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
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.
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 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 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
The Dassault Rafale: The Plane that Beat the F-16
How France walked away from NATO's joint fighter program and went it alone — producing one of the world's most capable fourth-generation combat aircraft.
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