“Strike Eagle, Strike Eagle, they call me by name/I bombed the hell outta Goldwater Range…” So begins the song that Dick Jonas—Vietnam War fighter pilot turned professional singer—dedicates to the F-15E Strike Eagle, the successor to the F-4 Phantom that Lt. Col USAF, Ret. Jonas had flown over the jungles of Southeast Asia. And an…

Wanna know what’s behind the trademark BRTTTTT noise of the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling Gun? The video below, produced by the 3D Mil-Tech YouTube channel, shows in extensive detail how the Avenger works. Dubbed Warthog, Hog or just Hawg, the A-10 Thunderbolt II is, basically, an airplane built around the GAU-8 Avenger 30-mm hydraulically driven seven-barrel…

During WW II, we in the military were not allowed to save notes, keep diaries or take pictures, and being a Boy Scout type, I lived by the rules. Now, decades later, when I’m called to write about some of my flight experiences, I wish that I had bent the rules a little. Thank goodness…

Dassault Rafale: A 3 Minute Rundown Detailing One of the Best Fighters On Earth – In an era of 5th generation stealth fighters, the older French Dassault Rafale often goes unnoticed. But those who ignore it do so at their peril as the French-made fighter jet is a great aircraft and formidable foe in capable hands. A Capable Aircraft  The…

This dogfighting dynamo was designed to win a war that never happened. Several decades—and one star-making turn in Top Gun—later, it’s now an endangered species. August 1981 opened with a massive show of American force in the Mediterranean Sea, just north of Libya. Two of America’s supercarriers, the USS Forrestal and the class namesake, USS Nimitz, had entered into what Libyan leader…

Key Point: America has many good fighter jets, and that includes the F-16 which has been constantly upgraded. Here’s how it still stacks up well against many foreign jets. The F-16 Fighting Falcon bears an unusual distinctions: it is one of the only top jet fighters in the world to also be cost efficient. Fast and…

Its development was kept under wraps for 14 years, but by 1991, the F-117 Nighthawk had become a household word. Television viewers who tuned to the Cable News Network (CNN) on the evening of January 16, 1991, were treated to a rare live preview of wars to come. Correspondents Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett, broadcasting…

Concorde’s time in the skies may have been fleeting, but it remains an icon of aviation. In tribute to the supersonic plane, here are 40 fascinating facts about Concorde. 1. Concorde’s first successfully completed supersonic flight took place on October 1, 1969. But it wasn’t until January 21, 1976, that the first commercial flights took place.…

The question as to which stealth fighter jet is the unrivaled best in the world is tough to decide (Washington DC) F-35: The Best Fighter Jet Today – The question as to which stealth fighter jet is the unrivaled best in the world is tough to decide concisely. It seems almost unanswerable given how many unknowns…

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