Le jet avec ses ailes à l'envers

Le jet avec ses ailes à l'envers

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
The Aircraft That Had No Wings

The Aircraft That Had No Wings

It is the morning of 18 September 1972, on a Dornier test field beside Lake Constance. There is no cockpit to climb into, no pilot to brief. The machine on the apron looks less like an aircraft than a fat steel cigar laid on its side: a smooth cylindrical body roughly...
Airbus Pulls the Pilot from the H145

Airbus Pulls the Pilot from the H145

Walk the static line at ILA Berlin and you expect the usual choreography around a helicopter: a pilot strapping in, a crew chief signalling, the slow whine of an Arriel engine spooling up. This June, Airbus parked something stranger under the Brandenburg sun. The...
Les Marines emmènent six F-35 sans radar

Les Marines emmènent six F-35 sans radar

Le programme d'avions de chasse le plus coûteux de l'histoire vient de livrer au Corps des Marines des États-Unis six avions furtifs flambant neufs, incapables de voir. À la place de leur radar, chaque F-35B embarque un lest massif boulonné à l'avant pour assurer son équilibre. Les Marines les ont acceptés….