France Commits 16 Rafales to Ukraine
It was fitting that the promise came in Paris. On 14 July — France’s national day — President Emmanuel Macron stood alongside Volodymyr Zelensky at the close of a “Coalition of the Willing” summit and announced that Ukraine had agreed a plan to acquire 16 Rafale...
Germany’s First Quadriga Eurofighter Flies
At 34 minutes past the hour on 14 July, a single-seat Eurofighter in plain grey primer rolled down the runway at Airbus’s Manching site in Bavaria, lit its two EJ200 engines and climbed away. The aircraft carried the German military registration 34+02. It was the...
A European Bastille Day Over Paris
At 10:25 on the morning of 14 July, the Patrouille de France swept over the Arc de Triomphe and unrolled three ribbons of blue, white and red down the length of the Champs-Élysées. Behind them came a river of jets. And for the first time in the long history of...
The Record No Carrier Wanted to Break
Somewhere in the northern Arabian Sea, a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered supercarrier is doing something no American warship has done in the modern era: it simply will not stop. The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego before Christmas, touched a pier exactly once, and has...
Ottawa Arms Its F-35s With a Norwegian Missile
Ottawa has made a choice that says as much about politics as it does about firepower. Canada will arm its future F-35A fleet with the Joint Strike Missile, the Norwegian-built cruise weapon that tucks inside the Lightning II’s belly without spoiling its stealth. Prime...
Farnborough 2026 Sold Out — Twice Over
Every couple of years a former RAF airfield in Hampshire becomes the centre of the aviation universe for five days. From July 20, it happens again — and the 2026 edition of the Farnborough International Airshow is shaping up to be the biggest in the event’s 78-year...
Ten Battered Raptors Come Home From Iran
Just after first light on July 10, ten F-22 Raptors dropped out of the English sky and rolled onto the runway at RAF Fairford under the callsign TREND. They looked like they had been to war. That is because they had. These were the 1st Fighter Wing’s jets from Joint...
The Fighter Built Like a Dragonfly
At first glance the little aircraft looks as though someone assembled it from the wrong box of parts. It has a wing at the front and a wing at the back, a propeller facing the wrong way, and a pilot perched right up in the nose. It looks less like a fighter than an...
The Record-Breaking Jet France Kept Secret
In the mid-1950s, a needle-thin French aircraft with jet engines perched on its wingtips and a rocket motor in its belly clawed its way toward the edge of space, touching nearly twice the speed of sound and setting records for how fast a jet could climb. And then...
The Supersonic Jet Britain Threw Away
In the winter of 1946, Britain was perhaps six months away from becoming the first nation to fly faster than sound. In a guarded hangar sat a small, bullet-shaped jet called the Miles M.52, all but finished, its test pilot chosen, its supersonic trials pencilled in...
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