A bomb can be built to hit hard. The BLU-109 Bomb was built to get inside. That difference explains why this weapon has lasted for decades. The BLU-109 bomb is a 2,000-pound-class hard-target ...

Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury is one of two Increment 1 CCA designs selected for production. The other is General Atomics’ FQ-42 Vengeance. In June 2026, the Air Force awarded both companies engineering, ...

The Ilyushin Il-20 first appeared decades ago, yet NATO fighters were still being sent to identify the aircraft in 2026. In March, Norwegian F-35s shadowed an Il-20M flying in international airspace ...

A photo can make a new aircraft look operational long before it actually is. That’s the trap with the FQ-42 Vengeance right now. General Atomics has shown the uncrewed fighter… ...

A propeller-driven aircraft can train pilots for modern fighter jets. That sounds strange until you see what the Pilatus PC-21 is actually built to do. The PC-21 isn’t a faster version of a basic ...

A trainer jet is not supposed to become one of Asia’s most interesting military aircraft families. The KAI T-50 Golden Eagle did exactly that. Developed by Korea Aerospace Industries with Lockheed ...

A Gulfstream business jet is about to become one of the U.S. Air Force’s strangest combat aircraft. The EA-37B Compass Call looks familiar from the outside. Its roots are in the Gulfstream G550, a jet ...

For more than four decades, the EC-130H Compass Call fought a battle most people could never see. Rather than relying on conventional weapons, this unusual U.S. Air Force aircraft operated in the ...

A fighter pilot may spend thousands of hours preparing for a mission that lasts only a few minutes. Before climbing into a front-line F-35, Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, or another modern combat ...

Imagine having a nuclear weapon system that is expected to be ready every minute of every day, but whose most important feature is that you almost never see it. That is the logic behind the ...

What do you do when the cargo is so big, so heavy, or so awkward that almost every cargo aircraft on Earth simply isn’t an option? You bring out the Antonov An-124 Ruslan. This enormous aircraft was ...