Mining Iran’s Missile Cities from the Air
A nighttime photograph released by the Israeli Air Force on March 29 shows a pair of F-16I Sufas taxiing for another strike mission against Iran. The jets are loaded heavy. But the weapons hanging under their wings aren’t the precision-guided JDAMs or Rampage...
Nine Seconds on the Gun: A-10 Strafing Runs Break the Rules
A standard A-10 gun run lasts two to three seconds. Finger on the trigger, a controlled burst of 30mm depleted uranium rounds, then pull off target. That’s what pilots train for. That’s what the manual says. So when video surfaced from Iraq showing...
Dozens of Warthogs Gear Up for Iran
Flight trackers lit up over the weekend as a formation of A-10C Thunderbolt IIs — callsign TABOR 71 — crossed the Atlantic toward RAF Lakenheath in England. Behind them, three KC-135 Stratotankers from RAF Mildenhall held station, feeding fuel to the tank-killers on...
Surgical Green at Mach 2: The MiG-21 Cockpit Mystery
Step inside a MiG-21 cockpit and the first thing that hits you isn’t the claustrophobic canopy or the wall of analog dials. It’s the color. Every surface — the instrument panel frame, the side consoles, the canopy rails — is painted in a striking shade of...
Stealth Fighters Land on China’s Doorstep
At 12:50 PM on March 29, four F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters touched down at Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan. They taxied to the ramp, engines winding down, canopies opening in the cold northern air. It looked routine. It was anything...
$80M Jets vs $30K Drones: The Losing Math
The first 100 hours of Operation Epic Fury cost approximately $3.7 billion — roughly $891 million per day. A staggering share of that went to a single, maddening problem: shooting down cheap Iranian drones with some of the most expensive aircraft on Earth. The math is...
Brazil Rolls Out Its Own Fighter Jet
On March 25, a Gripen E fighter jet — designation F-39E, serial FAB 4109 — rolled out of Embraer’s facility in Gavião Peixoto, São Paulo state. It looks identical to every other Gripen E. But this one was built in Brazil, not Sweden. And that changes everything....
A Strafing Run, a MANPADS, and a Near Miss
On March 25, a U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet screamed low over the Iranian port city of Chabahar, its M61A2 Vulcan cannon spitting 20mm rounds at targets near the Imam Ali IRGC Naval Base. Seconds later, a shoulder-fired missile streaked upward and detonated just...
Rude Rams Named Best Fighter Squadron in USAF
Eleven months deployed out of twelve. Thousands of combat hours. The first-ever air-to-air kills for the F-35A. The 34th Fighter Squadron just earned the Raytheon Trophy — and no unit in the Air Force had a more gruelling year to show for it. The “Rude...
Secret Testbeds Spotted Over Gulf of Mexico
For three consecutive days last week, two of America’s most secretive flying laboratories circled over the Gulf of Mexico in tight formation — and the aviation intelligence community is buzzing about what they were testing. Northrop Grumman’s heavily...
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