The Soviet Pilots Ordered to Ram Gary Powers’ U-2
On the morning of 1 May 1960, two young Soviet fighter pilots got an order so improbable they made the duty officer repeat it. They were to take off from a training airfield in Russia. They were to climb as fast as they possibly could. They were not to wait for a...
70th Hawkeye Delivered: The Navy’s Eyes Get a New Pair
Northrop Grumman has just delivered the seventieth E-2D Advanced Hawkeye to the U.S. Navy. The aircraft itself looks essentially identical to the seventieth Hawkeye built — the same twin-turboprop, the same enormous radar dome on the back, the same boxy fuselage that...
Why the B-1 Lancer Refuses to Retire
The B-1B Lancer does not get the headlines that the B-2 Spirit or the new B-21 Raider command. It was born in controversy, nearly cancelled, resurrected under Reagan, and spent decades as the workhorse nobody talked about. Yet today, the “Bone” — as its...
From F-22 Cockpit to Lockheed Aeronautics’ Corner Office
The most powerful aviation job in America just went to a man who used to fly F-22s for a living. Lockheed Martin has named a former U.S. Air Force Raptor pilot to lead Lockheed Martin Aeronautics — the division that builds the F-22, the F-35, the C-130, and whatever...
The P-8A Poseidon Just Got Sharper: Block 2 Goes Live
Most aviation news arrives with a roar. This one arrives with a quiet announcement that, somewhere over the cold North Atlantic, a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon is now flying in a configuration that can probably hear a Russian submarine before the submarine knows it is...
The Pentagon Is Quantum-Proofing the F-35
The F-35 Lightning II is, by some margin, the most networked combat aircraft ever built. A single jet exchanges several gigabytes of data per sortie with other F-35s, with E-3 and E-7 controllers, with ground stations, and — through the Multifunction Advanced Data...
Sikorsky Just Bolted Hellfires Onto the Black Hawk
Sikorsky has just turned the world’s most-built combat helicopter into a gunship. The Connecticut-based Lockheed Martin subsidiary has unveiled what it is calling the Armed Black Hawk — a clean-sheet conversion kit that bolts external pylons, sensor turrets, and...
GJ-21: China’s Stealth UCAV Is Almost Ready to Go to Sea
The People’s Liberation Army Navy is on the verge of doing something the U.S. Navy has been trying — and quietly failing — to do for fifteen years: operate a stealth, jet-powered, flying-wing combat drone from the deck of an amphibious assault ship. Fresh...
J-35AE: China’s First Stealth Fighter for Export
For the entire history of fifth-generation fighters, you have had exactly one option as a foreign customer: the Lockheed Martin F-35. Russia’s Su-57 has been on the market in theory for years, but in practice has produced exactly zero export deliveries. Everyone...
Resurrected: B-1B Lancer Pulled from the Boneyard
Once a B-1B Lancer goes to the boneyard, it stays in the boneyard. That has been the rule for a quarter of a century. Until last week. The U.S. Air Force has confirmed that a single B-1B has been pulled out of long-term storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in...
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