On a humid June afternoon, a Japanese plane-spotter pointed a long lens at the flight line of Gifu Air Base and froze. Tucked against a hangar wall sat something large, the size of a fighter, and it was wrapped from nose to tail in white fabric like a piece of...
It is official: Indonesia is now a Rafale operator. The first three Dassault Rafale fighters touched down at Roesmin Nurjadin Air Base in Pekanbaru, Sumatra, on 23 January 2026 — the opening batch of an eventual 42-jet fleet that will become the sharpest edge of...
It is officially happening: the first jet that will one day wear a Swiss cross is now bolted together on a factory floor in Georgia. After years of votes, lawsuits and price rows, Switzerland’s F-35A has stopped being a PowerPoint slide and started being an...
Turkey has just told the world it’s building a fighter jet engine in the same thrust class as the one inside the F-35 — and the claim is equal parts genuinely impressive and quietly confusing. The short version: Turkey’s indigenous-engine ambitions for its...
The order came not from a battlefield but from a committee room. On a Sunday in early May 2026, a panel of senior Israeli ministers signed off on a plan that had been gathering urgency for the better part of a year: buy two more squadrons of American fighters, and buy...
When Singapore Airlines goes shopping for aircraft, the rest of the industry leans in to watch. The Changi-based carrier has spent decades building a reputation as a benchmark for premium long-haul flying, and the jets it chooses tend to become the jets everyone else...
Two of the world’s biggest emerging powers are quietly negotiating one of the most unusual arms deals of the decade — and almost no Western capital is in the room. India and Brazil are working toward a barter: India would hand Brazil its homegrown Tejas Mk1A fighters...
The U.S. Air Force has been trying to kill the A-10 Warthog for the better part of two decades. Budget after budget, the brass penciled in its funeral. And every time, something refused to let it go quietly. This time it was Iran. After weeks of Warthogs hammering...
For a decade the U.S. Air Force kept trying to bury the F-15. The plan was to buy a token batch of new Eagles, then let the production line die quietly while everything went to stealth. The Eagle was the past. The F-35 and the secret sixth-generation jet were the...
For as long as most Sydneysiders can remember, the city’s air traffic has run into a wall every night. Kingsford Smith Airport — Sydney’s only major gateway — shuts to most aircraft between 11pm and 6am under a hard legal curfew. After dark, one of the busiest...
Rise above the red earth east of Ho Chi Minh City and a vast lotus flower seems to bloom out of the construction dust. It is not a sculpture. It is the roof of Long Thanh International Airport — Vietnam’s roughly US$16 billion bet on becoming one of Southeast Asia’s...
On the flight line at Hindustan Aeronautics in Nashik and Bengaluru sit some of the most modern fighter jets India has ever built: brand-new Tejas Mk1A light fighters in Indian Air Force grey, radars fitted, flight-test boxes ticked. There is just one problem. Not a...
Recent Comments