Planes
Fighter jets, bombers, spy planes, helicopters, and the aircraft pushing the edge of flight.
29 articlesLatest in Planes
The Future of Air Combat: 6th Generation Fighter Jets of the 2030s
Explore how sixth generation fighter jets will revolutionize aerial warfare with AI, drone swarms, directed energy weapons, and the end of traditional dogfighting by the 2030s.
MCAS: The Silent Killer on the 737 MAX
The inside story of the Boeing 737 MAX MCAS scandal: how corporate negligence, regulatory capture, and a fatally flawed software system led to two catastrophic crashes and 346 deaths.
The X-59 Quesst: On a Mission to Change Air Travel
NASA and Lockheed Martin's X-59 Quesst experimental aircraft aims to solve the sonic boom problem that has plagued supersonic commercial flight since the Concorde era.
The A-12 Avenger II: The Stealth Bomber That Could Have Changed Everything
How the A-12 Avenger II, the US Navy's triangular stealth attack jet nicknamed the Flying Dorito, collapsed before its first flight
Boeing E-3 Sentry: The Story of America's Ultimate Eye in the Sky
Inside the Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS, the modified 707 that became America's ultimate airborne radar and the eye in the sky for nearly 50 years
The Changhe Z-10: China's Twin-Turbo Answer to the Apache
How China built the Changhe Z-10 attack helicopter from scratch using Russian blueprints, smuggled Western tech, and homegrown engineering
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More in Planes
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker: The Absolute Unit That Carried America Into the Cold War
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the largest combat aircraft ever built — a six-engine nuclear behemoth whose real mission was to never be used at all.
The Convair Pogo: The US Navy's Weirdest Prototype Ever
The Convair XFY-1 Pogo was the US Navy's tail-sitting VTOL fighter that took off straight up, flew at 300+ mph, and very nearly worked
The E-4B Nightwatch: Inside America's Doomsday Plane
Inside the Boeing E-4B Nightwatch, the EMP-hardened 747 built to be America's airborne command post in a nuclear war, and the plane set to replace it
The F-105 Thunderchief: The Supersonic Bomber's Fatal Flaw
How Republic's F-105 Thunderchief went from "Thud" to "One Man Army" in Vietnam, and the trade-offs baked into its supersonic design
The Gripen: Sweden's Fighter Jet Masterpiece
How Sweden's JAS 39 Gripen became one of the best non-stealth fighters on Earth: short runways, ten-minute turnarounds, and a renaissance abroad
The Lockheed U-2: Spying Before Satellites
How Lockheed's U-2 spy plane flew to 70,000 feet to photograph Soviet secrets, survived being shot down, and outlasted every replacement for seven decades