France Pumps €36 Billion Into Defence Rearmament
France has just announced the largest peacetime increase in military spending in its modern history. An additional €36 billion — approximately $42 billion — will flow into the armed forces between 2026 and 2030, targeting the three domains where the war in the Middle...
First in NATO: Italy’s Raiders Earn AFSOC’s Seal
For the first time in the history of the Atlantic Alliance, a non-American military unit has earned the stamp of approval from the most demanding special operations air force on the planet. The Italian Air Force’s 17° Stormo Incursori — the Raiders Wing, based...
Navy Confirms: $240 Million Triton Drone Is Gone
It took the Navy six days to say it out loud. The MQ-4C Triton that vanished over the Persian Gulf on April 9 is not coming back. The U.S. Navy has officially confirmed the loss of the unmanned surveillance aircraft near the Strait of Hormuz, ending nearly a week of...
B-21 Raider Reveals Its Top Side for the First Time
The U.S. Air Force just showed the world something it has guarded for years: the top of the B-21 Raider. On April 14, the Air Force released two photographs of its next-generation stealth bomber conducting aerial refueling tests with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Edwards...
Günther Rall: He Broke His Back, Ignored the Doctors, and Scored 275 Kills
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories275 (3rd all-time)Aircraft FlownBf 109GWarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died10 Mar 1918 – 4 Oct 2009 (age 91)UnitJG 52 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J16509, Günther Rall — via Wikimedia Commons There’s a detail in...
Pardo’s Push: The F-4 That Shoved Another F-4 Home
On the morning of March 10, 1967, Captain Bob Pardo looked out the left side of his F-4 Phantom cockpit at another F-4 Phantom that was about to stop flying. The second jet belonged to his wingman, Captain Earl Aman, and it was bleeding fuel from a hole the size of a...
F/A-XX: The Navy’s Secret Sixth-Gen Fighter Moves
Everybody talks about the F-47. Every defence reporter, every think-tank panel, every congressional hearing. Boeing’s clean-sheet sixth-generation fighter for the Air Force gets the headlines and the money and the Trump tweets. Meanwhile, across the river at...
Navy’s T-45 Replacement Contest Goes Formal
Follow-up to our April 1 post, “Navy’s $10 Billion Trainer Race Begins.” Two weeks ago, the U.S. Navy’s hunt for a new jet trainer was a rumour with a price tag. This week it is a formal contest. NAVAIR issued the long-awaited Undergraduate Jet...
America Burned Through Every PRSM It Owned
The Precision Strike Missile was supposed to be the Army’s long-reach wonder weapon — a 500-kilometre knife that could punch through anything ATACMS couldn’t reach. On April 1, 2023, Lockheed Martin delivered the first production rounds. Three years later,...
The Tiny Radio That Saved One Airman
The wounded officer sat in darkness on a rocky mountainside, bleeding from shrapnel wounds, surrounded by hostile terrain. His F-15E had gone down fourteen hours earlier in Iranian airspace. The search helicopters had cycled through their on-station time. The dark had...
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