Fightersweep

A B-2 Spirit bomber, deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., is prepared for a training mission at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Jan. 17, 2019. Three B-2 bombers and more than 200 Airmen deployed here in support of U.S. Strategic Command’s Bomber Task Force mission. Bomber aircraft regularly rotate through the Indo-Pacific region to […]

Back in the 1990s, movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” helped show the world what it could be like if humanity met its end in a massive asteroid impact like our Jurassic (okay, technically Cretaceous) predecessors. In these movies, mankind utilized the best (science fiction) technology available to prepare for and attempt to prevent the […]

A 64-year-old man unexpectedly ejected from the rear seat of a Rafale B fighter during takeoff at Saint Dizier-Robinson Air Force Base in France. The unnamed man was reportedly a civilian that was invited to fly aboard the fighter during a routine training flight. While details remain sparse, the man suffered back injuries that some […]

On Monday, August 6th, 2012, I got up four hours before the sun rose. I wasn’t due on post for another five hours and I’d barely slept, but there was history to observe – and the warm comfort of my bed wasn’t going to keep me from witnessing it. I blindly silenced my phone’s alarm, […]

An F-35A Lightning II takes off at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Feb. 1, 2019. Pilots and maintainers from the 388th Fighter Wing’s 4th Fighter Squadron and 4th Aircraft Maintenance Unit are participating in exercise Red Flag 19-1. This is the wing’s second Red Flag with the F-35A, America’s most advanced multi-role fighter, which brings […]

As defense officials unveil their 2020 budget requests, journalists and analysts alike are finally getting a peek behind the curtain at the real priorities driving the American war-fighting apparatus. The Department of Defense (DOD), by and large, needs to err on the side of discretion when discussing ongoing defense initiatives. A poorly chosen word can […]

It can be tough to find stories about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that don’t go out of their way to paint the platform as either an incredibly overpriced boondoggle or the best thing to happen to military air power since the invention of nose-mounted radar. From an editorial standpoint, these “absolute good” and “absolute […]

On March 10, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, took off from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and almost immediately suffered flight control issues. Within five minutes of takeoff, the aircraft went down, claiming the lives of all 157 people on board. Tragic as this incident was, it didn’t take long before […]

Airmen assigned to the 5th Maintenance Squadron lower the vertical stabilizer on a B-52H Stratofortress at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., Feb. 10, 2019. The crew chiefs took turns operating the jackscrew that held the weight of the vertical stabilizer.   U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Jesse Jenny

A few weeks ago, images began to surface online of an F-117 Nighthawk flying over Nevada and California. Despite being formally retired for more than a decade, a number of these aircraft are consistently maintained in flyable condition, prompting sporadic sightings over the years that never fail to get the aviation community buzzing. This most […]

Back in 1975, Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works started tooling around with the Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) program, also known as Project Harvey. Harvey soon led to the Hopeless Diamond, a shape developed using computers that experts agreed would offer the smallest radar return possible under their current computational restrictions. The Hopeless Diamond led to Have […]

In a small corner of the humongous 2020 U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) budget, among numerous procurement and upgrade projects, there’s notification that the DOD decided to halt the acquisition of the CH-47F Block II—the newest model of the venerable Chinook heavy-lift helicopter. The decision indicates the end of an era for the Chinook, as […]