Military Aviation

The U.S. Air Force has narrowed the field in the competition for its new light attack aircraft to just two, the AT-6 Wolverine and A-29 Super Tucano, eliminating the Textron Scorpion and L-3 Longsword, a militarized Air Tractor 802 aerial application aircraft. It’s also canceled plans to test the aircraft in combat. “Rather than do […]

The largely hypothetical hypersonic aircraft race appears to have become a lot more real at an academic forum in Florida last week. Boeing showed off a model of what it thinks a Mach 5 aircraft might look like and a Lockheed Martin official may have let it slip that his company has already built one. […]

A shadowy office deep in the Pentagon that investigates unexplained encounters by military aircraft with flying objects continues to operate even though its mandate was officially ended five years ago, according to The New York Times. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program was a pet project of retired Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and spent $22 […]

BAE Systems and the University of Manchester have flown a stealthy drone that has no movable control surfaces and therefore does not change shape at all in flight. The MAGMA drone uses blown air to change aerodynamics and allow three-axes control. The most obvious benefit from the innovation is that there is no deflection of […]

The U.S. Air Force said on Sunday there are no plans to use the powers created by President Donald Trump last week to force the recall of retired pilots. “We appreciate the authorities and flexibility delegated to us,” said Ann Stefanek, chief of Air Force media operations, on Sunday. However, “The Air Force does not […]

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser left the ground at Edwards Air Force Base on Wednesday but the real testing is just about to begin, more than 35 years after the idea for a small, reusable spacecraft was given form by the Soviet Union. According to Wired, the 30-foot-long “space utility vehicle” was hoisted to 12,500 […]

All flying units of the U.S. Marines will take a 24-hour operational pause over the next 10 days “to focus on the fundamentals of safe flight operations, standardization, and combat readiness.” Because the days off will be scattered among all the units over that time period, the Marines say there will be no operational impact. […]

President Donald Trump has approved the sale of 12 Embraer Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria. Although the aircraft was designed in Brazil, the aircraft is being assembled in Jacksonville, Florida, and the weapons and sensor systems integrated by Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp. The supply chain was initially established for Embraer to supply the […]

It all started a few decades ago in a place 8500 miles away. Walt Fricke was in the copilot’s seat of an Army helo in the midst of the chaos of a combat assault in Vietnam. When the crew fired the air-to-ground rockets, one exploded leaving the tube. Shrapnel blasted into one of Walt’s legs, […]

NASA has winnowed a list of over 18,300 applicants down to twelve astronaut candidates—ASCANs in the NASA terminology. “We look forward to the energy and talent of these astronauts fueling our exciting future of discovery,” said acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot. “Between expanding the crew on board the space station to conduct more research than […]