Harrison Kass

A penny does not sound like the price of an aircraft carrier, and it isn't. What the buyer acquired for a cent apiece when Kitty Hawk and John F. Kennedy were sold was not two warships but the obligation to take them apart — asbestos remediation, PCB disposal, fuel and fluid cleanup, and environmental compliance across two hulls nearly 1,100 feet long. The scrap steel has value. So does the work. The Navy's objective in these transactions is responsible disposal rather than a sale price, which is why ships that projected American power for a generation ended up as industrial liabilities.

The Ford outperforms the Fujian by almost every metric—but American complacency would be a mistake.

Unsurprisingly, Russia tops the list of Europe’s strongest air forces—but the war in Ukraine has shown clearly the limitations of aircraft alone.

France introduced the Dassault Mirage 2000 in 1984 as an affordable delta-wing fighter meant to defend French airspace against Soviet aircraft. Fly-by-wire controls offset the delta's energy loss in sustained turns, and decades of upgrades added a glass cockpit, the RDY pulse-Doppler radar, the ICMS electronic-warfare suite, and weapons ranging from MICA air-to-air missiles to SCALP-EG cruise missiles and AASM Hammer precision bombs. The upgraded Mirage 2000-5 now flies for Ukraine alongside donated F-16s, intercepting cruise missiles and one-way attack drones and launching stand-off weapons from outside the most heavily defended airspace. Four decades after entering service, the Cold War interceptor is still accumulating combat experience.

On July 29, 2026, Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force conducted its first live-fire Tomahawk launch from the destroyer JS Chokai, a Kongo-class Aegis ship commissioned in 1998 and modified in the United States during 2025. Tokyo has procured 400 of the US-built cruise missiles since 2024. The Block IV and Block V Tomahawks fly more than 1,000 miles with a 1,000-pound warhead, and Japan's Mk 41 vertical launchers, used for SM-2 and SM-3 interceptors, can now deliver long-range land attack. After decades of defensive postwar doctrine, Tokyo argues that striking enemy missile sites before they fire can constitute legitimate self-defense, citing China's modernization and North Korea's arsenal.

The US Navy retired its frigates to concentrate on a revolutionary new vessel that it envisioned in their role: the littoral combat ship. This was a mistake.

Kosmos 482 lifted off from Baikonur on 31 March 1972, bound for Venus as the sister craft to Venera 8. It reached parking orbit, then the upper-stage burn terminated early. Instead of escaping Earth's gravity, the descent capsule entered a highly elliptical orbit and stayed there for 53 years, reentering over the Indian Ocean in May 2025.

The Falcon 9 upper stage that launched Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience in January 2025 had no propellant left for a disposal burn. Nineteen months of gravity and solar pressure made a lunar impact unavoidable. It weighs 8,800 pounds, measures nearly 45 feet, and will strike at roughly 5,400 mph — about three tons of TNT.

Everything astronomers can see directly — stars, planets, gas, dust, people — accounts for about five percent of the universe. Roughly 27 percent is dark matter and 68 percent is dark energy. The Roman Space Telescope launches on 30 August 2026 to observe billions of galaxies, measure gravitational lensing, track thousands of supernovae and build three-dimensional maps of the other 95 percent.

HMS Daring entered extended maintenance in 2017 and spent roughly eight years out of operational service while engineers cut open her hull and fitted three additional diesel generators. Finishing the work did not return her to the fleet. She still needed around 190 trained sailors, and the Royal Navy did not have them — crews were reassigned from other ships to make up the difference.