GBU-75: The Bomb That Grew a Jet Engine
A 500-pound bomb flew 200 nautical miles, hit within metres of its target, and cost a fraction of a cruise missile. Boeing’s GBU-75 Joint Direct Attack Munition — Long Range didn’t just extend the range of a dumb bomb. It turned one into a powered,...
150 Approaches, Zero Pilot Input: Chinook Lands Itself
A CH-47F Chinook helicopter touched down on a runway with all four wheels in exactly the right place. Nobody in the cockpit moved a finger. Boeing announced in April 2026 that its Approach-to-X (A2X) software successfully guided an Army Chinook through a complete...
X-BAT: The AI Fighter That Needs No Runway
They borrowed a thrust-vectoring nozzle from a 1990s experimental F-16 — retrieved, as one official put it, Indiana Jones style — bolted it onto a GE F110 turbofan, and pointed it straight down. That is how you make a fighter jet take off like a helicopter. Shield...
Rusty Dagger: The $225M Cruise Missile Arming Ukraine’s F-16s
The AGM-188A weighs 225 kilograms, flies at high subsonic speed, and strikes targets at ranges exceeding 930 kilometres. It costs a fraction of a Tomahawk. And the United States Air Force just launched it from an F-16 over the Gulf of Mexico. The weapon is called...
P-61 Black Widow: 127 Kills in the Dark, and Almost Nobody Remembers
Painted gloss black from nose to tail, carrying its own airborne radar, and bristling with four 20mm cannons and a remote-controlled dorsal turret, the Northrop P-61 Black Widow was built to kill in the dark. It was the first American aircraft designed from the outset...
Microburst: The 30-Second Killer That Changed Aviation Forever
On August 2, 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 — a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar carrying 163 people — was on final approach to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. A thunderstorm cell sat north of the field. The crew saw lightning but pressed on. At roughly 800 feet...
Wake Turbulence: The Invisible Force That Can Flip a 737
On November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 — an Airbus A300 — departed New York’s JFK airport two minutes after a Japan Airlines Boeing 747. The A300 encountered the 747’s wake turbulence over Jamaica Bay. The first officer’s aggressive...
Born in 1982, Still Nuclear: The Cruise Missile That Won’t Retire
The AGM-86B entered service in 1982. Ronald Reagan was president. The Space Shuttle had flown exactly three times. Top Gun was four years from release. And the Air Force fully expected this nuclear cruise missile to be retired within two decades. It is 2026, and the...
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