The first half of 2026 has been one of the busiest stretches in modern military aviation. From a sixth-generation Boeing fighter quietly taking shape in St. Louis to Ukrainian drones reaching deep into Russia to hit Su-57s on the ground, the pace of news has been relentless. Here are ten developments from April and May 2026 every aviation reader should know.
1. Boeing begins building the F-47 NGAD airframe. The FY27 White House budget request, released in April 2026, reaffirmed the U.S. Air Force’s plan to field 185 F-47 NGAD fighters at roughly $300 million each, with first flight in 2028 and IOC in 2029. Boeing started fabricating the first airframe in St. Louis in late 2025, making the F-47 vs J-36 doctrinal race very real, very fast.
2. The B-21 Raider just broke its own test schedule. Northrop Grumman announced on May 7 that the B-21 Raider Combined Test Force completed a developmental test campaign originally scheduled for 180 days in only 73. Two weeks earlier, DoD added a $6.1 billion production boost, and CEO Kathy Warden hinted the Air Force’s eventual buy could climb beyond the planned 100 airframes if industrial output keeps up.
3. Ukraine struck Su-57s 1,700 km inside Russia. On April 25, Ukrainian deep-strike drones hit Shagol airbase in Chelyabinsk Oblast, with satellite imagery confirming damage to two Su-57s and a Su-34. Despite the loss, Russia resumed Su-57 cruise-missile operations in May, logging 10-plus Kh-59/Kh-69 launch events including a May 3 strike on Dnipro — proof that even Russia’s most prized stealth fighter is not untouchable on the ramp.
4. Turkey signed the first KAAN production contract. On May 12, Turkey’s SSB inked a deal with Turkish Aerospace Industries for the first batch of 20 indigenous KAAN stealth fighters, with deliveries scheduled 2028 through 2030. TAI’s CEO also confirmed the first true production-standard prototype is expected to fly before the end of June 2026, making Turkey the third nation after the U.S. and China to put a real 5th-gen of its own on contract.
5. South Korea’s KF-21 Boramae is now “fully combat suitable.” On May 7, DAPA announced the KF-21 Boramae passed its final combat suitability evaluation after three years of additional testing, clearing it for operational missions. Formal system development concludes June 2026, with the first mass-produced airframe due to the Republic of Korea Air Force in the second half of this year.
6. Hermeus Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 went supersonic. Hermeus announced on May 26 that its uncrewed Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 prototype hit Mach 1.21 over Spaceport America, New Mexico — only 85 days after its maiden flight in early March. The FAA has cleared up to seven more supersonic test flights in 2026, with Mach 3 targeted in 2027 and an eventual goal of Mach 5 cruise.
7. India sustained a scramjet burn for 1,200 seconds. On May 9, DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Laboratory in Hyderabad held an actively-cooled, full-scale scramjet combustor in steady operation for more than 1,200 seconds — nearly double its earlier 2026 record. The result puts India closer to fielding a Mach 5-plus cruise missile and joins the global hypersonic race that the U.S., China, and Russia have been driving for a decade.
8. F-35 flew with an MQ-20 Avenger as a loyal wingman. In late May, General Atomics, the F-35 Joint Program Office, and partners flew a joint autonomy exercise pairing an F-35 Lightning II with an MQ-20 Avenger as a CCA surrogate. The data feeds directly into the YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, whose Increment 1 production decision is expected in FY26 — and which the Air Force is counting on to multiply every manned fighter it flies.
9. GCAP Tempest hit a £686 million design milestone. In April, the GCAP intergovernmental body (GIGO) awarded the new Edgewing joint venture — BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Japan’s JAIEC — a £686 million bridge contract to lead Tempest design through June 2026. Canada also moved formally toward observer status, with an announcement expected at a UK ministerial meeting in mid-2026 that could make GCAP a five-nation program before the prototype is even welded together.
10. India opened the AMCA prototype build to private industry. On May 28, India’s Ministry of Defence issued a roughly ₹15,000-crore RFP for development of the AMCA stealth fighter prototype to three private consortia — L&T with BEL, Bharat Forge with BEML, and Tata Advanced Systems — excluding state-owned HAL from the prototype stage for the first time. Bid opening is July 28, 2026, with first flight required within 30 months of contract signing, signaling a structural shift in how India intends to build its 5th-generation fighter.
Update — More News From April–Early June 2026
11. Sweden will donate 16 Gripen C/Ds to Ukraine and sell 20 new Gripen E/Fs. On May 28, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and President Zelenskyy announced a package that includes up to 16 JAS 39 C/D fighters with IRIS-T, AMRAAM, and Meteor missiles, plus a separate sale of up to 20 new Gripen E/F airframes financed through €2.5 billion of an EU loan. The C/Ds arrive in 2026–27, the E/Fs from 2030, making Ukraine the second-largest Gripen operator in Europe overnight.
12. The Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin $177.5 million for three new F-35 flight-science test jets. The April 23 contract modification covers one new F-35A, one F-35B, and one F-35C dedicated to flight-science testing, replacing aging test airframes that were holding up Block 4 certification. Work spans seven U.S., UK, and Danish sites through April 2031 — a clear signal Block 4 timelines are slipping further right.
13. Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury ran a contested-ops exercise with inert AMRAAMs at Edwards. On April 17 the U.S. Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit completed what it called a “critical exercise” at Edwards AFB with the Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft carrying inert AIM-120s on under-wing pylons. The test focused on sustainment and dispersed operations, two of the hardest unsolved problems for fielding unmanned loyal wingmen at scale.
14. The first serial-production KF-21 Boramae flew for the first time. Aircraft 26-001, rolled out at KAI Sacheon on March 25, completed its maiden flight in April 2026 — the first off the production line, not a prototype. With system development closing in June and ROKAF fielding from September, the program is now genuinely operational rather than experimental.
15. Germany signed the €3.75 billion contract for 20 Tranche 5 Eurofighters. Eurofighter GmbH and NETMA inked the deal in May at the Airbus Manching plant, locking in 20 Tranche 5 Typhoons for the Luftwaffe with deliveries 2031–2034. The aircraft are configured as a Tornado replacement, restoring Germany’s electronic-attack and nuclear-sharing capacity that the IDS Tornado fleet has carried alone for decades.
16. The first Swiss F-35A entered major assembly at Marietta. Lockheed Martin began center-wing assembly of Switzerland’s first F-35A at the Marietta CWA line on May 28. The first eight Swiss jets ferry to Ebbing ANGB in Arkansas in mid-2027 for pilot training, with first delivery into Switzerland from 2028 — Bern’s 36-jet buy is finally moving from paperwork to metal.
17. Boom Supersonic began physical assembly of the Symphony engine. Boom started building its first Symphony engine in April 2026, with the first full core-test cycle targeted for Q3 2026 and a fully integrated 42-megawatt pre-production turbine by year’s end. Roughly 90 percent of Boom’s current effort is now on propulsion — the hard part that killed every previous attempt at a post-Concorde supersonic airliner.
18. CENTCOM requested Dark Eagle (LRHW) deployment to the Middle East. Bloomberg reported on April 29 that U.S. Central Command formally asked for the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon to be moved into theater for potential strikes on Iran. With a roughly 1,725-mile range and Mach 5-plus reentry speed, an actual operational firing would be the first combat use of a U.S. hypersonic weapon and a real-world data point in the global hypersonic race.
19. France and the UAE renewed their defense pact after the Rafale F5 funding dispute. The two governments signed a renewed bilateral defense agreement in May after the UAE pulled out of co-financing the Rafale F5 standard, leaving Paris to fund the upgrade alone. Both sides made a point of reaffirming strategic ties — a reminder that even ugly procurement fights rarely end the underlying defense relationship in the Gulf.
20. A USAF F-35A crashed near Creech AFB; the pilot ejected safely. On the night of March 31 / April 1, the pilot ejected after reporting control problems and the jet crashed roughly 25 miles northeast of Indian Springs on the Nevada Test and Training Range. The pilot was recovered with minor injuries and the standard accident investigation board has been convened. The F-35 fleet’s Class A mishap rate remains low for a fifth-generation airframe of its complexity, but every loss matters when the unit cost is north of $80 million.
Update — 25 More From May and Early June 2026
The news did not slow down. From a sixth-generation European fighter program collapsing on stage at ILA Berlin to NASA’s X-59 quietly breaking the sound barrier over the Mojave, here are 25 more developments from May and the first half of June 2026.
21. Both F-47 engine contenders cleared assembly-readiness reviews. Within four days in May, Pratt & Whitney passed the Assembly Readiness Review for its XA103 adaptive-cycle engine (May 8) and GE Aerospace cleared the same milestone for its rival XA102 (May 11), validating two digital-first designs competing under the Air Force’s Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program. Both three-stream engines are meant to power the Boeing F-47, whose first flight is now expected around 2028–2029 — likely on interim powerplants while NGAP finishes ground testing later this decade.
22. The Navy set August 2026 to choose its own sixth-generation fighter. At the Sea-Air-Space expo on April 20, CNO Adm. Daryl Caudle said the Navy expects to downselect its F/A-XX carrier fighter — a Super Hornet replacement — in August, about a year late, with Boeing and Northrop Grumman the two finalists after Lockheed Martin was eliminated in 2025. Congress added roughly $1.7 billion for FY26 even as the FY27 request fell to about $140 million. The same day, Northrop released its most detailed F/A-XX concept yet: a tailless, carrier-capable design with dorsal intakes, sharpening the contest over how to win the air-dominance fight.
23. China showed off the export-model J-35 for the first time. On May 1, CCTV aired footage of a J-35AE taxiing from a hangar marked “001” and wearing AVIC corporate markings rather than PLA insignia — a clear export pitch. The twin-engine stealth jet displayed an internally integrated electro-optical targeting system and English-language placards. Analysts estimate a unit price of $50–70 million against $80–90 million for an F-35A, with Pakistan (reportedly eyeing up to 40 jets) and the UAE the leading prospects, though Beijing has confirmed no contract. China is thought to have built more than 57 J-35-family airframes by late 2025, making it the only low-observable fighter besides the F-35 offered widely for export.
24. Satellite imagery caught China’s first nuclear-powered supercarrier taking shape. A CSIS analysis published May 21, using imagery dated May 4, showed the Type 004 hull at Dalian already roughly 286 by 46 metres — larger than Fujian was at the same stage — with two compartments bearing the hallmarks of shielded reactor containment. That would make it the first nuclear-powered surface warship fielded by a non-Western navy. Secondary estimates (not in the CSIS report) put displacement near 110,000–120,000 tons and a launch around 2032, a major step toward true blue-water carrier strike reach.
25. General Atomics’ YFQ-42A drone fighter returned to flight after a crash. GA-ASI announced on May 21 that its YFQ-42A was flying again after a roughly six-week pause, following an April 6 mishap at Gray Butte that destroyed a prototype shortly after takeoff (no injuries). A joint Air Force/GA-ASI review traced the crash to the flight-autonomy software miscalculating the aircraft’s weight and centre of gravity; a software fix cleared it to resume. The jet remains in a head-to-head with Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury, with the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft Increment 1 production decision due by the end of FY26.
26. Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat flew abroad for the first time — and grew a bigger wing. In late May the Australian-developed Ghost Bat logged three sorties over the U.S. Navy’s Point Mugu Sea Range, its first operations outside Australia, months after its first autonomous AIM-120 launch. Then at ILA Berlin on June 10, Boeing revealed an enlarged variant with a 25-percent-larger wing that lifts maximum takeoff weight from 10,000 to 12,000 pounds and adds an internal bay for two AMRAAMs or four Small Diameter Bombs. The upgrades are pitched to allied buyers as the loyal-wingman race goes global; RAAF service is targeted for 2028.
27. Leidos won $2.7 billion to mass-produce America’s hypersonic glide body. Announced May 12, the U.S. Army contract — executed through Leidos subsidiary Dynetics — unifies the Common Hypersonic Glide Body and its Thermal Protection Shield under one program and pushes them from prototyping into production. The same conical glide body arms both the Army’s Dark Eagle (LRHW) and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike missile, making the award a key supply-side milestone in the global hypersonic race.
28. The Air Force revived the ARRW hypersonic missile it had killed in 2023. The FY27 budget request, released in late April, restored $345.7 million to the AGM-183A boost-glide weapon — about $296 million for an all-weather, moving-target seeker meant to hit ships, plus roughly $49 million to begin a new ARRW-derived air-launched ballistic missile. Out-year plans push the effort past $1.7 billion through FY30. The comeback reads as a hedge after delays to the rival scramjet-powered HACM.
29. Russia fired an Oreshnik hypersonic missile at the Kyiv region. On the night of May 23–24, Russia launched about 90 missiles and 600 drones nationwide, with an Oreshnik intermediate-range missile striking Bila Tserkva south of Kyiv — only the third known combat use of the weapon after Dnipro (November 2024) and the Lviv region (January 2026). Ukrainian analysts say all three carried inert warheads. Moscow framed it as retaliation for a May 22 Ukrainian strike in occupied Luhansk; the nationwide toll reached roughly four killed and nearly 100 injured, another grim data point in the hypersonic-weapons era.
30. France and Germany killed the FCAS sixth-generation fighter — and Europe splintered. At ILA Berlin, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed on June 9 that the trilateral Future Combat Air System’s crewed Next Generation Fighter was terminated after nine years and roughly €4 billion, sunk by an irreconcilable workshare fight (Dassault demanded up to 80 percent). Only the combat-cloud pillar survives. Within days, an Airbus-led “Team Gen 6” of German and Spanish firms formed to press on without Dassault, Germany floated buying more F-35s as a bridge, and the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP began courting Berlin — reshuffling the entire map of European next-generation fighters.
31. Saab rolled out the first two-seat Gripen F. On June 2 at Linköping, Saab unveiled the first Gripen F — the twin-seat version of the Gripen E — for launch customer and co-developer Brazil, where it is designated F-39F. It belongs to Brazil’s 2014 order for 36 jets (28 single-seat E and 8 two-seat F), 11 of which have been delivered. The two-seater next heads to flight testing, and Saab has since booked Gripen orders from Thailand and Colombia, whose €3.1 billion deal for 17 jets runs deliveries through 2032.
32. Poland’s first F-35s landed on NATO’s eastern flank. Three F-35A “Husarz” jets touched down at the 32nd Tactical Air Base in Łask on May 22 after ferrying from Fort Worth via the Azores, escorted in by Polish F-16s. They are the first of 32 stealth fighters from Poland’s 2020 contract worth about $4.6 billion, replacing Soviet-era MiG-29s and Su-22s. Warsaw expects 14 aircraft in-country by the end of 2026 and full operational readiness in 2027; the defence minister called them “the first fifth-generation fighters on NATO’s eastern flank.”
33. A GAO report put the F-35 mission-capable rate at just 44 percent. Released June 11, the watchdog’s review found the fleet’s mission-capable rate had fallen from 67 percent in FY21 to 44 percent in FY25, with the full-mission-capable rate down to 25 percent — barely one jet in four fully ready. GAO blamed spare-parts shortages, software delays and over-reliance on contractors, and said the Pentagon’s new sustainment strategy needs an extra $13.7 billion through FY31. A day later, the Navy awarded Lockheed a $2.29 billion contract to stand up new F-35 operating sites.
34. Rolls-Royce and Safran squared off to power India’s stealth fighter. On June 4, Rolls-Royce offered to co-develop a clean-sheet, roughly 110-kilonewton fighter engine in India with full intellectual-property transfer for the AMCA Mk2, targeting ground trials around 2032 and a first flight near 2034. It goes head-to-head with France’s Safran, which has pitched an M88-derived joint program with India’s GTRE. The winner powers the heavier AMCA variant; the GE F414 already covers the Mk1 and Tejas Mk2.
35. Indonesia settled its bills, edging the KF-21 toward its first export. On June 9, Jakarta’s ambassador to Seoul said one of the six KF-21 Boramae prototypes had been agreed for transfer to Indonesia “in the near future.” Under a revised 600-billion-won cost-share, Indonesia has paid 536 billion won, with the final roughly 64 billion (about $43 million) due in June. Joint development formally wrapped in June 2026 after more than a decade, and the move underpins talks for Indonesia to buy 16 production jets — what would be the type’s first export deal.
36. Russia flew its first twin-seat Su-57 — built to command drones. On May 19, Sukhoi chief test pilot Sergei Bogdan took the two-seat Su-57 (widely called Su-57D, a rebuilt airframe) on its maiden flight from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. United Aircraft Corporation casts it as both a trainer and an airborne command post for directing unmanned aircraft such as the S-70 Okhotnik — a role echoing the crewed-uncrewed teaming the West is chasing. It is the second fifth-generation two-seater to fly, after China’s J-20S, and is already being pitched for export to India.
37. Russia finally started building a flyable Su-75 Checkmate. On June 2, UAC chief Vadim Badekha told TASS that the long-delayed single-engine stealth fighter had reached the stage of building an experimental prototype. First shown as a mock-up at Dubai in 2021, the roughly $30-million “Checkmate” has seen its first-flight target slip from 2023 to 2024 to 2025, and the 2026 goal remains unconfirmed pending ground tests. Russia has yet to announce a single domestic or export order for it.
38. Ukraine’s French Mirage 2000s were caught flying ground-strike missions. Footage published on June 2 showed a Mirage 2000-5F skimming the eastern front in a toss-bombing profile, releasing AASM Hammer guided bombs — rare evidence that Ukraine’s handful of French jets, first delivered for air defence, are now flying offensive strikes. France initially provided six airframes (at least one since lost) and President Macron promised more in October 2025, gradually widening the type’s role from intercepting cruise missiles to hitting targets on the ground.
39. Ukraine marked Russia Day with a deep-strike drone raid 1,100 km out. On June 12, Ukrainian long-range drones struck the TANEKO and TAIF-NK refineries at Nizhnekamsk in Tatarstan — more than 1,100 km from the border — and the Tolyattikauchuk plant in Samara, which makes synthetic rubber used in solid rocket fuel. Russia’s defence ministry claimed it downed 231 drones across more than 15 regions; monitors reported damage to crude-distillation units and a tank farm, and four people were hospitalised after a residential building was hit.
40. NASA’s X-59 broke the sound barrier — quietly. On June 5 the X-59, Lockheed Martin’s needle-nosed quiet-supersonic demonstrator, exceeded Mach 1 for the first time, reaching Mach 1.077 at 43,400 feet on an 81-minute flight from Edwards with pilot Jim “Clue” Less — who flies with no forward window, using an external-vision camera display. A week later, on June 12, it hit its target conditions of Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet. Those are the settings for upcoming community overflights designed to replace the sonic boom with a soft “thump” and reshape the rules on overland supersonic flight.
41. Hermeus’ high-Mach contract ballooned to $219 million. On May 28 the Defense Innovation Unit added $159 million to Hermeus’ Quarterhorse program, lifting the ceiling to $219 million — one of DIU’s largest awards — to demonstrate high-Mach flight plus payload carry and release up to Mach 3. The funding landed two days after the uncrewed Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 went supersonic at Mach 1.21, with Mach 3 targeted for a follow-on aircraft in early 2027.
42. Two Navy EA-18G Growlers collided at an Idaho air show. During a demonstration at the Gunfighter Skies show at Mountain Home AFB on May 17, two EA-18G electronic-attack jets from squadron VAQ-129 collided in mid-air about two miles from the base. All four aircrew ejected, with only one minor injury, and were recovered roughly a mile away. Both jets — worth about $68 million each — were destroyed, the base was locked down, and the rest of the show was cancelled pending investigation.
43. The Air Force grounded its entire T-38 trainer fleet. On May 19 the service ordered a fleet-wide operational pause for the T-38 Talon after a May 12 crash of a Columbus AFB T-38C, whose instructor and student both ejected safely. The pause reached all four commands that fly the jet and lasted until May 28, when a fleet-wide inspection process let aircraft begin returning to flight. The decades-old Talon remains the backbone of Air Force fast-jet training as its long-awaited replacement works through development.
44. The Marine Corps retired the AV-8B Harrier II. At a “Sundown” ceremony at MCAS Cherry Point on June 3, the last Marine Harrier squadron, VMA-223, sent a five-ship formation aloft to close out a jump-jet that entered U.S. service in 1971. The F-35B inherits the Marines’ short-takeoff/vertical-landing mission, keeping the ability to operate from amphibious ships and austere fields while adding stealth and sensor fusion. VMA-223 deactivates in September and is slated to return as an F-35B squadron later this decade.
45. The world’s largest military air show was cancelled. On May 22, organisers scrapped the Royal International Air Tattoo 2026, set for July 17–19 at RAF Fairford, because the base is hosting U.S. B-52 and B-1 bombers tied to operations against Iran. Ticket holders were offered a rollover to 2027, a refund or a donation to the RAF Charitable Trust, with the show aiming to return to Fairford next year.