The Tiger Gets a New Set of Claws

The Tiger Gets a New Set of Claws

The attack helicopter has spent the last few years being written off. Ukraine’s skies, thick with man-portable missiles and cheap drones, have looked like an unkind place for a low, slow gunship. Europe’s answer is not to retire its Tiger — but to rebuild it almost...
Japan’s Kaga Is a Carrier Again

Japan’s Kaga Is a Carrier Again

A grey warship longer than three football fields is steaming through the Pacific, and stealth fighters are dropping onto its deck. For most navies that would be unremarkable. For Japan, it is something close to historic — because for eighty years, Japan insisted it...
Canada to West Africa, Nonstop at Last

Canada to West Africa, Nonstop at Last

For as long as anyone could remember, getting from Montreal to Dakar meant flying the wrong way first. North-east to Paris or Brussels, a layover, then back south to Senegal — a journey of twelve hours or more to reach a city that sits almost due east across the...
Europe Rolls Out Its Robot Wingmen

Europe Rolls Out Its Robot Wingmen

For years, the race to build “robot wingmen” — uncrewed jets that fight alongside human pilots — looked like an American and Australian story. In a single week in June, Europe planted its flag.At the ILA air show in Berlin, two very different European players pulled...
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....
Turkey’s Radar-Killer Jet Steps Into View

Turkey’s Radar-Killer Jet Steps Into View

It looks, at a glance, like a rich man’s toy: a sleek Bombardier business jet, the kind that ferries executives between capitals. Then you notice the lumps. A long blade running down its spine, blisters under the belly, a fairing crowning the tail — and suddenly the...
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...