Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947 in the rocket-powered Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis. Three years earlier, a British Supermarine Spitfire Mark XI had already come within 11 percent of doing the same thing with a piston engine and a propeller. In 1944, RAF test pilot J.R. Tobin dove his Spitfire to 606 miles per hour — Mach 0.89. In a follow-up test, Anthony F. Martindale pushed the same airframe to 620 mph in a 45-degree dive. The propeller tore off, the tail-heavy aircraft climbed automatically, and Martindale woke at 40,000 feet to glide home.
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NATO’s top military commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, assured allies Tuesday that the planned withdrawal of approximately 5,000 American troops from Europe will not weaken the alliance’s defense posture in the region.
Speaking to reporters after meetings with NATO military chiefs in Brussels, Gen. Grynkewich — who serves as both Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and head of U.S. European Command — described the move as part of a broader adjustment in U.S. force posture.
From May 14 to 15, U.S. President Donald Trump held a summit in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In addition to pageantry, the summit featured discussions about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, Taiwan, and bilateral trade. Both Washington and Beijing emphasized a relationship based on “constructive strategic stability.”Many countries, particularly those in Asia, were watching closely to see how the two leaders got along, what they agreed on, and what divided them. We asked four experts to tell us about the reactions in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.Read more below.
More than 300 years after the 150-foot-long Spanish galleon San José came to a grisly end off the coast of Colombia, the world’s most coveted shipwreck is again at the center of a bitter struggle over who has a right to its untapped wealth.
The Backstory
The San José sank near Colombia’s port city of Cartagena back on June 8, 1708, while carrying one of the richest cargoes ever assembled in the Americas. Often described as the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks,” the vessel is believed to have gone down with gold, silver, emeralds, Chinese porcelain, and other valuables.
The XM2001 Crusader was supposed to become the U.S. Army’s next-generation artillery system: a heavily automated 155mm self-propelled howitzer capable of firing faster, farther, and more accurately than the aging M109 Paladin fleet it was designed to replace.
Instead, it became one of the most famous canceled weapons programs in modern Pentagon history after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld abruptly killed the project in 2002 during the early months of the post-9/11 “military transformation” era.
NATO Artillery Test. Image Credit: NATO.
The U.S. Navy commissioned three Midway-class aircraft carriers in 1945 — the USS Midway, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, and USS Coral Sea — designed with heavily armored flight decks to survive the kamikaze attacks that had crippled the Essex-class. Each ship measured nearly 1,000 feet, produced 200,000 shaft horsepower, and carried more than 4,000 sailors. None saw World War II combat, but all three fought through the Cold War. The Midway launched strikes over Vietnam, evacuated Saigon in 1975, and struck Iraqi forces in Operation Desert Storm.
After his Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump called Taiwan a ‘place’ rather than a country, cautioned Taipei against using the word ‘independence,’ and froze U.S. arms sales to the island. The shift is the consequence of the Iran War. Tehran has now closed the Strait of Hormuz, set up a permanent toll bureaucracy charging passing ships in yuan, bitcoin, or gold, and the U.S. Navy has not forced the waterway open.
As President Donald Trump’s delegation prepared to leave Beijing after a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, White House staff collected the Chinese-issued credentials, lanyards, delegation pins, and U.S.-issued burner phones from the trip and dumped them into a bin at the bottom of the Air Force One stairs. New York Post correspondent Emily Goodin reported that nothing from China was allowed onto the aircraft. AFP reporter Danny Kemp confirmed Chinese officials had asked for their red lapel badges back, and U.S. staff put them in the bin instead.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s lead Ford-class aircraft carrier, is heading into a major repair period after a 300-plus-day combat deployment — one of the longest in modern U.S. naval history. The damage list is long. The Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear need full inspection after sustained combat sortie generation. The vacuum waste system that left sailors unable to flush toilets may be redesigned outright. Berthing compartments damaged by a multi-hour laundry fire need refurbishment.
The F-35 Lightning II is best known for stealth, internal weapons storage, and sensor fusion. It also has a Beast Mode. In stealth configuration, the F-35 is limited to 5,700 pounds of internally stored weapons. In Beast Mode, the jet can carry up to 22,000 pounds — a roughly 400 percent increase. A typical Beast Mode loadout includes four external 2,000-pound GBU-31 JDAMs and two AIM-9X Sidewinders, plus two more JDAMs and two AIM-120 AMRAAMs held internally. Empty, the F-35 weighs 29,000 pounds. Fully loaded in Beast Mode, it weighs about 70,000.