Military Aviation
International military aviation programs and the U.S. military, including the Air Force, Marines, Army and Navy
Helicopter Missions: The Taliban Gambit
It's summer 2005. In Afghanistan, a four-man U.S. Navy SEAL team has been ambushed by the Taliban. A Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter is immediately sent to extract them, but as it approaches the rescue site, the Taliban fire a rocket-propelled grenade, hitting the Chinook's fuel tanks. All 16 crew ...
April 27, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Parachuteless Freaks
On March 23, 1944, a British Lancaster bomber over Germany's Ruhr River took heavy flak and exploded. As his oxygen mask and goggles began to melt, and his flight suit burned, tail gunner Nick Alkemade heard the pilot ordering the crew to bail out.The aircraft was at 18,000 feet, and while Alkemade...
April 26, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Inside Joke
Admit it: Sometimes you want to skip all the technical hoo-hah and get straight to the jokes. For your enjoyment, today we're resurrecting a bit of aircraft maintenance humor that has been roaming the Internet since 1997, and circulating on hard copies before that. The jokes have been attributed to...
April 21, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
The Victory of Advertising
Before the Japanese air attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, less than one percent of all workers in American aeronautical factories were female. Just two years later, more than 475,000 women would help to manufacture aircraft for the war effort. Another 350,000 would ...
April 08, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Parachuting in Virtual Reality
That's what they're doing at the Royal Air Force's Brize Norton base as an adjunct to regular jump training.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr81ZG-tXQU
April 01, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
100 Years of Naval Aviation
The Navy's first pilot and 10 more milestones.
March 2011 |
By The Editors
Moments and Milestones: Can You Hear Me Now?
When radio communication took to the air.
March 2011 |
By George C. Larson, Member, NAA
Carrier-bound, and Unmanned
The X-47B, an unmanned combat vehicle being developed by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Navy, made a successful first flight at California's Edwards Air Force Base on February 4.The X-47B is no small toy—it's about the size of the retired Grumman F-14 Tomcat. It will continue to work toward the ...
February 07, 2011 |
By Mike Klesius
When Pigs Could Fly
The F-111, beloved by pilots in America and Australia, takes to the air for the last time.
January 31, 2011 |
By Michael Klesius
A Guppy with Talons
No, it's not some freakish genetics experiment. It's NASA's Super Guppy transport hauling around a couple of T-38s. Read about it here.
January 26, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Fired Up
Balkan military officials report that China's new stealth fighter might have some technology acquired from a Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.Whoever recently took this footage of the new fighter doing high-speed taxi tests gets plenty fired up about it around ...
January 25, 2011 |
By Mike Klesius
The Budget News From 1911
As in any year, there are winners and losers in the 2012 Pentagon budget announced yesterday. The Defense Department plans to buy more Reaper unmanned drones, but the Marine Corps' short takeoff and landing version of the F-35 was put on two-year "probation," and may not happen at all. Pretty stand...
January 07, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
The New Afghanistan Air Force
How the U.S. military is training Afghans to fly.
January 2011 |
By Stewart Nusbaumer
Too Hot to Handle: McDonnell XP-67 Moonbat
Man cannot zoom by blended wing alone; he must have an engine that, well, works.
January 2011 |
By Stephan Wilkinson
The Great Escape
For U.S. airmen trapped in Yugoslavia during World War II, building a secret airstrip was their only way out.
January 2011 |
By Phil Scott
You've Got EMALS
We told you all about electromagnetic catapults in this story from January 2007. Now the first airplane has been launched with an EMALS system: an F/A-18E Super Hornet, at a Navy test site in Lakehurst, New Jersey.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euLsg_viWW0
December 30, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
