The Pakistani Armed Forces have deployed 8,000 personnel and significant quantities of aerial warfare assets to Saudi Arabia to support its participation in the U.S.-led war effort against Iran, which has been ongoing since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on the country on February 28. Reflecting Pakistan’s uniquely high reliance on Chinese military equipment, equipment deployed has included JF-17 fighters, an HQ-9B long range air defence system, and two squadrons of unmanned aircraft which some reports have indicated may be of Chinese origin.
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Lockheed’s F-104 Starfighter was one of the fastest fighters of the early Cold War, capable of Mach 2 on a single General Electric J79 turbojet, and was developed by Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works after he toured air bases in Korea. The aircraft used a long, thin fuselage and very small straight wings to cut drag, but the same design produced brutal low-speed handling. West Germany became one of the largest operators of the Starfighter and lost a significant portion of its fleet to crashes, earning the jet the nickname Widow Maker. Italy flew the F-104 into the early 21st century.
The U.S. Air Force has just concluded its Checkered Flag exercise at Tyndall Air Force Base, a high-end air-to-air training event designed to rehearse the kind of war the United States expects against a peer adversary like China or Russia. Run by Air Combat Command and the 325th Fighter Wing, Checkered Flag puts up to 100 aircraft in a single battle, with around 50 flying as adversaries.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s lead Ford-class aircraft carrier, has returned to port after a 326-day deployment — the longest for any U.S. carrier since Vietnam. The 4,600-sailor crew fought combat operations in the Middle East and South America under Operation Epic Fury, crossed the Atlantic multiple times, and launched hundreds of sorties. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to Carrier Strike Group 12 — including the USS Ford, USS Bainbridge, and USS Mahan.
Summary and Key Points: Israel is moving to extend the range of its F-35I Adir stealth fighters after long-range strike operations against Iran exposed the limits of tanker-dependent airpower. A new $34 million agreement with Elbit Systems will develop external fuel tanks intended to increase endurance, reduce reliance on aging Boeing 707-based tankers, and give Israeli planners more flexibility for future deep-strike missions. The tanks appear likely to function as drop tanks rather than conformal tanks, allowing the aircraft to trade stealth for range when needed.
Lockheed’s YF-12A was a Mach 3.2 Cold War interceptor born from the same Skunk Works lineage that produced the A-12 and SR-71. Built to hunt Soviet bombers before they could threaten North America, the aircraft combined titanium construction, JP-7 fuel, J58 engines, advanced pulse-Doppler radar, and internal AIM-47 missiles. It could fly near 80,000 feet and outrun almost anything in the sky, but its extreme engineering came at a steep cost.
All four Navy aircrew members involved in a midair collision Sunday over an Idaho airshow survived ejecting from their planes, Navy officials confirmed Monday, an outcome that several retired fighter pilots described as extraordinary.
The mishap came when two Navy E/A-18G Growlers appeared to become stuck together in midair during a demonstration flight over Mountain Home Air Force Base. All four crew of the two-person jets ejected almost instantly as the planes stalled, including the two aviators whose jet had become stuck underneath the other plane.
U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, is focused on moving quickly to get technology into the hands of special operators, a senior acquisitions official with the command said on Monday.
“We are not building aircraft carriers here,” said David Breede, SOCOM’s deputy director for acquisition. “We are not launching million-dollar satellites here. What we are doing is integrating the latest technology into systems that can be fielded quickly for our quick turn prototyping, quick turn testing, validation — get them to the field.
TAMPA, Fla. — Officials across the services are racing to get disparate military platforms to talk to each other, an effort buoyed by the idea that the speedy transfer of information across multiple domains and automated systems will give U.S. forces an advantage on the battlefield.
For America’s most elite forces, the development of such a network — one that doesn’t rely on equipment-specific software — is not moving fast enough, according to one of U.S. Special Operations Command’s top acquisition officials.
Other parts of the military have echoed those concerns.
The Pentagon just released its budget request for the upcoming fiscal year and, if an organization’s budget reflects what it values, cyber operations are not a top priority. While President Donald Trump’s national cyber strategy affirms that this administration will “act swiftly, deliberately, and proactively” and no longer “tinker at the edges” of America’s cybersecurity problem, the Pentagon bureaucracy does not appear to have gotten the memo.