Here are some images I wasn’t expecting to see this century. It shows the Su-27s of the Russian Knights aerobatic team being escorted by Iranian F-14 Tomcats and F-4 Phantoms. Talk about bizarre. Two of America’s legendary Cold War fighters being flown by one of its biggest 21st Century adversaries alongside two Soviet-designed jets [...]
Military Defense
USS Ponce to Become Spec Ops Mothership
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
In case you didn’t see this on Friday, the Pentagon is converting the 1970s-vintage amphibious assault ship USS Ponce into a mothership for special ops and countermining missions in the Middle East, the Washington Post is reporting. The 570-foot long ship’s big flight deck and well deck are well suited to carry the choppers and [...]
A Basic Mistake That Trashed a JSTARS
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
Imagine flying, along with 20 or so fellow aircrew, in an Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System (JSTARS) jet for a mission to track down insurgents planting roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. You’ve just taken off from your base in Qatar but before you can go scan the ground for [...]
MoH-level Valor Leads to a Robot Hand
Friday, January 27th, 2012
I had a chance to sit down with Medal of Honor recipient SFC Leroy Petry a couple of days ago while participating in the AFCEA West 2012 conference in San Diego. Like all who’ve received the nation’s highest award for valor, his story of courage under fire is amazing. (Read more about him in Military.com’s [...]
Hot Docs: DoD’s 2013 Budget Briefing Documents
Friday, January 27th, 2012
Here’s where you’ll see the weapons programs are going to thrive going forward and the types that won’t (barring Capitol Hill getting involved, which you’ve always got to factor in). Below you’ll the Pentagon’s basic budget documents that the DoD has released to coincide with the budget rollout that we’ve been live Tweeting. The first [...]
Navy Getting Very Close to UAV Aerial Refueling
Friday, January 27th, 2012
So, the Navy just took a big step toward achieving the military’s goal of having UAV’s capable of mid-air refueling. Last month, a Navy Learjet equipped with flight control software and refueling hardware from the service’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator jet autonomously completed a mock air-to-air refueling from a Boeing 707-based tanker (shown [...]
Pics of the Day: X-47B From Above
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Speaking of Northrop Grumman-made UAVs, check out these new photos of Northrop’s stealthy X-47B. The downward-looking pics show the plane — designed to test out how to operate a fighter-sized, stealthy UAV from an aircraft carrier — flying from an angle I’d never seen before. They make it look all the more badass, even if [...]
Adios Global Hawk, U-2 Will Stick Around (updated)
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Wow, so it looks like we’re seeing the first of the upcoming budget cuts for the Air Force trickle out. The AP is reporting that the Air Force is cancelling the RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude spy drone opting instead to keep the legendary U-2 Dragon Lady in service (for now, anyway)! Yup, the 50-year old [...]
Video: F-35’s First Night Flight
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Last week we showed you pics of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s first night flight that happened on Jan. 18 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Well, Lockheed just released the video from that dusk flight in which an F-35A took off at 5:05 pm and landed shortly after sunset at 6:20 pm. This [...]
Pic of the Day: Angry Caspian Sea Monster
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Happy Tuesday, everyone. I’ve been at a briefing on Iran all morning so while I digest that I thought I’d give you this awesome picture of a Soviet Lun-class ekranoplan firing one of its six massive P-270 Mosquito anti-ship missiles while speeding over what’s likely the Caspian Sea sometime in the late 1980s or 1990s. [...]