet farmland around Bērzgale, a village in eastern Latvia barely thirty kilometres from the Russian frontier, became the site of a first for Latvia — and at least the third time NATO fighters have destroyed a...
It’s Official: France and Germany Kill FCAS
It was meant to be the aircraft that bound Europe together — a tailless, sensor-fused sixth-generation fighter, flanked by swarms of loyal drones, sharing one encrypted combat cloud, flying off French and German runways by 2040. On Monday, the Élysée Palace ended it...
The Mirage 4000: Dassault’s Twin-Engine Monster France Refused to Buy
On 9 March 1979, test pilot Jean-Marie Saget lifted a giant delta off the runway at Istres and climbed into a sky that belonged, for a few glorious minutes, to the most powerful fighter ever built in Europe. The Dassault Mirage 4000 — twin SNECMA M53 engines, compound...
France Confirms: Rafales Are Coming to Ukraine
France’s ambassador to Sweden has confirmed what defence analysts suspected and Kyiv desperately hoped: Dassault Rafale F4 fighters will join the Ukrainian Air Force. The announcement, made by Ambassador Thierry Carlier in early June 2026, places the most...
Rafale Fires MICA NG at Mach 1
A Rafale punched through Mach 1 over the DGA missile test range on 1 June and released an MICA NG infrared missile into the markedly hotter airflow that supersonic flight generates. The seeker locked. The missile guided. France just proved its next-generation...
Ukraine’s Mirages Are Now Dropping Bombs
A delta wing flickers along a tree line in eastern Ukraine, so low it seems to brush the branches, then hauls up into a steep, sudden climb. The silhouette is unmistakable to anyone raised on French aviation: a Dassault Mirage 2000. And the manoeuvre is just as...
Brand-New Lufthansa 787 Drops on Its Nose
At 12:45 on Thursday afternoon, a brand-new Boeing 787-9 stood at stand A15 of Frankfurt Airport, being readied for the long haul to Los Angeles. Catering was going aboard, the cabin crew were at their stations — and then, without warning, the nose of the...
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