The Sukhoi Su-57 Felon is Russia’s first fifth-generation stealth fighter, developed under the PAK FA program, with the T-50 prototype’s maiden flight on January 29, 2010 and the name Su-57 adopted in 2017. It measures about 20.1 m in length, 14.0 m wingspan, and 4.8 m in height, uses internal weapon bays, and employs radar-absorbing…
Read more
From 2006 to 2023, violent non-state actors carried out 1,122 drone attacks, with a peak of 265 in 2023. The 2018 Gatwick airport incident highlighted the public-safety risks posed by off-the-shelf quadcopters. The Ukraine war has been described as the first “drone war,” with both sides deploying swarms of small drones for surveillance and strikes,…
Read more
The F-35 is a family of three variants: F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL), F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL), and F-35C carrier-capable version. The aircraft first flew in 2006, with IOC achieved by the F-35B in July 2015, the F-35A in August 2016, and the F-35C in early 2019. As of mid-2025, more than 1,170…
Read more
F-35 Lightning II, a 5th-gen stealth fighter, first flew in 2006, entered service in the mid-2010s, and by 2025 had over 1,000 delivered to 17 nations. F-22 Raptor, a 5th-gen air-superiority fighter, first flew in 1997 and entered service in 2005, with a top speed around Mach 2.25 and only 195 built. Chengdu J-20 Mighty…
Read more
By late 2024, the F-35 Lightning II had surpassed 1,000 deliveries worldwide, fueling Lockheed Martin’s market dominance and its ubiquity across more than a dozen nations. Lockheed Martin continues F-16 production into a 50th year with new Block 70/72 variants exported to Slovakia and Bahrain. Boeing is delivering the F-15EX Eagle II to the U.S.…
Read more
The first space images were captured in 1946 from a sub-orbital U.S. V-2 rocket at about 105 km altitude. The first actual satellite photograph of Earth was taken on August 14, 1959 by the U.S. Explorer 6 satellite. In 1960, TIROS-1 transmitted the first television image of Earth from orbit, a milestone for weather observation.…
Read more
Starlink is SpaceX’s satellite-based broadband internet service, and by 2025 the constellation has launched over 7,500 satellites with about 6,750 active in orbit. The satellites orbit in low Earth orbit at roughly 550 km altitude, delivering typical download speeds of 50–200+ Mbps and latency around 20–40 ms. SpaceX began launching Starlink in 2019, and by…
Read more
Iridium operates 66 active LEO satellites in a cross-linked constellation, providing truly global coverage including the poles. Inmarsat uses 3–4 GEO satellites at about 36,000 km altitude to cover most of the globe from roughly 70°N to 70°S, and its IsatPhone 2 offers 8 hours of talk time. Globalstar runs about 48 LEO satellites to…
Read more
Iridium, a LEO network, started service in 1998 and operates 66 active cross-linked satellites, delivering near-global coverage, with the Iridium NEXT second-generation network launched in 2019. Globalstar uses 48 satellites (24 second-generation as of 2013), has no inter-satellite links and relies on ground gateways, and Apple’s Emergency SOS on iPhone 14 uses about 85% of…
Read more
By mid-2024, about 60% of Bahraini households had fiber-optic internet via the wholesale operator BNET, with roughly 171,000 fiber subscriptions in Q2 2024 and top plans up to 2 Gbps. Batelco, STC Bahrain, and Zain have launched 5G with over 98% population coverage, and the median mobile download speed was about 119 Mbps in early…
Read more
