A Robot Tanker Sails Into New York
Among the tall ships and grey hulls that filled New York Harbor for America’s 250th birthday, the strangest silhouette wasn’t a ship at all. Lashed to the flight deck of USS Nimitz, between rows of Super Hornets, sat a windowless grey machine with folded wings and no...
The Stealth Bomber That Stayed Home
On July 4, virtually everything in the US military that flies made an appearance over Washington. Three bombers in one formation. Eight Thunderbirds. A brand-new Air Force One with a Raptor escort. The one aircraft everybody on the internet was actually waiting for...
Nine Hours of Thunder Over Washington
The thermometer read over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the crowd on the National Mall had been baking since morning, and somewhere above the haze four F-5 Tigers were pulling into formation. One of them was flown by the administrator of NASA himself. It was 1:14 p.m. on...
The 1980s Nuke Missile the B-52 Can’t Retire Yet
The AGM-86B was designed when the Soviet Union still existed, gas cost about a dollar a gallon, and the B-52 crews loading it were younger than the bomber. More than four decades later, the United States has decided it cannot let the missile retire just yet. In 2026,...
flydubai Opens Bangkok’s Other Airport to Dubai
Bangkok has two airports, and for years the glamorous international arrivals went to just one of them. On July 1, 2026, flydubai bet on the other. Dubai’s low-cost carrier launched a daily service to Don Mueang — Bangkok’s original airport and now the largest low-cost...
Boeing or Northrop: Who Builds the Navy’s Next Fighter?
Two companies. One contract. Decades of consequences. Sometime around August 2026, the US Navy is expected to decide who will build the F/A-XX — its sixth-generation carrier fighter and one of the most important American aircraft programmes of the century. The choice...
Real Bombers Grounded the World’s Biggest Airshow
Every July, a quiet corner of Gloucestershire becomes the busiest military airfield on Earth. Fighters, bombers and display teams from dozens of nations pack the ramp at RAF Fairford for the Royal International Air Tattoo — the largest military airshow in the world....
China Doesn’t Need the Best Stealth Jet — Just the Most
For twenty years, the Western answer to Chinese air power was simple: our jets are better. The F-22 and F-35 out-sense, out-stealth and out-network anything Beijing could field. That may still be true of any single aircraft. It may also be about to stop mattering....
The UK’s Drones Won’t Always Ask Permission to Fire
For decades, one rule has sat quietly at the centre of Western air power: a human being decides when a weapon kills. On June 30, 2026, Britain edged away from it. Buried inside a sweeping Defence Investment Plan — more than £5 billion for drones, the largest such...
The Boeing 777X Slips Into 2027 — Again
Somewhere on the ramp at Paine Field in Washington State sit rows of enormous, finished airliners with nowhere to go. They are Boeing 777Xs — the biggest twinjets ever built — and most of them have never carried a paying passenger. In 2026 they are still waiting,...
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