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Various subvariants of the Model 147S flew more than half of all Lightning Bug sorties between December 1967 and the end of the war in 1972. The four longest-serving Lightning Bugs were Model 147SCs, most notably “Tom Cat,” which completed 68 missions, compared to just three missions for the typical Lightning Bug. Teledyne Ryan photo…
In the span of just a few years, the Air Force went from employing only a few hundred drone operators, analysts and maintainers to needing tens of thousands of them. There were some growing pains.
Quantity, Not Quality: Why Iran Will Never Abandon Its Missile Forces Iran’s conventional weaponry is hopelessly out of date, and the country’s leaders know it, according to one expert. Here's What You Need to Remember: When the United States in early January 2020 assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, Iran retaliated by firing scores of rockets at two bases in Iraq where U.S. forces reside. Dozens of Americans were injured. Iran’s conventional weaponry is hopelessly out of date, and the country’s leaders know it, according to one expert. But conventional mi...
Expensive and just plain useless? Here's What You Need to Know: It took the Navy nearly two decades to realize the LCS program had failed. The sailing branch in 2014 cut LCS acquisition from 55 ships to 32. Congress eventually added three vessels, boosting the class to 35 ships. After spending $30 billion over a period of around two decades, the U.S. Navy has managed to acquire just 35 of the 3,000-ton-displacement vessels. Sixteen were in service as of late 2018. Of those 16, four are test ships. Six are training ships. In 2019 just six LCSs, in theory, are deployable. While that number sho...
Russia Could Give Chinese Aircraft Carriers the Power Boost They Need “While China has good experience in the development of nuclear reactors for use on land, it has yet to master the miniaturisation process that is needed to make a nuclear power unit suitable for an aircraft carrier,” South China Morning Post reported. Here's What You Need to Remember: “Russia has the technology but no money, China has the money, but doesn’t have the technology,” Zhou said. “By working together China will move a step closer to one day launching a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.” China could...