39 Aircraft Lost: The Full Cost of Epic Fury
Thirty-nine aircraft. More than 13,000 sorties. Five weeks of sustained air combat over and around Iran. The War Zone has published a comprehensive, open-source tracking of every US aircraft confirmed lost or damaged during Operation Epic Fury — and the numbers tell a...
Nuclear Reactors Are Coming to Air Force Bases
In February 2026, a C-17 Globemaster III lifted a nuclear reactor off the tarmac at March Air Reserve Base in California and flew it to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The reactor, built by Valar Atomics, was small enough to fit inside a standard cargo bay. It was the...
Mystery Weapon Appears on Navy Destroyer
A photograph taken at Pearl Harbor on March 29 showed something unusual on the aft deck of the USS Carl M. Levin (DDG-120): a launcher that nobody outside the Navy could immediately identify. Mounted between the destroyer’s port-side torpedo tubes and its rear Mk 41...
Britain’s Drone Killer: From Sketch to Contract in 14 Months
In late 2024, a group of engineers, venture capitalists, and a former British defence secretary founded a company in Cambridge with a single goal: build a weapon that could kill a Shahed drone for roughly the same price as the drone itself. Fourteen months later, that...Before Lindbergh: The Two Men Who First Crossed the Atlantic Non-Stop
On June 15, 1919, at 8:40 in the morning, a Vickers Vimy biplane with two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines and no radio contact with the outside world nosed down through the clouds over the west coast of Ireland — and drove itself straight into a bog at Derrygimlagh, near...
Mach 6.7 at the Edge of Space: The X-15 Story
On October 3, 1967, test pilot William J. “Pete” Knight climbed into a black, dart-shaped aircraft bolted to the wing of a B-52 bomber. At 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, the B-52 released him. Knight lit the rocket engine. In the next 84 seconds, he accelerated...
The Pilot Who Stole the Foxbat
On September 6, 1976, a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor appeared on Japanese radar screens without warning. It was flying fast, low, and heading straight for Hakodate Airport on the northern island of Hokkaido. The pilot had not filed a flight plan. He had not...
Portugal Bets on a Tiny Italian Trainer
The next generation of Portuguese military pilots will learn to fly in an aircraft that weighs less than a family car. On April 9, 2026, Tecnam and Spanish aviation services provider World Aviation announced that the Portuguese Air Force has selected the Tecnam...
Your Next Flight Instructor Might Be an Algorithm
The student pilot finishes a practice session, pulls off a headset, and opens an app. Within seconds, an AI has analysed the flight, identified three areas where technique drifted, cross-referenced the errors with FAA Airman Certification Standards, and generated a...
Free Wi-Fi at 35,000 Feet Is Now the Norm
Five years ago, inflight Wi-Fi was a luxury that cost $8 an hour, dropped every ten minutes, and made loading a single email feel like an achievement. In 2026, airlines are racing to offer passengers something that would have seemed absurd a decade ago: fast, free...
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