AI Just Flew an F-16 Through a Real Missile Attack — Pilots Kept Their Hands Off the Stick
Over Edwards Air Force Base earlier this year, a modified F-16 received a simulated surface-to-air missile warning at high speed. The two human pilots in the cockpit did exactly nothing. They sat with their hands clear of the stick and watched as the aircraft snapped...
“Through the Yellow Visor”: A TOPGUN Instructor Just Wrote the Most Honest Memoir in a Decade
The cover is yellow. The title is taken from the visor on a U.S. Navy fighter pilot’s helmet — the polarised yellow strip that filters out everything except what matters in the high desert sun over Fallon. The author is Vincent “Jell-O” Aiello, a former...
The PZL M-15 Belphegor: A Jet-Powered Biplane Named After a Demon
In 1973, a Polish state-owned aircraft factory rolled out one of the strangest production aircraft ever built. Two wings, stacked biplane-style. A 3,300-pound-thrust turbofan on the back. Two enormous pesticide tanks slung between the wings like a chemical airliner’s...
The Boeing YC-14: The Cargo Plane That Should Have Replaced the C-130
In 1976, Boeing rolled a strange-looking jet out of its Seattle plant. Two turbofans mounted high above the wings — not under them, where every cargo aircraft in history had put its engines. Stubby, square fuselage. T-tail. A wing that looked too small for the...
Ukraine Just Unveiled Its First Homegrown Glide Bomb — and Nobody Can Stop It Selling It
For three years, Ukrainian Air Force Su-24 Fencers and Su-27 Flankers have been launching American-made GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs and JDAM-ER kits at Russian positions inside occupied Ukraine. Every one of those bombs comes with a U.S. export licence, a U.S. supply...
49,221 Feet in 2 Minutes 36 Seconds: The Marine Who Broke Five Records in One Day
It is one of those records that does not seem possible when you read it on paper. On 22 and 23 May 1958, a U.S. Marine Corps test pilot named Edward N. LeFaivre took off five times from Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California, climbed each time as fast as his Douglas...
35 Years Ago Today, the Luftwaffe Flew Its Last F-104 Starfighter
On 22 May 1991, F-104G serial 26+40 lifted off from Ingolstadt-Manching in Bavaria for the final flight of any German F-104 Starfighter. The pilot flew a brief profile over the Alps. He returned to Manching. The aircraft was shut down. The chocks went under the...
Germany Just Unveiled the Most Capable Eurofighter Ever Built
The Eurofighter Typhoon is old enough to vote in most European elections. Conceived in 1983, first flown in 1994, in service since 2003 — by every conventional metric it is a fourth-generation aircraft that should already be giving way to fifth. Instead, on 20 May...
The $4 Million Problem: Army Wants a Patriot Interceptor Under $1 Million
Every Patriot launch costs the U.S. Army about $4 million. Every Iranian Shahed drone costs about $20,000 to build and a few thousand more to ship. The math has been broken for years. The Iranian and Houthi campaigns of 2024-2026 broke it in public, on television,...
Special Ops Wants a New Wolfhound: Why the C-146 Is Falling Apart
Most Americans have never heard of it. That is the point. The C-146A Wolfhound — a militarised Dornier 328 in unmarked colour schemes — is the quietest workhorse in the entire U.S. military aviation inventory. On any given day, a handful of Wolfhounds are dropping...
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