RSSScience and Technology

Boeing wins F-47 fighter contract, heads explode

| March 24, 2025 | 29 Comments
Boeing wins F-47 fighter contract, heads explode

The competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter (NGAD) is over, with Boeing taking first prize. During the Oval Office announcement ceremony, Trump displayed a poster showing the first glimpse of the F-47 design, revealing a forward fuselage and sharply swept back wings but no further design features. The […]

Continue Reading

Crash update, DeepSeek warning

| February 15, 2025 | 26 Comments
Crash update, DeepSeek warning

NTSB has released updated information on the January 30 crash between an Army Blackhawk and the American Airlines flight near Reagan airport in DC. One helicopter pilot thought they were at 300 feet and the other thought they were at 200 feet. The NTSB is not prepared to say exactly how high the helicopter was […]

Continue Reading

Saturday New Tech

| February 8, 2025 | 19 Comments
Saturday New Tech

We mentioned the dual-band radar on the Gerald Ford yesterday – today we turn our attention to non-floaty toys. First up – the Marines are looking for a few good choppers hybrid planes Osprey replacements. A newly released U.S. Marine Aviation Plan shows the service is now looking at a successor to its MV-22 Osprey […]

Continue Reading

Floaty Friday

| February 7, 2025 | 13 Comments
Floaty Friday

We’ll start with a piece of good news. Darn near lost us a perfectly good handcar airplane back in November 2023. The plane in the scenario is an F/A-18E Super Hornet on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. On November 27, the pilot was coming in for a routine landing when one of the arresting wires […]

Continue Reading

Hellhound in Army Competition

| February 1, 2025 | 13 Comments
Hellhound in Army Competition

I am in awe of what science can do today – and the following helps demonstrate why. Cummings Aerospace is submitting a new drone for Army approval in its ‘loitering munition’ competition. Sounds kinda boring, huh? The company took its S3 version of its man-portable loitering munition out to the Pendleton Unmanned Aircraft Systems test […]

Continue Reading

Hump Day shorts

| January 22, 2025 | 27 Comments
Hump Day  shorts

Sometimes a column needs 1000 words per topic, and sometimes a lot of little things crop up. Hopefully the major news of the week is the new administration, but here are a couple of other quick items. In good news for recruiting, in the first quarter of the fiscal year the Army signed up 30,000 […]

Continue Reading

Friday Fragments

| January 17, 2025 | 18 Comments
Friday Fragments

Well, first up is the formerly useful American Civil Liberties Union. I guess I am REALLY old – I remember when they used to be impartial defendants of the Bill of Rights, in its entirety. Heck, I remember when the National Rifle Association mentioned that the ACLU had actually supported the NRA’s side of lawsuits […]

Continue Reading

Six shooters? Pah?

| January 7, 2025 | 8 Comments
Six shooters? Pah?

Gotta love a sexy six (or seven) shooter – I know revolvers in .22LR are even made as 10-shooters – so kudos to Ed for giving us one Monday. Gotta say, though, that today’s offerings are a tad more sophisticated. Let’s start with Metal Storm – a Chinese made system. How do you intercept a […]

Continue Reading