Imagine a Sopwith camel biplane which first saw service in 1917 during the first world war and then using the same aircraft in combat missions right up until the last days of the Vietnam war in 1975. That’s a service life of 58 years which also spans a massive change …
C-5 Galaxy – The USAF’s Heavyweight Champion of the Air
It’s been the heavyweight workhorse of the United States airforce since 1970, moving everything from emergency food relief to main battle tanks and even other aircraft and pretty much everything else in between. It’s also the only ever plane to carry and launch a full-sized intercontinental ballistic missile in the …
How Safe is Nuclear Transportation?
Every day tens of thousands of shipments of radiative materials are made by road, rail, air and sea around the world with everything from the smoke detectors that contain americium-241 to the refurbishment of nuclear warheads but how safe is the transporting of these materials either from accidental damage or …
Why Can’t We Find MH370?
It’s been six and a half years since Malaysian Airlines MH370 disappeared on route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China with the presumed loss of all 239 onboard. And yet despite the most expensive air and sea search in aviation history and launching a whole raft of conspiracy theories, only …
Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne, possibly the best attack helicopter never made
In the 1960s and in response to a competition run by the US Army to find an Advanced Aerial Fire Support System during the Vietnam war, Lockheed, in their first major foray into building helicopters, created possibly the best attack helicopter of the 20th century. Ten prototypes were built and …
How Prepared Are We For A Carrington Level Solar Storm?
Preparedness is one of those attributes which has been sorely tested in recent times and in many ways has been found wanting but there are many bullets out there with our name potentially on them, one of which we have touched on before, namely solar storms and the CME or …
How Stealth Changed Modern Warfare
The advantage that Stealth technology has bestowed on those countries which use it is hard to underestimate and it has changed the way warfare is conducted but it’s not just aircraft which use it, ships, vehicles even troops can use varying types of technology help hide from detection, this is …
Will Directed Energy Weapons be the Future?
They have been seen in science fiction for a hundred years and go by many names, heat rays, death rays, lasers, masers, phasers, disrupters and e-bombs, but they are all effectively directed energy weapons and in theory they could be the ideal weapon that works at near the speed of …
F-35, Why is it the Best Fighter in the World Today?
To say that the F-35 project has come in for lot of bad press over the years is bit of an understatement with any number of critics and armchair pilots pitching in on every little piece of bad news that percolates through the internet. But with the aircraft now being …
What happened to the Trans Europe Express? – The TEE
The Trans Europe Express was the first international railway service to link up major cities in western Europe with high-speed trains, crossing borders with minimal stops and disruption and allowing business people and wealthy travellers to travel from one country to another and back again within a single day. All …