Israel Signs $34M Deal to Extend F-35I Range
On May 14, Israel’s Ministry of Defense signed a $34 million contract with Cyclone, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, to develop and integrate external fuel tanks for the F-35I Adir. It is a deal born not of peacetime planning but of hard operational lessons —...
A Stray Ukrainian Drone Just Took Down the Latvian Government
On the night of May 7, a Ukrainian drone wandered into Latvian airspace from Russia, lost contact under intense electronic warfare jamming, and slammed into an empty oil tank at a fuel depot near Rēzekne, about 40 kilometres from the Russian border. No casualties....
Italy Just Dumped Boeing for Airbus: 6 A330 MRTTs to Replace KC-767
The Boeing-versus-Airbus tanker fight that consumed two decades of American procurement just had a quieter, more decisive European sequel. Italy signed on April 16 for six Airbus A330 MRTT tankers — €1.4 billion over ten years — and walked away from a long-standing...
Italian F-35Bs Just Landed On a Finnish Highway — A Lightning II First
For the first time in the F-35B’s decade-long operational life (the variant entered service with the US Marine Corps in July 2015), an F-35B has set wheels down on a public road. Two of them, actually — Italian Air Force F-35Bs from the 32° Stormo, touching down...
Baltic First: Romanian F-16 Just Shot Down a Drone Over Estonia
At 12:00 local time on May 19, an unidentified aircraft crossed into Estonian airspace from Russia. Fourteen minutes later it was a smoking crater south of the town of Põltsamaa. In between, two Romanian F-16s from Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania — already airborne on...
The Nord 1500 Griffon: France Stacked a Ramjet on a Turbojet and Hit Mach 2.19
In the late summer of 1957, in the South of France, a 35-year-old test pilot named André Turcat climbed into the cockpit of an aircraft that, by every reasonable standard of aerospace engineering, should not have flown. The Nord 1500 Griffon II had a turbojet engine....
The Aerfer Sagittario 2: 70 Years Ago Today, Italy Broke the Sound Barrier
Seventy years ago today — 19 May 1956 — an Italian aeronautical engineer named Sergio Stefanutti watched his answer to a NATO design competition lift off the runway at the Pomigliano d’Arco airfield outside Naples. The aircraft he had spent three...
After 22 Years, Air France-KLM Is About to Drop Its Own Name
After 22 years, two of European aviation’s most recognisable blue tail-fins may be about to disappear from the cover of their own annual report. Air France-KLM Group — the holding company born in 2004 from the merger of France’s flag carrier and the...
NATO Just Picked a Swedish-Canadian Jet Over Boeing for AWACS
For 44 years, the radar discs that watched the skies above Europe wore American badges. Fourteen NATO Boeing E-3A Sentries, based at Geilenkirchen in Germany, flew under the NATO flag with mixed crews drawn from 17 participating nations — and as many as 19...
UK F-35Bs Are Finally Getting Smart Bombs — From the Americans
For a country that operates the most expensive combat aircraft ever built, Britain has spent the last decade flying it with surprisingly few things to drop. The Royal Air Force’s F-35B Lightning fleet — designed around a 25-year roadmap of cutting-edge British...
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