Brandon Weichert

Commissioned 1940–1942, the Royal Navy's King George V-class battleships carried ten 14-inch guns under treaty limits other navies moved past. HMS King George V opened fire on the Bismarck from 25,500 yards on May 27, 1941, three days after the Bismarck sank HMS Hood; HMS Duke of York sank the Scharnhorst in 1943; HMS Prince of Wales was lost off Malaya to Japanese aircraft. Britain scrapped the survivors in the 1950s.

The war in Ukraine has shown that drone swarms and cheap anti-tank munitions have wrecked main battle tanks on both sides, 19FortyFive's Brandon J. Weichert argues, which is why Russia refuses to risk its T-14 Armata.

The Royal Navy cannot keep its five Astute-class submarines maintained with only two British shipyards certified for nuclear submarines, yet it plans 12 SSN-AUKUS attack submarines, plus five for Australia, at one boat every 18 months at Barrow-in-Furness, a yard a Parliamentary inquiry found is already over capacity. Steel is due to be cut next year; London and Canberra say the boats arrive in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

On March 21, 1984, Soviet submarine K-314 surfaced with no lights in the path of the USS Kitty Hawk, 150 miles east of Pohang. US helicopters had tracked the sub and practiced killing it more than 15 times before both sides lost each other. No one was hurt; the sub was towed home, its commander was removed, and repairs at Subic Bay turned up anechoic tiles in the carrier's hull.

France is building a single nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the France Libre (PANG), to replace a single aging one, Charles de Gaulle, which already disappears into the shipyard for up to 19 months at a stretch. Brandon J. Weichert argues that breaks the one-in-three rule of carrier navies, one deployed, one ready, one in maintenance, and leaves Paris with a binary fleet: full carrier airpower or none. A planned 2036-to-2038 overlap of the two ships is unfunded, pilots will struggle to keep deck qualifications, and critics say the money could have bought ten FDI frigates for a middle power that cannot afford its image.

France's only aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle, caught fire on October 5 during maintenance at Toulon Naval Base when a gas cutting torch ignited a compartment near the hangar, Le Figaro reported.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon, chosen over Northrop's YF-17 in January 1975, pulls 9 Gs, reaches Mach 2 and has flown for 50 years, and pilots say it beats almost anything in a dogfight except the F-22 and F-35.

Summary and Key Points: Air Force test pilot Lt. Col. Skip Anderson named the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk himself when no one in his chain of command responded, Aviation Geek Club reports. The F-117 first flew June 18, 1981; flew more than 1,200 Desert Storm sorties with no losses; lost one jet over Yugoslavia in 1999; was retired April 22, 2008; and still flies under a contract through at least 2034.

Summary and Key Points: On January 27, 1982, the nose wheel of an F-117 prototype detached on takeoff from Area 51 and bounced down the runway. Lockheed test pilot Tom Morgenfield kept flying his avionics tests, declined a suggestion to eject, and an hour later landed on a foam-covered runway, using the drag chute to keep the nose up. The only damage was the strut. Skunk Works chief Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson summoned him to Burbank and pretended to be angry as a joke.

The B-2: Ten major upgrades in the late 2010s multiplied its onboard processing power 1,000 times, rebuilt its Defensive Management System with automated route replanning, raised its JDAM capacity from 16 to 80, and fitted it for the 30,000-pound GBU-57 it dropped on Iran's nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer.