F-18

As the world focuses on the escalating rhetoric between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, Iranian forces seem to also be growing increasingly hostile toward American Navy operations in the Persian Gulf with the AP reporting a second "dangerous" encounter with an Iranian drone in the span of less than a week.  Just last week we noted that an Iranian drone came within 100 feet of an F/A-18 operating from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier forcing pilots to take evasive measures to avoid a collision. 

A US F-18 fighter jet crash landed at Bahrain's international airport Saturday, causing the complete closure of the island's main commercial flight hub. Photos and brief video footage quickly posted online shows a badly damaged but intact jet with its tail on the ground and nose in the air in a gravel area located completely off the runway.

The Russian government announced that it’s sixth-generation fighter jet will be equipped with a range of powerful new features, including laser and microwave weaponry, and advanced radar that will “significantly expand” their ability to detect enemy fighters. The jet, which is Russia’s answer to the US F-35, was first announced in 2016, according to the Washington Times.

Shortly after Russia's deputy foreign minister Ryabkov snubbed the US, cancelling a meeting with the Under Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., in retaliation to the Trump administration's announcement on Tuesday that it has imposed sanctions on 38 Russian individuals while a parallel bill of Russian sanctions is making its way through Congress, the US State Department issued a statement on US-Russian relations.

Statement from @statedeptspox on U.S.-#Russia relations: pic.twitter.com/UoMnydnuJC

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Sunday, a Navy F-18 Hornet shot down a Syrian air force jet, an act of war against a nation with which Congress has never declared or authorized a war.

Washington says the Syrian plane was bombing U.S.-backed rebels. Damascus says its plane was attacking ISIS.

Vladimir Putin’s defense ministry was direct and blunt: