Fightersweep

In a move that comes as little surprise to anyone, two Russian TU-160 heavy payload bombers were intercepted and escorted away from North American shores by a compliment of American and Canadian Air Force fighter aircraft on Saturday morning. The Russian bombers did not violate American or Canadian airspace during the encounter. According to an […]

Last July, a single grainy image of Russia’s long anticipated Okhotnik (Hunter) unmanned combat aerial vehicle hit the web, prompting a flurry of headlines touting the 20-ton drone’s potential as a low-observability platform that could offer the Russian military greater deep penetration capabilities with their legacy bombers. To put a an arguably over-simplistic spin on […]

Two U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs, assigned to the 4th Fighter Squadron from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, conduct flight training operations over the Utah Test and Training Range on Feb 14, 2018. The F-35A is a single-seat, single engine, fifth generation, multirole fighter that’s able to perform ground attack, reconnaissance and air defense […]

Horrific footage of Tuesday’s crash of a Russian flagged Tu-22M3 bomber has surfaced on the internet, confirming initial reports that the aircraft broke apart during an attempted landing in Murmansk, a Russian city located north of the Arctic Circle. The footage clearly shows the blizzard like conditions at the time of the incident before the […]

One of the first-ever Special Forces scuba diving operations wasn’t targeted against an enemy. Rather, it was to assist in the search and recovery of 26 Americans who had perished in a freak aircraft collision. On March 7, 1958, a United States Marine Corps (USMC) R4Q (C-119) “Flying Boxcar” transport and a United States Navy […]

The Orange Flag Evaluation Team are tasked with assessing how well the different branches of the U.S. military can work together to accomplish a wide variety of objectives. “The latest event involved a total of 18 aircraft in six combat-relevant test tasks and experiments,” said Maj. Christopher Campbell, Air Force Test Center, Orange Flag Evaluation […]

In recent months, much ado has been made about America’s diplomatic opponents developing anti-ship capabilities that we currently have no defense against. Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles, capable of achieving hypersonic speeds, represent a kind of threat the United States hasn’t faced in decades: a technology that America is not only behind on, but apparently, […]

According to the Pentagon, the first U.S. air-to-air engagement since 1999 took place in June of 2017 only after Syrian loyalist forces attacked U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Ja’Din, southwest of Raqqa.  After a SU-22 dropped bombs near the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet immediately moved to […]

Editor’s note: You’re right guys, this is absolutely an F-35. Bad on us – these image captions are written by Air Force PAO, but it’s on us to make sure what we run is correct. Original caption below: The F-22 Raptor performs a demonstration at the Mather Airshow in Sacramento, California, Sept. 23, 2018. The […]

August of last year marked the first time U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors ever flew alongside their counterparts in the Royal Norwegian Air Force inside Norwegian airspace. That alone would make for an occasion worth mentioning, but the event was all the more momentous thanks to Norway’s recently acquired F-35 Joint Strike Fighters joining the […]

Japan and South Korea have long-established themselves as fervent allies of the United States, but recent altercations between the two Pacific nations have shown that the friend of a friend can still be your enemy. On Wednesday, South Korean officials accused a Japanese military patrol aircraft of executing a “threatening” low-altitude pass over one of […]

Pentagon officials are mulling over a new initiative that would involve arming F-35 Joint Strike Fighters with ballistic missile interceptors that would be fired like a traditional air-to-air weapon at launching intercontinental ballistic missiles. Over the next six months, the Pentagon intends to determine whether such a strategy is feasible–both technically and financially–but at least […]