300 Feet From Disaster at Boston Logan

300 Feet From Disaster at Boston Logan

A football field is 300 feet long. On the morning of 20 June 2026, that was roughly the margin between an ordinary Saturday at Boston Logan and a disaster the whole country would still be talking about. Delta Flight 2351, an Airbus A319 in from Dallas with 135 people...
America’s New Air Force One Breaks Cover

America’s New Air Force One Breaks Cover

For more than sixty years, “Air Force One” has meant one specific shade of pale blue — the robin’s-egg scheme drawn up for John F. Kennedy in 1962. On 19 June, a different 747 rolled into the light inside a hangar at Joint Base Andrews, and the blue was gone.In its...
A Combat Pilot Just Flew the B-21 Raider

A Combat Pilot Just Flew the B-21 Raider

It sounds like paperwork: a pilot from one Air Force unit flew an aircraft alongside a pilot from another. Except the aircraft was the B-21 Raider — the most secret new warplane in the world — and one of the men at the controls was a frontline combat pilot, not a test...
The First F-35 in Wild Weasel War Paint

The First F-35 in Wild Weasel War Paint

On 16 June a brand-new F-35A lifted off from Fort Worth, flew for about an hour, and came home behind a chase jet. Routine — except for two black letters painted on its tail: WW.Those letters make aircraft 24-5970 the first F-35 ever to wear the Wild Weasel tail code....
Marines Land F-35Bs on a Finnish Highway

Marines Land F-35Bs on a Finnish Highway

It costs north of a hundred million dollars, it is the most sophisticated fighter the United States builds, and on the morning of 9 June it was sitting on a two-lane road in the Finnish woods, taking on fuel with pine trees a wingspan away.Two U.S. Marine Corps F-35B...