I wonder what happened to the cranked kite. Northrup was pretty specific about that being a selling point of their design. The ad they showed a year ago was also clearly a cranked kite: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-chilling-…

Is this a real design change, or is the program keeping everything under complete…

I wonder if the arsenal plane concept isn’t being misread a bit. What if the plan is to bring something like the S-3 out of retirement? It’s been suggested before, albeit for ASW duties. The S-3 has phenomenal range, 10 hour endurance on station, and a pretty good payload to boot. 91 of them were just mothballed in…

Really? The Kunduz hospital attack is on the front page of CNN and many other media sites today. What about the four hospitals Russia has bombed in Syria since then? I don’t see those on any front pages. The difference is that in the US there is an investigation and people are being held into account. In the RuAF…

He probably just absentmindedly forgot his Garmin in the barracks.

Only an AMRAAM needs to catch the Mig. Also, Syria allegedly (but dubiously: http://www.janes.com/article/53660/…) already has Mig-31s. They certainly operated Mig-25s and still do at least in a reconnaissance role. But neither has the kinematic ability to reliably evade medium-range AAMs, not to mention PAC-3 etc...…

I’m curious whether the story of the 18-man SAR team finding him is true. With one Mi-8 lost to ground fire, I would be surprised if they kept up the search. A possible alternative scenario that suits both Turkey and Russia would be that the Turkmen rebels captured the navigator, and that he was repatriated via…

They were likely deliberately flying in turbulence for training purposes. You have to be able to tank up in bad conditions as operations require it, so it makes sense to fly out over some topography and prove your mettle.