History & Legends, Military Aviation
When the Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut rolled out in 1997, it looked like nothing else in the sky. Its wings swept forward instead of back — an aerodynamic concept that promised extraordinary agility, superior low-speed handling, and enhanced controllability at high angles of...
Aviation World, Military Aviation
In 1991, during the opening night of Desert Storm, F-111F Aardvarks streaked across the Iraqi desert at 200 feet and 500 knots — in total darkness. The pilots were not flying the aircraft. The terrain-following radar was. A computer scanned the ground ahead,...
Aviation World, Military Aviation
The Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound is the fastest combat aircraft in active service. It can exceed Mach 2.8, reach altitudes above 67,000 feet, and detect targets at ranges of over 200 kilometers with its Zaslon phased-array radar — the first of its kind ever fitted to a...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The Convair B-58 Hustler was the first operational supersonic bomber. It could outrun interceptors, deliver nuclear weapons at Mach 2, and looked like it was going fast standing still. It also killed more of its own crew than any bomber in USAF history relative to...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In 1991, the Yakovlev Yak-141 became the world’s first supersonic VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) fighter to fly. Four years later, the Soviet Union was gone, the program was dead, and Yakovlev was broke. Then Lockheed Martin came calling — and parts of the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the night of April 30, 1982, Vulcan XM607 took off from Ascension Island with a single objective: bomb the runway at Port Stanley, nearly 4,000 miles away. It took eleven Victor tankers in the initial wave, some seventeen fuel transfers, and sixteen hours of flying...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In 1940, when Britain was burning through aluminium faster than it could import it, Geoffrey de Havilland proposed building a combat aircraft out of wood. The Air Ministry laughed. Bomber Command’s hierarchy dismissed the idea as amateurish. The specification...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 6 April 1965, Chancellor James Callaghan stood up in Parliament and — in the middle of his Budget speech — cancelled the most advanced military aircraft Britain had ever built. The BAC TSR-2 — Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance, Mark 2 — died not because it failed,...
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