The Hypersonic Missile Built to Be Cheap

The Hypersonic Missile Built to Be Cheap

Here is America’s hypersonic problem in one sentence: the missiles work, but the factory doesn’t. The United States has spent years and billions proving it can build weapons that scream through the sky at more than five times the speed of sound. What it...
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...