The Drone Built by Two Secret Labs

The Drone Built by Two Secret Labs

Military Aviation, News

Skunk Works and FalconWorks are the two most secretive advanced-projects shops in Western aerospace. Lockheed Martin’s built the U-2, the SR-71 and the F-117. BAE Systems’ is the British equivalent, the place where the awkward, classified and interesting...
Three Drones, One Apache, Triple the Missiles

Three Drones, One Apache, Triple the Missiles

Military Aviation, News

The model sitting under the lights on Anduril’s stand at Farnborough on Monday morning does not look like anything currently in the US Army inventory. It has two enormous tilting rotors, a fuselage shaped like a stretched teardrop, and where a cockpit should be...
Four Thousand Aircraft in the Desert

Four Thousand Aircraft in the Desert

Aviation World, Military Aviation

From the air it looks like a filing system for aeroplanes. Row upon row of them, wingtip to wingtip, laid out across ten square kilometres of Arizona desert in lines so straight they look drawn. Bombers here. Fighters there. Transports over there. Around four thousand...
How the Force de Frappe Actually Works

How the Force de Frappe Actually Works

Military Aviation

France is the only member of NATO that delivers part of its nuclear deterrent from a fighter cockpit, and the only one whose deterrent answers to nobody outside Paris. Last week two French Rafales flew alongside German Eurofighters in the first joint activity of a new...
The Interceptor You Cannot Afford

The Interceptor You Cannot Afford

Military Aviation

On 9 July, eight Iranian ballistic missiles were fired at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. All eight were intercepted. Nobody was hurt, nothing was damaged, and the incident barely registered outside the region. Eight days later the same base was attacked again, and...
The Weapon That Fires Nothing

The Weapon That Fires Nothing

Military Aviation

There is an aircraft in most modern strike packages that carries no bombs, has no air-to-air kills, and will never appear on a recruiting poster. It is usually converted from something else, it is frequently ugly, and if it fails, everyone else dies. Electronic attack...
The Bomb Designed to Miss

The Bomb Designed to Miss

History & Legends, Military Aviation

Every bomb ever built before 1944 was designed to hit the thing it was aimed at. Barnes Wallis built two that were designed to land next to it. This was not a compromise or an admission that bombing was inaccurate. It was the entire principle. Wallis had worked out...
The Last Old-Fashioned Air War

The Last Old-Fashioned Air War

History & Legends, Military Aviation

Militarily, Suez worked. In six days, Anglo-French air power destroyed the Egyptian Air Force largely on the ground, paratroops took an airfield, Royal Marines made the first helicopter assault in the history of warfare, and the invasion force held the northern end of...
The Air War Fought at 18,000 Feet

The Air War Fought at 18,000 Feet

History & Legends, Military Aviation

Everything a combat pilot knows about dropping a bomb assumes air. Thick air, at sensible altitudes, where wings generate predictable lift, engines produce rated thrust, and a weapon released at a known speed follows a known arc to the ground. In May 1999 the Indian...