Northrop Grumman unveiled Project Talon in the vast hangars of the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert. This unmanned aircraft is ready to team up with fighter jets, transforming solo missions into coordinated raids that protect pilots and provide them a competitive advantage. Northrop’s engineers and the magicians at Scaled Composites have been pounding this prototype into shape over the past 15 months, and in just nine months, it will make its first flight.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works engineering team knocked it out of the park earlier this month. An F-22 Raptor hurtling through the Nevada sky at breakneck speeds was communicating with an unmanned drone from inside the cockpit. The pilot flew the fighter with ease, commanding the drone’s motions from the plane’s seat. This test flight was a first for a fifth-generation aircraft, since it seized full control of a loyal wingman while still airborne.
Pete Bitar has been chasing the ultimate rush: the thrill of soaring through the air propelled by electricity. Years of work in his workshop have finally paid off with the introduction of the LEO Solo JetBike, the latest in a line of prototypes that have experienced their fair share of ups and downs.
Joby Aviation has just completed a surprisingly quiet revolution in the skies over a California airfield. On November 7, their latest model, a turbine electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, took off for the first time from their Marina facility. This aircraft has combined the clean lift of electric motors with the constant leg-up of a gas turbine, resulting in longer flights and heavier loads than anyone could have dreamed.
Late October is typically a quiet time in aviation, but that was not the case at a California test site. A sleek matte gray jet with a mostly empty interior took off from Victorville’s runway, rose slowly, and was able to negotiate its own path through the sky without even a remote pilot at the controls. It was a historic event; no one was inside, and the entire route had essentially been left in the hands of the YFQ-44A, also known as Anduril’s Fury.
Flight simulators need precision, but ordinary joysticks isolate pilots from the action. Zeroshot, a creator who goes deep into virtual skies, was painfully aware of the gap. Commercial choices for force feedback exist, however they are expensive and difficult to get. Instead of compromising, he designed his own from scratch, integrating 3D printed parts, stepper motors, and ingenious circuitry to create a controller that resists every movement.
Lockheed Martin’s X-59 took off from Palmdale, California on October 28th, 2025 and landed an hour later near Edwards Air Force Base. The pilots took the pointy-nosed jet (which looked like something out of a sci-fi movie) for a spin, reaching 254 knots and 12,400 feet, to see how it handled and how all the systems worked.
Haneda Airport is one of the world’s busiest airports, and it welcomes a large number of travelers every year in the heart of Tokyo. Terminal 3, Japan’s international flight hub, has already demonstrated a strong respect for the country’s past with the Edo Koji zone, a strip of shops and walkways that truly captures the spirit of those tiny, atmospheric 17th century Edo side streets – you can almost imagine what it must have been like to stroll through those narrow alleys back in the day, complete with an authentic section of the Nihonbashi bridge as it appeared in bygone days.
