Military Aviation

Russia has ordered its airlines to avoid Syrian airspace after a charter airliner with 159 passengers and eight crew aboard escaped a possible missile attack Monday. Russia Today quoted Interfax as saying the the Nordwind Airlines A320, on a flight from an Egyptian resort to Kazan in Tatarstan, was over the mountains of Syria when […]

The NYPD said Friday that it believes a piece of wreckage found Wednesday in a narrow space between two buildings in lower Manhattan came from one of the jets that impacted the World Trade Center twelve years ago, but how it got there isn’t clear. According to a police spokesperson, the item was found by […]

Of eighty men, three of the four surviving members of Doolittle’s Raiders, all now living their ninth decade, met publicly — and, they say, for the final time — during the week of April 15, at Eglin Air Force Base, to commemorate the 71st anniversary of their April 18, 1942, one-way mission to bomb Japan. […]

The Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS) recently targeted and shot down an aerial drone in testing; meanwhile another aircraft-mounted laser system (this one for self-defense) may commence testing in 2014. The Navy’s test involved a destroyer-mounted laser that successfully tracked and engaged a flying drone. The aerial vehicle caught fire in flight and crashed into […]

One of the most astonishing chapters in U.S. aviation history unfolded ten years ago when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley ordered a secretive raid on Meigs Field, sending heavy equipment in under cover of darkness to carve massive Xs across the runway. At the time, Daley claimed the move was necessary to protect the city “from […]

Frenchman Philippe Jernnard is being held on $1 million bond after being found in the cockpit jump seat of a US Airways flight at Philadelphia International Airport, Wednesday, posing as an Air France pilot. Jernnard was found by the flight’s crew at some point during the boarding process. When questioned, he identified himself as a […]

Police in the Canadian province of Quebec said late Sunday they had arrested three men and had another cornered in connection with the helicopter escape of two of the men from a prison in Saint-Jerome, about 25 miles northwest of Montreal. Police are releasing few details but witness accounts gathered by various media sources suggest […]

Integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the U.S. national airspace system is scheduled for 2015 and, according to the UAS industry itself, that will create more than 70,000 jobs and have a broader economic impact of more than $13.6 billion by 2019. The numbers are not from an independent study but from a study […]

Laser chemist and researcher Jayan Thomas of the University of Central Florida is working to create eyewear that could use gold to prevent pilots from being temporarily blinded or injured by laser light shot into the cockpit from the ground. Thomas is working in collaboration with other researchers at the Carnegie Mellon Institute in the […]

The NASA/JPL Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity Project Team will receive the 2012 Robert J. Collier Trophy, the National Aeronautic Association announced on Tuesday. In choosing the project from a field of seven nominees, the committee cited the”extraordinary achievements of successfully landing Curiosity on Mars, advancing the nation’s technological and engineering capabilities, and significantly improving humanity’s understanding […]