Fightersweep

Editor’s Note: SPEAR Cap 3 is set to be part of the offensive armament of British F-35s, both for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy’s squadrons. A standoff weapon by design, it features a selective effect warhead and can attack a wide range of mobile targets, day or night. While this may not […]

Editor’s Note: Exercise Cope Tiger, a trilateral large force employment exercise between Singapore, Thailand, and the United States, has come to a close. The purpose of the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF)-sponsored exercise is to reinforce current relationships by improving combined readiness and interoperability among military partners in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. This year’s iteration involved a […]

Editor’s Note: As promised, we’ve been watching the situation in Syria as the Russians have begun withdrawing their forces. Not surprising, the stay-behind contingent is still pretty formidable. It includes approximately 2,000 personnel and approximately twenty combat aircraft. Among them are Su-24s, Su-30SMs, and Su-35S fighters, as well as Ka-52 and Mi-28N attack helicopters. And […]

Editor’s Note: For every person I know who has flown The Big Fighter, every single of them to a man–or woman–misses flying the airplane. For those of us in the Top Gun generation of aviators, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat is an icon, but it’s so much more than that. It awakened something in us that […]

Editor’s Note: It will be curious to see what happens with the Bronco. The aircraft flew 134 sorties–120 of them in combat, and amassed 477.3 flying hours, and achieved a 99% mission-capable rate. No matter how you look at it, that’s a very strong outing for 82 days worth of work. But what does it […]

Editor’s Note: I would say that we’re surprised, but we’re not. There’s nothing Secret about China’s ambitions to expand its influence all over the globe. They’ve been speaking with Portugal about taking over operations at Lajes Field in the Azores, so the fact they’re looking for real estate for bases in the Southern Hemisphere is […]

Editor’s Note: It’s not just the Air Force and Navy who get the good deals in the fighter world! VMFA-314, the Black Knights, had the opportunity to fly dissimilar air combat training, or DACT, against F-15C Eagles from the Japanese Air Self Defense Force. While we’ve talked about Hornets fighting Vipers, etcetera, the Eaglejet is […]

Editor’s Note: If anyone has an appreciation for how difficult it can be to develop a next-generation aircraft, it would be the folks at Lockheed-Martin’s Advanced Development Programs division, better known as the Skunk Works. The next generation of air dominance, better known as NGAD or 6th-Gen, promises to be a difficult task. Because of […]

Editor’s Note: About five years ago, DARPA commissioned a program to develop a very small drone. AeroVironment’s “Nano Hummingbird” which looks a lot like its namesake, can actually hover in winds up to 5 mph, has a wingspan of six inches, and weighs in at less than one ounce. The endurance is a bit less […]

During its service at Point Mugu, the Lockheed-Martin S-3 Viking–with its substantial endurance, speed and room for multiple types of avionics, pods and test equipment–played a vital role in VX-30’s mission to support the Navy and its customers. Not only did the Viking support test operations at the California base and its adjacent 36,000 square […]

We can log this one into our file of “firsts,” FighterSweep Fans: the Moose has gone where no Moose has gone before! Well, at least the winged variety of Moose. A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III from the 517th Airlift Squadron landed at Bryant Army Air Field on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on 7 […]

FighterSweep Fans, we have breaking news out of Russia. According to initial reports by the country’s Southern Regional Emergency Center, a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet owned and operated by FlyDubai airlines crashed as it was landing at the Rostov-on-Don airport in southern Russia. News agencies are reporting everyone aboard was killed in the crash, citing […]