The GBU-31 JDAM looks almost boring. It has no dramatic rocket motor. No exotic seeker sits in its nose. At its core, it is a large gravity bomb fitted with a guidance kit. That simple idea changed ...

Landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier is one of the hardest jobs in military aviation. Now add stealth. The F-35C Lightning II was built to handle both. Its larger wings, reinforced landing gear, ...

A missile designed in the Soviet era still shapes how pilots fight at close range today. That sounds strange until you look at what the R-73 missile actually changed. When it entered Soviet service in ...

A bomb can be built to hit hard. The BLU-109 Bomb was built to get inside. That difference explains why this weapon has lasted for decades. The BLU-109 bomb is a 2,000-pound-class hard-target ...

Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury is one of two Increment 1 CCA designs selected for production. The other is General Atomics’ FQ-42 Vengeance. In June 2026, the Air Force awarded both companies engineering, ...

The F-15C Eagle was built around one goal: air superiority. Its formula was straightforward. Two powerful engines, a large wing, a strong radar and enough weapons to engage targets at different ranges ...

The AIM-7 Sparrow didn’t become famous because it worked perfectly. It became famous because the missile kept getting better. That distinction matters. The Sparrow began as an ambitious attempt to ...

The Sukhoi Su-57 looks like a stealth fighter, but that description misses the most interesting part. Russia did not build the Sukhoi Su-57 Felon around stealth alone. Its designers wanted an aircraft ...

The JAS 39 Gripen was built around a simple Swedish idea: one fighter should do several jobs, take off from places a large air base cannot, and get back into the air quickly. That sounds ordinary ...

In today’s rapidly evolving geopolitical environment, nations increasingly prioritize robust defense systems capable of countering threats from aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, and ballistic ...

The F/A-18 Hornet should have been yesterday’s fighter by now. Its first flight came in 1978. The U.S. Navy began receiving production Hornets in 1983. By fighter standards, that makes the original ...

A missile doesn’t need to be the fastest weapon in the sky to be dangerous. The Norwegian Naval Strike Missile (NSM) proves the point. It flies at high subsonic speed, carries a roughly 125 kg warhead ...