Aircraft

Leonardo UK has publicly rolled out its BriteStorm electronic warfare system that allows air forces to penetrate hostile airspace by creating phantom squadrons of fighter planes and missiles to jam and spoof radar defenses.

Lockheed Martin's famous-yet-secret Skunk Works is conducting live flight tests of its Smart Adaptive Flight Control Environment (SAFE) autonomous AI system on the X-62A. The system can be reconfigured in real time while the X-plane is still in the air.

When is an empty tube not an empty tube? When it's a ramjet that uses rotating detonation technology to propel aircraft at hypersonic speeds. A case in point is Venus Aerospace's new Venus Detonation Ramjet 2000 lb Thrust Engine (VDR2).

Aurora Flight Sciences has released a new video of its revolutionary wing-in-ground-effect Liberty Lifter concept aircraft that it's developing for DARPA. The aircraft uses ground effect to lift heavy loads without the need for an airstrip or ship port.

Giving a preview of the future of military aircraft, General Atomics unveiled a full-scale mock-up of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which is an autonomous warplane designed to augment air forces with cheaper, expendable robotic fighters.

At the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in Washington, DC, the US Air Force and prime contractor Northrop Grumman have released the first video of its B-21 Raider nuclear bomber in flight, along with an update on the B-21 program.

Piasecki Aircraft's Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) tilt-duct VTOL aircraft has completed its maiden flight. On September 6 at Piasecki's West Helipad in Essington, Pennsylvania the autonomous rotorcraft made two tethered hover flights.

The world's first flight test for an aerospike rocket engine ended in disaster, but Polaris Aerospace is back on track, preparing to fly second- and third-generation prototypes for its MIRA supersonic/hypersonic aircraft platform within weeks.

Scaled Composites' Model 437 Vanguard Loyal Wingman prototype has taken to the air for the first time. On August 29, 2024, the aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California with test pilot Brian Maisler at the controls.

Aerospace startup Dawn Aerospace has made a major advance in its push to create a highly reusable spaceplane. The latest test flight reached transonic speeds of Mach 0.92 and an altitude of 50,000 ft (15,000 m), or 3 times and 5 times, respectively, better than before.

Since we looked in on aerospace motor startup H3X in 2020, it's gotten its first round of motors out and signed contracts with major players like the US Air Force and NASA. Now it's working to launch bigger, badder megawatt-class machines.

Conventional helicopters have a built-in speed limit, imposed by the physical limitations of their top-rotor lift systems. This fascinating Airbus project has found a way to break through that speed limit, and it's already done it in flight testing.