The Aviationist Blog

A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft from the 124th Fighter Wing at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho, sport hundreds bomb markings. Here’s what they mean. Bomb and kill markings are a very well-known tradition in military aviation. [...]

Latest Accident Continues Tragic Trend, Underscores Risks of Marine Aviation. “The cause of the crash is under investigation.” It is the boilerplate statement issued in the aftermath of every aviation accident. As U.S Marines maintain [...]

Cockpit Video Brings You Aboard An A-10 Thunderbolt II during Operation Guardian Blitz II A-10C Thunderbolt II aircraft, belonging to the 163rd Fighter Squadron of the 122nd Fighter Wing from Fort Wayne, Indiana, have deployed [...]

Private “Red Air” Adversary Simulator Aircraft Crashes Within Sight of Shore. An ATAC private contract adversary Hawker Hunter crashed off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii shortly after takeoff from Honolulu airport close to Joint Base [...]

Or, How to Get Your Press Credentials Revoked in One Easy Lesson… Every aviation journalist gets excited about a big story, especially when they get to bring us hot news from live and on location. [...]

In April 2016 we visited 14th Flying Training Wing at Columbus AFB, Mississippi. Here’s our report. In an era when unmanned flying is becoming a normality, the U.S. Air Force is expanding its pilot training [...]

The United States intensified its ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) presence in the Black Sea after Kerch Strait incident. Here’s an analysis. Following the incident in the Kerch Strait near Crimea in the morning of Nov. [...]

Planes from eight different squadrons based out of Oceana, Virginia, deployed to Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base to take part in the historic 21-jet Bush Memorial Flyover. The U.S. Navy paid tribute [...]

Bizarre Photo Shows What Appears To Be A Model Of An Advanced Chinese Stealth Jet Allegedly at Georgia Airfield. File this under, “Too Weird to Believe, Too Bizarre Not to Report”. Late Wednesday, December 5, [...]

Developing Story: Two Aircraft Reported Down, Seven Aircrew Reported Missing. Reports on Twitter indicate that two U.S. military aircraft have crashed during a midair refueling operation off Iwakuni, Japan. Early reports that surfaced on Twitter [...]

Thirty U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets Fly to Texas In Preparation for Unprecedented 21-Jet Missing Man Formation. The U.S. Navy has dispatched thirty F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet jets from various units to participate in [...]

New Air Force F-35A Team Will Go “Full Demo” To Showcase F-35A Capabilities. The USAF Air Combat Command announced on Dec. 4, that the 2019 F-35A Lightning II Demonstration Team will now perform a solo [...]

The presidential aircraft was put on sale by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, near the end of his first day as president of Mexico. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner TP-01 “José María Morelos y Pavón” of the [...]

The Aeronautica Militare has declared its F-35s operational. On Nov. 30, 2018, during the media day of TLP 18-4 currently underway at Amendola, in southeastern Italy (the first iteration of the course to integrate 4th [...]

Luftwaffe’s Airbus 340, called “Konrad Adenauer”, carrying the German delegation to the G20 summit, suffered technical problems about an hour into the 15-hour trip to Buenos Aires. Angela Merkel is currently travelling to the G20 [...]

RAF Marham F-35B Lightnings are taking part in their first operational exercise at RAF Lakenheath as they continue their progression to initial operating capability. U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing, [...]

An interesting Cold War episode worth 4 medals. During the 1980s, the U.S. flew regular SR-71 Blackbird aircraft reconnaissance missions in international waters over the Barents Sea and the Baltic Sea, the latter known as [...]

An interesting “close encounter” in the Black Sea was captured on video. During the filming of a documentary, UK’s Channel 5 captured interesting footage of a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer “buzzed” by Russian fighter [...]

Commonly known as Battlefield Airborne Communications Node, or BACN, the E-11A is a U.S. Air Force aircraft that provides unparalleled communications capabilities to coalition forces on the ground and aircraft in the air. “There is [...]

Moscow has blocked passage through the Kerch Strait, between Crimea and mainland Russia, after three Ukrainian navy ships made what the Russian authorities have called a violation of Russian territorial waters. Russia has stopped all [...]