Free Republic

Something was off with a key component used to literally hold many U.S. Air Force aircraft together—and it resulted in the service grounding 207 vital aircraft according to a Time Compliance Technical Order issues in February. No—it’s wasn’t the Air Force’s numerous F-16 tactical fighters. Nor its new F-35 stealth jets, or venerable B-52 bombers and A-10 ground attack jets. Foremost, it was the workhorse keeping all of those planes refueled in the sky: the service’s airliner-based KC-135 Stratotanker. It also affected RC-135 and WC-135 surveillance aircraft extensively deployed to monitor the activity and technologies of foreign militaries (particularly China,...

A treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires buried for decades on a glacier off France’s Mont Blanc has finally been shared between the climber who discovered them and local authorities, eight years after they were found. The mountaineer stumbled across the precious stones in 2013. They had remained hidden in a metal box that was onboard an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years earlier. In September 2012, India took possession of a bag of diplomatic mail from a Boeing 707 flying from Mumbai which crashed on the south-west face of Mont Blanc on 24...

A lawsuit set to be filed in Washington, D.C. will allege that Saddam Hussein helped train several of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. at an Iraqi terrorist training camp known as Salman Pak, London's Sunday Express reported over the weekend. "Saddam Hussein helped to plan and pay for the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, according to U.S. court documents obtained by the Sunday Express," the paper claimed. Five key witnesses - three Iraqi defectors and two former U.N. weapons inspectors - have "provided chilling details," the Express said, about the hijacking...