Christian D. Orr

An estimated 632 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets have been built since the type entered service in 1999, at roughly $70 million apiece. No enemy has ever shot one down. An April 2026 report put readiness at 80 percent. Production ends in 2027 once a final order for 17 Block III aircraft is delivered.

Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta was founded in Gardone Val Trompia in 1526, which makes 2026 its 500th year in business. It sold arquebus barrels to the Holy League before the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Four and a half centuries later it designed the Beretta 92, a 9mm pistol that has sold roughly 3.5 million copies, replaced the Colt .45 as the standard US military sidearm in 1985, and armed the LAPD, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

The Makarov is a traditional double-action (TDA) auto pistol, and just like the Beretta 92F, Walther PPK, and Walter P38, not to mention the old-school Smith & Wesson TDAs, it uses a slide-mounted, hammer-decocking safety.

The late great John Moses Browning is arguably the greatest firearm designer of all-time, and one of his most enduringly popular firearms was indeed

With a whopping 20,000,00 –, yes, **twenty million**—specimens of all models and calibers made worldwide since 1982, Glock is the world's most

On September 6, 1976, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko flew a Mach 2.8 interceptor out of the Soviet Union. Western analysts finally got inside the aircraft that had driven a generation of American fighter design.

Lockheed built 188 S-3 Vikings to kill Soviet submarines. Not one ever did. The Cold War ended first, and the Viking spent its war destroying Iraqi missile sites and radars.

The Board of Generals reviewed all 2,625 Medals of Honor awarded up to 1916 and revoked 911. Some 864 went to the 27th Maine, a regiment that never fired a shot at Gettysburg.

Summary and Key Points: “Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” General George S. Patton said that, and then the shooting stopped, and he outlived it by seven months.

An Iowa-class battleship's 16-inch guns threw a 2,700-pound shell about 24 miles. In the 1980s the US Navy pulled out four 5-inch mounts and fitted 8 armored box launchers holding 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles — 992-pound warheads reaching 1,553 miles at $2,000,000 apiece — plus 16 Harpoons and 4 Phalanx guns firing 4,500 rounds a minute. Nine years later USS Missouri fired the first of 28 Tomahawks at 1:40 in the morning on 17 January 1991.