The Flying Crowbar: A Reactor at Mach 3
On the afternoon of 14 May 1961, in a tin control shed on a stretch of Nevada desert called Jackass Flats, a group of Lawrence Livermore engineers held their breath. Two miles away, bolted to a railroad flatcar and painted fire-engine red, sat a machine no one had...
Ukraine’s Pink Missile Takes Aim at Patriot Prices
The missile is pink. That is the first thing you notice in the test footage Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point released this week: a bright flamingo-pink rocket leaping off its launcher and carving through a “fully controlled maneuvering flight.” The colour...
China Built a Submarine With No Sail
Something is missing from the submarine that appeared at Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard at the end of May: the sail. Satellite imagery captured on June 1 by Vantor shows a boat roughly 120 metres long — longer than most nuclear attack submarines — with...
Turkey’s Secret Jamming Jet Breaks Cover
For one second — literally one second of footage — Turkey’s most secretive military aircraft flashed across the screen. The clip, buried in a Ministry of National Defense video marking the 115th anniversary of the Turkish Air Force on June 1, gave...
Engine Failure After V1
The airliner is rolling. Both engines at full power, 160 knots, the runway disappearing fast. The captain’s hand is on the throttle. The first officer calls “V1.” At that exact moment, the left engine explodes. Too fast to stop. Too slow to fly well...
MQ-25 Stingray Completes Maiden Flight
Boeing’s MQ-25A Stingray completed its maiden flight on 25 April at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport, flew for two hours, and demonstrated autonomous taxi, takeoff, flight, and landing under ground-controller command. Three weeks later, the Navy cleared it for...
CCA Engine Race: GE and Rolls-Royce
The engine that will power America’s autonomous combat drones does not exist yet — but six companies are now racing to build it. The US Air Force has awarded medium-thrust engine design contracts to GE Aerospace and Rolls-Royce for the Autonomous Collaborative...
Russia Delivers New A-50U After Losing Three
Ukraine has destroyed or crippled three of Russia’s irreplaceable A-50U airborne early warning aircraft since January 2024. Now Moscow has quietly delivered a replacement. An image published by the Fighter-Bomber Telegram channel on 31 May shows a freshly...
The Sukhoi T-4 ‘Sotka’: Russia’s Mach 3 Answer to the XB-70 Valkyrie
On August 22, 1972, at the Zhukovsky flight test center outside Moscow, a colossal aircraft unlike anything the Western world had ever seen rolled onto the runway. Its drooping nose — eerily similar to the Concorde’s — was raised for takeoff...
The He 162 Volksjaeger: Hitler’s Jet Fighter for Teenage Pilots
The glue was still wet when test pilot Gotthold Peter strapped himself into the cockpit on December 10, 1944. The Heinkel He 162 had made its maiden flight just four days earlier — ninety days after the first design drawings had been submitted — and the...
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