Planes
Fighter jets, bombers, spy planes, helicopters, and the aircraft pushing the edge of flight.
29 articlesLatest in Planes
Aurora Spy Plane: The $2 Billion Aircraft That May Never Have Existed
The Aurora legend began with a black-budget line item, sonic booms, and triangular sightings. The evidence points to something murkier than one spy plane.
Why the U.S. Still Has Not Replaced the Cobra and Apache
Why the Cobra and Apache keep outlasting the U.S. attack helicopter programs built to replace them.
Boeing E-4: America's Advanced Airborne Command Post
How the E-4 Nightwatch became America's airborne command center, built to keep national command authority alive through nuclear war, disasters, and crises.
MQ-28 Ghost Bat: Australia's Combat Drone That Allies Want to Buy
Australia's MQ-28 Ghost Bat is a Boeing-built collaborative combat aircraft designed to team with crewed jets, fire missiles, and scale allied airpower.
Su-75 Checkmate: Russia's F-35 Rival That Still Has to Fly
Russia's Su-75 Checkmate was pitched as a cheap fifth-generation export fighter. Its real test is whether UAC can turn a mockup into a flying aircraft.
H-20: China's Stealth Bomber Is Still a Mystery
China's H-20 stealth bomber has been promised for years. The public record still shows a program wrapped in secrecy, delay, and unproven claims.
Project Pulse
The engineering briefing that explains why nothing gets built on time — or on budget.
More in Planes
A-10 Warthog: Why the Close-Air-Support Icon Is Finally Leaving
The A-10 Thunderbolt II survived decades of retirement fights, but 2026 divestments show why the Air Force is finally moving past the Warthog.
Dassault Mirage: The Delta-Wing Fighter Family That Sold the World
The Dassault Mirage family turned France's postwar fighter crisis into a global export success, from Mirage III and Mirage 5 to F1 and Mirage 2000.
What If Boeing's Passenger Jets Were Forced Offline?
Boeing controls 40% of global commercial aircraft. Here's what happens to the world if regulators pull the plug on its entire fleet.
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
RAT 55: Why the US Military Built the Weirdest Boeing Ever Made
Inside RAT 55, the one-of-a-kind modified Boeing 737 with bulbous radomes that may be the secret linchpin of US stealth airpower
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