Ford-Class Carriers on the Chopping Block

Ford-Class Carriers on the Chopping Block

The most expensive warship ever built might not get any siblings. Navy Secretary John Phelan announced on April 21 that the service is conducting a comprehensive review of the Ford-class aircraft carrier design — and he pointedly refused to rule out canceling future...
Iran Seizes Two Ships Hours After Ceasefire Extension

Iran Seizes Two Ships Hours After Ceasefire Extension

The ceasefire was barely twelve hours old when Tehran made its answer clear. On April 22, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats seized two commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and opened fire on a third — all within hours of President Trump...
BRRRRT Lives On: A-10 Warthog Extended to 2030

BRRRRT Lives On: A-10 Warthog Extended to 2030

For more than a decade, the Air Force tried to kill the Warthog. Every budget cycle, every force structure review, every strategic pivot toward great-power competition included the same recommendation: retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Congress said no. The Warthog flew...
Marines Enter the Sixth-Gen Fighter Race

Marines Enter the Sixth-Gen Fighter Race

The Marines are in the sixth-generation fighter business. Quietly, without fanfare, the Marine Corps included a post-2041 sixth-generation combat aircraft in its 2026 Aviation Plan — the first time the service has formally acknowledged that it wants a successor to the...
X-BAT: The AI Fighter That Needs No Runway

X-BAT: The AI Fighter That Needs No Runway

They borrowed a thrust-vectoring nozzle from a 1990s experimental F-16 — retrieved, as one official put it, Indiana Jones style — bolted it onto a GE F110 turbofan, and pointed it straight down. That is how you make a fighter jet take off like a helicopter. Shield...
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