Dollars and Sense Tom Cruise Could Make $100,000,000 From Top Gun 3 — Paramount Just Confirmed the Sequel and Cruise Is Officially Locked In Paramount Pictures formally confirmed Top Gun 3 at CinemaCon in April 2026, with Tom Cruise officially returning, Jerry Bruckheimer back as producer, and Ehren... Caleb LarsonMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More Northrop’s Tacit Blue Was Called ‘the Most Unstable Aircraft Ever Flown’ — Its 130 Flights at Area 51 Helped Create the B-2 Spirit Northrop’s Tacit Blue stealth research demonstrator made its first flight from Groom Lake — better known as Area 51 — in 1982, eventually making... Caleb LarsonMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More China Has 300 J-20 Stealth Fighters in Service — But Its Radar Cross-Section Is Still 100 Times Larger Than the F-22 Raptor China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter entered service with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force in March 2017, and by 2025 the PLAAF had built... Jack BuckbyMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More Lockheed Spent Years Designing the X-44 Manta as a Tailless F-22 in 1999 — It Never Flew, But Its Design May Have Inspired the F-47 In 1999, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works designed the X-44 Manta — a “Multi-Axis, No Tail Aircraft” built on the F-22 Raptor fuselage with a... Stephen SilverMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More In 1984, an SR-71 Blackbird Suffered an Engine Unstart at Mach 3 Over Russia — It Almost Crashed Into the Barents Sea In 1984, an SR-71 Blackbird operating at 83,000 feet and Mach 3 over the Soviet Union suffered a sudden engine unstart that yawed the... Jack BuckbyMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More Boeing Won a $20,000,000,000 Contract for the F-47 NGAD — 185 Aircraft Designed to Replace the F-22 and Outclass China’s J-20 In March 2025, President Donald Trump and U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin announced that Boeing had won a $20 billion... Steve BalestrieriMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More NASA’s X-43D Was Designed to Fly at Mach 15 — Engineers Warned the Aircraft Would Have Literally Melted in Flight NASA’s X-43D was designed to fly at speeds approaching Mach 15 — roughly 11,000 miles per hour — using a hydrogen-fueled scramjet to sustain... Jack BuckbyMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More NASA’s First X-43A Crashed Into the Pacific in 2001 — The Two That Followed Set Hypersonic Records No Aircraft Has Beaten in 22 Years In the early 2000s, NASA was among the first to achieve sustained hypersonic flight. As part of the broader Hyper-X program, NASA developed the... Isaac SeitzMay 9, 2026
Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More Boeing’s X-32 Was Designed to Become the F-35 — It Was Ugly, It Couldn’t Pass the Marine Corps’ STOVL Tests, and Lockheed Won Before the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II became the most-produced stealth fighter in history, it had to beat Boeing’s X-32 in the Joint Strike... Harrison KassMay 8, 2026