UAS VISION
an independent online news service for the Unmanned Aircraft Systems world
Test pilot Leo Sullivan straps in and pushes the throttles, bringing the massive C-5A Galaxy’s TF39 turbofans to life. It’s taken years of painstaking engineering just to get here. It needed wings strong enough to carry two battle tanks and six helicopters across the world. Its landing gear and structural frames have been redrawn from scratch just to ensure this titan can stand on its own. But the result has been worth it. Continue reading
During the 1960s, advanced military trainers evolved alongside complex fighter aircraft, demanding better pilot preparation. Amid the rush, a small German company named Rhein Flugzeugbau, RFB, embarked on an unconventional idea; they set out to build a jet that wasn’t a jet at all. Continue reading
An aggressor squadron screams across the Baltic sky, closing in on the Swedish Saab 35 Draken at Mach 1.7. By all conventional wisdom, the brand new Swedish fighter should have been trapped—outgunned, outmaneuvered, and seconds away from being another Cold War casualty. But this is no ordinary aircraft…. Continue reading
On April 14, 1986, Karma 52 checked in over the Mediterranean, its radar altimeter steady just a few hundred feet above the sea. The F-111F was part of an 18-ship U.S. Air Force strike package bound to hit the literal beating heart of Libya—each jet armed with two 2,000-pound Pave Way II laser-guided bombs. Continue reading
The F-22 Raptor was engineered to be a spectre. A fifth-generation marvel with thrust-vectoring, supercruise, and radar-absorbing skin, an almost alien machine built to dominate the skies for the next four decades. Continue reading
In a secret base buried deep within the Nevada desert, a pilot climbs into a jet unlike anything ever built on American soil. The controls are alien, scattered with no apparent logic, covered in strange, foreign letters. No ordinary pilot could ever decipher the maze of dials and switches. Continue reading
It was every Allied bomber pilot’s worst nightmare. Flying his Douglas A-26 Invader over northern France, Major Myron L. Durkee unexpectedly finds himself picked out as prey for Hitler’s terrifying new weapon: the Messerschmitt Me-262, a jet-powered assassin seemingly sent from the future. Continue reading
The Heinkel He 178 was an experimental aircraft designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Heinkel. It was the world’s first aircraft to fly using the thrust from a turbojet engine. Continue reading