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  • Boeing Wins FA-XX Contract

    Boeing Wins F/A-XX: What It Means for the Navy’s Next Fighter Imagine a fighter rolling into position on a carrier catapult somewhere in the Pacific. Behind it, Super Hornets and F-35Cs crowd the flight deck. Ahead lie hundreds of miles of ocean, followed by airspace defended by modern fighters, missiles, and radar networks. The Navy wants its next fighter to cross that distance, operate with unmanned teammates, and bring its pilot home. On September 29, 2026, that aircraft’s future became a little clearer. Boeing won the Navy’s F/A-XX competition, securing a full-scale development contract valued at more than $20 billion.…

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  • They Found Him Alive. Then the Rescue Aircraft Got Stuck.

    An F-15E Strike Eagle goes down over Iran. Its weapons systems officer survives a damaged parachute and devastating injuries—then spends roughly 50 hours behind enemy lines. When rescuers finally reach him, another emergency threatens their escape: two rescue transports cannot take off. In this PilotPhotog rescue update, we examine the publicly reported account of Dude 44 Bravo’s survival and the extraordinary effort to bring both Strike Eagle crew members home during Operation Epic Fury. Follow the story from the ejection and dangerous daylight recovery of pilot Dude 44 Alpha to Bravo’s isolation in the mountains, the massive second rescue effort,…

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  • A Tale of Two F-35’s

    The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II remains one of the most polarizing warplanes in modern military history. On one side, it acts as an unrivaled “quarterback of the skies,” leveraging low-observable stealth, sensor fusion, and networked data sharing to dominate battlespaces long before adversaries register its presence. On the other side, years of hardware supply delays, soaring sustainment costs, and software integration hurdles leave military analysts asking a crucial question: Is the F-35 program actually broken? In the video above, Tog takes an animated look inside both sides of America’s flagship fifth-generation fighter jet. Key Takeaways from the Breakdown The…

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  • The Complete F-18 Story

    From the YF-17 Cobra to the F/A-18 Hornet, Super Hornet, Block III Rhino and EA-18G Growler, this is the complete story of one of the most versatile aircraft families ever to operate from an American aircraft carrier. The Hornet was never the fastest fighter in the fleet, and it never had the longest range. But when the Navy needed an aircraft to do something, there was usually a way to make a Hornet do it. In this special feature-length PilotPhotog compilation, we trace nearly five decades of F/A-18 development, technology and operations — from the original Lightweight Fighter competition through…

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  • A-6 Intruder: the ground attack legend

    When bad weather grounded every sleek fighter on the carrier deck, the United States Navy turned to one ugly, subsonic bomb truck: the Grumman A-6 Intruder. It carried a heavier payload than the F-4 Phantom, flew blind through pitch-black storms over Vietnam using the revolutionary DIANE radar system, and laid the foundation for the EA-6B Prowler. Yet, right after proving its unmatched precision-strike capability in Desert Storm, the Navy retired the Intruder—leaving carrier air wings without a true long-range, heavy-payload successor after the stealth A-12 Avenger II was canceled. In this deep dive, we break down how the “Iron Tadpole”…

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