The 1980s Nuke Missile the B-52 Can’t Retire Yet
The AGM-86B was designed when the Soviet Union still existed, gas cost about a dollar a gallon, and the B-52 crews loading it were younger than the bomber. More than four decades later, the United States has decided it cannot let the missile retire just yet. In 2026,...
Boeing or Northrop: Who Builds the Navy’s Next Fighter?
Two companies. One contract. Decades of consequences. Sometime around August 2026, the US Navy is expected to decide who will build the F/A-XX — its sixth-generation carrier fighter and one of the most important American aircraft programmes of the century. The choice...
China Doesn’t Need the Best Stealth Jet — Just the Most
For twenty years, the Western answer to Chinese air power was simple: our jets are better. The F-22 and F-35 out-sense, out-stealth and out-network anything Beijing could field. That may still be true of any single aircraft. It may also be about to stop mattering....
One Last Growl: The Warthog’s Final Range Day
It is 107 degrees on the range tower at Gila Bend, and a photographer is shielding his camera in the shade between passes so it will not overheat. Then the sound arrives — that unmistakable, chest-rattling BRRRT — and an A-10C Thunderbolt II drops out of the Arizona...
A Cheesesteak, a MiG-21, and Mach 1
Somewhere over the Florida coast, at better than a thousand miles an hour, a man in an oxygen helmet unwrapped a cheesesteak, took a bite, and pulled a face you don’t usually see outside a rollercoaster. That, apparently, is what it now takes to sell a sandwich....
The Strike Eagles Came Home as Monsters
The first eight came in before sunset on 1 July, dropping onto RAF Lakenheath’s runway one after another. The last three arrived in the dark, their names unreadable. Eleven F-15E Strike Eagles of the 48th Fighter Wing, home from the Iran air war — and...
An Eagle and a Ghost Fly Together
One photo, two aircraft, and a very large hint about the future of air combat. On 1 July, Pacific Air Forces posted imagery of a US Air Force F-15EX Eagle II flying over the Philippine Sea in close formation with something no American fighter had been photographed...
Seahawk Down in the Arabian Sea
At 3:30 in the morning Eastern time on 1 July, an MH-60S Sea Hawk from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush went into the water of the Arabian Sea. Three of the four crew members were pulled out and are in stable condition aboard the carrier. As of publication,...
The Pentagon Gets a Drone Czar
The Pentagon just did something it almost never does: it took power away from the Army, Navy and Air Force all at once. In a memo dated 29 June and made public this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created a single office with authority over virtually every drone...
PLA Releases First Official Footage of China’s J-36 Sixth-Generation Fighter
China’s People’s Liberation Army has released the first official footage of its sixth-generation fighter jet — believed to be the Chengdu J-36 — in a military video published on 28 June 2026. The brief but unmistakable appearance marks the first time...
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