Benny Kirk
1,726 ARTICLES
The F-111 Aardvark Was a Much Better Ground Strike Jet Than the A-10, Let Us Prove It
11 Mar 2023, 21:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Everyone sings the praises of the A-10 Thunderbolt II, and rightly so. There's something that's eternally cool about a military attack jet that's built more around its cannon than its wings or engine. But we need to stop pretending t...
To Heck With Electric SUVs, America Needs a Good EV Station Wagon
10 Mar 2023, 18:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A couple of days ago, the Not Just Bikes Youtube channel released a video where they break down the reasons why large, full-size SUVs are nothing but a blight on North American cities. They said in no uncertain terms that status-obsessed suburbanit...
Westinghouse eVinci: The Pint-Sized Mini Reactor Designed to Kick Diesel to the Curb
9 Mar 2023, 23:41 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It was easy to be awe-struck when the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, managed the first-ever ignition of a nuclear fusion reaction in December 2022. But nuclear fusion is still a pie-in-the-sky fantasy aspiration despite all th...
Panavia Tornado ADV: The British Swing-Wing Attack Jet That Tried to Be a Tomcat
8 Mar 2023, 21:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The British were learning to contend with many things in the 1970s, apart from the obvious empire-falling-apart business. One of these things was learning to play nice with its European neighbors when building airplanes. Until the Eurofighter came ...
The FA/18 Super Hornet's Days Are Numbered, Here's Why It's Not the End of the World
7 Mar 2023, 20:30 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Round about 17 years ago, aviation fans across the web hailed the retirement of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat as one of the worst tactical decisions the U.S. Navy's made in decades. This was doubly so. Because the F-35 would usurp the Tomcat's ...
Germany Couldn't Stand the F-104 Starfighter, But Its Finest Hour Was Simply Magical
6 Mar 2023, 14:32 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The West German Luftwaffe hated the Lockheed F-104 Starfighters. No, really, they couldn't stand the things. For so many well-documented and well-remembered reasons, the Luftwaffe Starfighters were known the world over as deathtraps. It only m...
This Canceled Soviet VTOL Jet Inspired the F-35B, Now It’s Coming to War Thunder
5 Mar 2023, 20:17 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / So much of the western understanding of the capabilities of the Soviet Air Force before the fall of the Berlin Wall resulted from hyperbole and word-of-mouth hype-ups resulting from a deliberate attempt by the Kremlin to obscure the facts. But at l...
Unmitigated Disaster: How the LIRR Dropped the Ball Opening Grand Central Madison Station
4 Mar 2023, 04:03 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The last time we checked in on the Long Island Rail Road, we toured their newest rail station up close and personal. A new station built right under Grand Central Terminal to the delight of all of New York City. Our trip was notable for how quiet a...
Spirit Airlines: How a Lowly Trucking Company Got Its Wings for Better or Worse
3 Mar 2023, 21:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's foolish to pick sides between big corporations that don't know you exist. But in the North American airliner space, it's not hard to find things to dislike about Spirit Airlines. As an ambassador for poor relations between compa...
U.S. Department of Energy To Upgrade Its Aging Fleet of Nuclear Reactors, Here's How
3 Mar 2023, 00:49 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Historically, the U.S. has steeled itself against global energy crises slightly better than its European allies, with a few exceptions. Most places in America besides California never quite hit the $7 per gallon mark for gasoline the same way place...
These Awesome Warbirds Will Never Be Added to War Thunder, Here’s Why
2 Mar 2023, 04:37 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Love it or hate it, it's impressive to see how far War Thunder's come in aircraft development since 2013. But some people malign the arrival of relatively contemporary F-16s, A-10s, and MiG-29s marks the "jumping the shark" mome...
Hawker Siddeley Nimrod: The First Commercial Jet Airliner Gone Full Rambo Mode
1 Mar 2023, 21:45 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you ask most aviation geeks about the de Havilland Comet, they're bound to conjure images of hideous crashes, explosive decompression, and badly designed windows which led to stress fractures that doomed multiple passenger flights. Neve...
China's Crewed Moon Lander Vehicle Looks Mighty Impressive, NASA Says 'Bring It On!'
28 Feb 2023, 18:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If someone told a citizen of any western nation that China would have a space program to rival NASA's 25 years ago, they'd either scoff or laugh you out of the room. What a difference a quarter of a century can make, right? In 2023, N...
Beriev A-50: Russia's Prized Quad-Engine Military Jet That Was Just Attacked in Belarus
28 Feb 2023, 16:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Belarus may have been an afterthought in the west when it came to covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That was until some Belarusian partisans decided it was time to boogaloo. Their target? A Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control jet...
Overreliance On Software is a Plague on All Industries, Especially With EVs and Airliners
26 Feb 2023, 21:13 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Back in the mid-1980s, a radiation treatment machine called Therac-25 was fresh on the scene in North American hospitals. It was a device touted as treating multiple forms of cancer by wirelessly beaming medical doses of radiation to target areas p...
The Last Airworthy Lockheed TriStar Airliner Spends Its Days Launching Rockets to Orbit
25 Feb 2023, 21:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the 21st century, spotting a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar in the sky is like spotting a dodo right before the species went kaput. In 2023, there's only one TriStar left in service. Don't think it's with some humdrum cargo carrier like ...
Sea Dragon: A Long-Forgotten, 490-Foot Tall Rocket Concept Come to Life on Apple TV
24 Feb 2023, 21:50 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's not often we come across something space related that makes us go "WOW!". But that's the only descriptor fitting to explain the post-credit scene in the last episode of season one of For All Mankind on Apple TV. In this sce...
Lamborghini P140: The Forgotten Common Ancestor of the Gallardo and Huracan
23 Feb 2023, 21:26 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's hard to find a Lamborghini that few have ever seen or heard of. Even Lambo's prototypes and concept cars tend to be remembered long after their time. But based on the existence of the P140, that isn't a rule of thumb. If anythin...
One Decade Ago, Canada Almost Revived the Legendary Avro Arrow, But Not Really
23 Feb 2023, 02:24 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / With the possible exception of the F-15, no single jet fighter encompassed a nation's pride and ambitions in quite the same way the Avro CF-105 Arrow did. That's all the more notable because Canada's only domestically designed supers...
2022 Was a Banner Year for Embraer, Brought the Fight to Airbus and Boeing
21 Feb 2023, 21:46 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There's a duopoly in modern commercial aviation. A two-company drag race between America's Boeing and Europe's Airbus for total dominance of the civil airliner space. At least, that would be the case if not for a handful of smaller m...