stealth fighter

In this article we revisit whether Russian and Chinese stealth fighters really live up to their name.

Recently surfaced images and a brief video show Russia’s premier stealth fighter, the Su-57 Felon, flying without the canopy enclosure.

In the first reported total loss of one of Russia’s exceedingly rare fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 “stealth” fighters, one of the jets crashed approximately 68 miles from the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aircraft plant in Russia, where it was likely built. The pilot ejected from the aircraft safely and was recovered soon after the incident by Russian military MI-8 […]

The legendary F-117 Nighthawk, sometimes referred to colloquially as the “Stealth Fighter,” may have formally retired in 2008, but sightings of the angular-angel have persisted for years in the skies above America’s southwest. This culminated recently in a series of new sightings near the infamous airstrip of “Area 51,” located in the dry bed that […]

The United States introduced the world to the concept of stealth-integrated “fifth-generation” fighters decades ago when the first F-22 Raptors took to the sky. Since then the U.S. has remained at the forefront of this new generation of fighter, but efforts from both Russia and China to close this capability gap have resulted in a […]

Over the past few days, headlines have popped up all around the world indicating that a German tech firm had managed to track a pair of American F-35s for nearly a hundred miles when they visited Berlin last year for an airshow. The company, called Hensold, used a new form of radar that reads and […]

From a journalistic perspective, covering the F-35 program can be a bit of a quagmire at times. The aircraft is undoubtedly among the most advanced and capable air platforms ever to take to the sky, but the plane’s development has also been a clinic in poor planning, over-spending, and the inherent flaws in putting an […]

Only weeks after Russia announced that it would be giving its dying fifth generation fighter a new lease on life (in the form of plans to actually produce 76 of the aircraft), Russian President Vladimir Putin has been spotted peddling the fighter to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This sales pitch has been seen by […]

Earlier this month, an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter belonging to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force went down over the Pacific during a training flight. Three other F-35s participating in the flight returned home safely, with the pilot and much of the missing F-35’s wreckage, still missing. “The Japanese have the lead there, and we’re working […]

For the first time, the U.S. Air Force is deploying the world’s most advanced fighter to the Middle East to participate in combat operations. While Marine Corps F-35Bs have already participated in combat operations over Afghanistan, this deployment marks the first outing for the Air Force’s F-35A iteration of the platform. The first F-35As reached […]

On Tuesday, at approximately 7:30 p.m. local time, a Japanese Air Self Defense F-35A Joint Strike Fighter disappeared from Japanese tracking systems somewhere off the coast of northern Japan. According to local media reports, a search and rescue mission is underway. While not confirmed to be a part of this effort yet, a number of […]

Russia has a long and storied history of fielding capable fighter platforms that evoke anxiety in American pilots and interest from Chinese officials. A number of Chinese fighters in operations today are either production lines purchased directly from the Russian government or, as is the case with their carrier-based J-15s, were reverse engineered from Russian […]