Hawkeye’s Eyes Get Sharper: E-2D Radar Overhaul
The US Navy’s most important aircraft isn’t a fighter. It’s a turboprop with a dinner-plate radar on its back — and it just received the most significant upgrade in 25 years. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have completed testing of the Digital...
3D-Printed Cruise Missile Hits Tomahawk Range
A cruise missile the size of a 500-pound bomb, manufactured almost entirely by 3D printers, can now fly over 1,000 nautical miles. CoAspire unveiled the RAACM-ER — the extended-range variant of its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile — at the Sea-Air-Space...
Australia’s Growlers Get Next-Gen Jammer Pods
The Royal Australian Air Force just received the most advanced electronic warfare system ever mounted on a fighter jet. Raytheon confirmed on April 22 that the RAAF has taken delivery of ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer — Mid Band (NGJ-MB) pods for its fleet of EA-18G...
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...
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