Golden Eagles Cross the Arafura Sea
The message came from Air Operations Command in Jakarta, and for the ninety-five men and women of Skadron Udara 15 it meant something none of them had done before: pack up five jets, cross the Arafura Sea, and go fly with the world.For the first time, the Indonesian...
Manila’s Mach-1.5 Guard Dog Gets Sharper Teeth
The Philippines is doubling down on the little jet that guards its skies — and this time it is buying the version that finally bites back at range.The Philippine Air Force has confirmed that its next 12 FA-50 fighters remain on schedule, with the first aircraft...
Ten Nights of Fire Over Iran
Ten nights in, the pattern has become grimly familiar. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. Eastern on 20 July, U.S. Central Command announced it had finished another round of strikes on Iran — the tenth consecutive night — hitting military command centres, missile and...
Indonesia Buys a Trainer That Shoots Back
Jakarta went shopping for a frontline fighter and came home, instead, with a very clever trainer that shoots back.At Farnborough on 21 July, Leonardo and its Indonesian partner PT ESystem Solutions signed a contract with Indonesia’s Ministry of Defence for 12...
Europe Quietly Joins the Ghost Bat
Australia built the Ghost Bat. Europe, it turns out, has been quietly helping all along — and at Farnborough, Boeing finally said so out loud.On 21 July, MQ-28 Program Global Director Glen Ferguson confirmed that Italy’s Leonardo has become an official...
Lockheed Just Halved the Price of a Patriot Shot
Modern air defense has a money problem, and everybody knows it. A single Patriot shot can cost more than the drone it swats down, and in a war where the incoming threats are cheap and endless, the math eventually breaks the defender, not the attacker. At Farnborough...
Every Robot Wingman Unveiled This Week
Walk the halls at Farnborough this week and you will trip over robot aeroplanes. Anduril unveiled a tiltrotor on Monday morning. BAE and Lockheed unveiled a jammer an hour or two later. Boeing parked an Australian one on the static line. General Atomics brought its...
The $20,000 Rocket That Kills Drones
An AIM-120 AMRAAM costs about a million dollars. An AIM-9X Sidewinder costs around $450,000. A Shahed-type one-way attack drone costs perhaps $20,000 to $50,000, and Iran and its partners can build them faster than anyone can afford to shoot them down with...
The Ghost Bat Finally Came to Farnborough
Farnborough has been running since 1948. The Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat first flew in 2021. On Monday, finally, the two met. Australia’s uncrewed combat aircraft made its Farnborough debut on the show’s opening day — on static display, in the US Department of...
The Drone Was Already Down
The drone had already been shot down. That is the detail that makes this loss different from the others. On Saturday, in northern Iraq, a US service member was killed during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance recovered from a downed Iranian one-way attack...
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