usaf

Monster Machines: This Supersonic Fighter Has Never Seen Real Combat

The US Air Force’s armada are among the most advanced aircraft on the planet. As such, the USAF isn’t going to let just any schmuck fresh out of basic training take to the skies in an F-35. Instead wannabe Top Guns must first prove their mettle in a less expensive plane that’s trained more than 50,000 pilots since the Eisenhower administration.


Giz Explains: How NASA’s Nuclear Rockets Will Take Us Way Beyond Mars

The first people to step on to the surface of Mars won’t arrive aboard the chemical-fueled rockets that delivered Apollo 11 to the moon — they simply don’t provide enough thrust to get to the Red Planet before exposing their crews to months of dangerous space radiation. Instead, NASA is turning to long-ignored nuclear-thermal rocket technology to deliver the first Martian explorers into history.


US Air Force Is Considering A Sprawling Tunnel System For Nuclear Missiles

In an effort to upgrade its ageing nuclear weapons and accompanying silos, the US Air Force is exploring the possibility of chauffeuring its missiles around in a massive, underground network of tunnels. Driving Miss Daisy, meet the Apocalypse.


Monster Machines: No ICBM Can Sneak Past This Radar Array

Death by ICBM was a near constant threat to both sides during the Cold War. The answer: a long-range, phased-array early warning system designed to find, identify and track these sea-launched ballistic missile threats. It worked so well the US Air Force still uses it.


Monster Machines: Why Are The Most Vital Aircraft In The USAF Arsenal Owned By NASA?

While chatter between the US Air Force is spoken exclusively in English, communications between their aircrafts’ electronic systems is more akin to the United Nations cafeteria — a “dog’s breakfast of different datalinks,” according to Lt. Gen. William Lord. Since the numerous competing defence contractors tasked with building military aircraft often install contradicting and incompatible systems, the USAF employs a pair of legacy NASA fliers to act as battlefield interpreters.


US Air Force Finally Has Enough F-35s To Fly A Decent Formation

Here you have it, people: four F-31A Lightning IIs returning in formation to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. According to the USAF, “pilots with the 33rd Fighter Wing began flying the formation for the first time at Eglin AFB last week.”


Monster Machines: Battlefield Routers Make Air Strikes Even More Accurate

Battlefield communications will be getting a boost in the near future. The US Air Force has just completed testing on a new plane-mounted wireless router system that will allow troops to collaborate with other ground forces as well as jets overhead.


US Air Force Used To Test Ejector Seats With Drugged Bears

In 1950, the United States Air Force had a new bomber called the B-58 Hustler, the first to go Mach 2. Naturally they wanted to include ejector seats to allow pilots a chance to bail out, but first they had to do a lot of testing, and they did it with bears. Bears on drugs.


US Air Force Tests Doomsday Nuclear Launch Attack

If Lenin ever leaps out of his coffin and starts singin’ nukes at Rhode Island, this is how America will seek her justice: a nuclear-tipped Minuteman III rocket, aimed straight down Moscow’s throat. Will it work? Watch and see!


The MC-27J Spartan: The Baddest Gunship The USAF Will Never Fly

After a decade of deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, the wings are literally falling off the USAF’s ageing fleet of AC-130s. The Air Force thought about upgrading them to the new MC-27J Spartan multi-purpose gunship — but budget cuts nixed that idea. The Airmen will miss out on quite a machine.


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