Aviation

From the five pound MHTK that swats mortars midair to the F-35 ready Mako sprinting at Mach 5, Lockheed has handed the Pentagon two precise, affordable missiles built for the fights ahead, and the real question is why we are not buying them.

Flying low and hard over the Somme on April 21, 1918, the Red Baron chased a green Camel into Australian guns until Sergeant Cedric Popkin’s cool 200 round burst sent a single .303 round through his heart and the legend hit the beet field eight seconds later.

Batman made it look cool, but the real Skyhook riders were the kind of men who trusted a steel wire, a balloon, and a pilot’s nerve more than luck or legend.

By carving through refineries, rail, and bomber bases deep inside Russia, Ukraine’s DeepStrike drone campaign is strangling the Kremlin’s war machine at its fuel line and showing how precision hybrid warfare can wreck an empire’s logistics without inviting nuclear catastrophe.

Putting a Qatari fighter school in Idaho feels like parking a lit cigar in a powder magazine and trusting the wind to behave.

Facing Kaliningrad, Belarus, and a live war next door, Poland is pushing its F-16s to the Viper standard with APG-83 radar, Viper Shield, and standoff punch to hold the line while F-35s spin up.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, a combat tested pilot, is the White House pick to steer budgets, training, and modernization as the next Air Force Chief of Staff.

Three fully armed Russian MiG-31s knifed six miles into Estonian airspace toward Tallinn, only to be met by Finnish Hornets and Italian F-35s that herded them out—a brazen, ill-timed probe likely to trigger NATO Article 4 talks and stiffen Western resolve at the worst moment for Putin.

Gold wings used to mean you could land on a postage stamp in the middle of the ocean—now they’re handing them out like participation trophies at flight school.

Night Stalkers don’t get the luxury of easy nights—their training flights cut low and fast through blacked-out timber, where one wrong move can turn a routine drill into a headline.

Flying with the Night Stalkers, whether fast-roping from a Black Hawk, thundering in a Chinook, or clinging to the skids of a Little Bird, showed me firsthand why these aviation professionals are the lifeline of America’s most elite warriors.

HH-60G Pave Hawk fires flares as an F-15D Eagle soars above, joint power and precision in a test of combat rescue readiness.