36 Metres, No Second Chance: Eugene Ely Invented the Carrier Landing
On 18 January 1911, a barnstormer from Iowa pointed a Curtiss pusher biplane at a wooden platform bolted to the stern of the USS Pennsylvania, anchored in San Francisco Bay — and landed. No arresting gear existed, so the ground crew had strung sandbag-weighted ropes...
It Took Losing an E-3 to Iran: Pentagon Finally Funds the Wedgetail
It took losing an E-3 Sentry to Iranian missiles to make the Pentagon do what it should have done years ago. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has submitted a budget amendment to the White House adding funding for the E-7A Wedgetail to the fiscal year 2027 budget...
10% to 95%: China’s AI Drone Wingmen Just Rewrote the J-20’s Kill Rate
The numbers are almost too clean to be believable. In a Chinese computer simulation pitting a lone J-20 stealth fighter against a simulated F-22, the win rate sat at a dismal 10 per cent. Add AI-controlled drone wingmen to the same scenario, and the win rate climbed...
267 Eagles, a Broken Lightning: Congress Pushes Multiyear Buy for Both
The F-35 can’t deliver on time. The F-15EX production line was kneecapped by a strike. And the Air Force needs both — desperately. Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina is pushing an amendment into the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would authorise...
Hivemind Goes Lethal: Shield AI’s Swarm Brain Wired Into Pentagon’s Attack Drones
The Pentagon’s vision of autonomous drone swarms just got real software. Shield AI — the San Diego company that built Hivemind, the only AI pilot to fly full-sized aircraft without GPS, communications, or a human operator — has been selected to integrate its...
Dragon Cart: Every Cargo Plane Becomes a Cruise Missile Bomber by 2027
A C-17 Globemaster III pulls up to altitude, the ramp drops, and 45 cruise missiles slide out the back on pallets. That is no longer a concept video or a PowerPoint fantasy. The U.S. Air Force just turned it into a funded programme of record called Dragon Cart — and...
RIAT 2026 Cancelled: The Iran War Just Killed the World’s Biggest Military Airshow
The world’s largest military airshow is dead for 2026. The Royal Air Force Charitable Trust Enterprises confirmed today that the Royal International Air Tattoo — the crown jewel of the global airshow calendar — will not take place this July. The reason: American...
TSgt James Howell: The Live Human Ejection Test From a Supersonic F-106 in 1961
On 6 June 1961, somewhere over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Technical Sergeant James A. Howell of the U.S. Air Force was strapped into the back seat of a specially-instrumented Convair F-106B Delta Dart. The aircraft climbed to 23,336 feet and...
The F-100 That Took Off Without a Runway: How Zero-Length Launch Almost Saved the Cold War
Imagine the worst-case scenario from the Pentagon perspective in 1957: the Soviet Union launches a surprise nuclear strike against NATO. The first warheads land on every U.S. and allied air base in Western Europe within the first ten minutes. Every runway is cratered....
The U.S. Navy Built Two Real Flying Aircraft Carriers — and Then Lost Them Both
The most ambitious naval aviation concept the United States ever fielded was not the nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was a 785-foot helium airship with an interior hangar bay full of biplane fighters that could be launched and recovered in flight. There were two of...
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