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aparticularbandit · 2 years ago

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Harmony

Summary: Every time Wanda enters the room, Agatha beams. It’s unsettling, at first, but she gets used to it. She needs a bit of sun to temper her thundercloud, after all. (And always, always, always Agatha beams.)

Follow up to Strumming, Strolling, and Accompaniment.

Wanda Maximoff & Agatha Harkness Rating: G.

previous chapter

They arrive in Westview long after it’s grown dark, long after most of the residents have gone to sleep, as though they’ve flown in on one of those really late flights and then had to drive all the way back—

As though—

They did fly in on one of those really late flights and then they did have to drive all the way back. Agnes found her car parked neatly in one of the parking garages, grumbled a bit about the cost of having kept it there for—

It’s been how long?

—honestly, she should have just asked someone to drive her to the airport. It’d been an emergency, though, and Max had needed her, and she’d gone just as soon as Max called—

This is all empty prattle.

Max listens to her old friend’s words as she buckles into the passenger seat of her red Buick Verano, rests her head in one hand, and then stares out the window, taking in the stars above Newark International studded with the bright lights of landing and ascending planes as they pull out and then the grass-studded darkness on either side of Route 2 as they drive the hour or so to Westview proper.

They barely reach the route before Agnes curses, grumbles about how she should have gotten gas before she left, and then apologizes profusely to Max for needing to make a pit stop. It’s not that Max particularly minds. She uses it as an excuse to buy a bottle of RC to help her fight the near constant desire to yawn, and then they’re back on the road. It might not be smart to drink caffeine this late, but she finds she doesn’t really mind.

With the jet lag, maybe it will help her stay awake until what should be a normal bedtime.

When they make it to Westview, when Agnes unlocks the front door and gestures inside, she suggests, softly, that Max take the full of the upstairs (bedrooms, bathrooms, everything), but Max refuses to relocate her old friend to what she considers the dungeon, even though that means she’s stuck in what she has always considered to be a dark, dank, dirty space. Her breath catches in her throat the first time she starts down the stairs, and Agnes suggests, again, that it might be better for her to stay upstairs. Healthier.

No, Max says, clutching the bannister so tightly that her knuckles turn a bright white. It doesn’t scare me anymore.

It’s a lie. She’s certain Agnes can see that it’s a lie. Agnes knows, after all.

You don’t have to be strong, hon. Agnes places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gentle. You came here to heal. You don’t have to force yourself—

I know. Max sets her hand over Agnes’s. Thank you, though. You didn’t have to…. She lets her voice trail off, expects Agnes to say something – anything – but she doesn’t. So she just repeats it again. Thank you.

Agnes smiles, and although she doesn’t see it, she can hear it in her voice. Any time, super star.

Max fits into Agnes’s life as if she was always meant to be there, like the shore waves always beat against, the rope tying an anchor to its ship, the ship a lighthouse always seeks out, the fly the spider beckons into her web. She takes over the basement apartment with trepidation at first, but it isn’t nearly as horrid as her mind imagined it would be. Agnes has taken great care to make sure the basement feels less like that and more like an entire second floor; the only reason it sometimes feels less than is that there’s not enough sunlight. There are small slits of windows here and there, but sometimes Max feels like a plant who needs a little more sun.

Like maybe there isn’t enough in the world to make her feel better.

But then Max creeps upstairs, pulling her sweater sleeves down around her hands, and finds Agnes sitting stretched out on her couch, one ankle neatly crossed over the other, a book in one hand – which isn’t so exciting in and of itself, to be honest, but that every time, Agnes notices her, Agnes glances up from her book, Agnes gives her a smile that looks a bit like sunlight. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, having such brightness directed her way, and so she doesn’t always keep her attention. She can’t always say anything back, just shifts her guitar where it rests on her back and nods when Agnes asks if she’s going to be playing outside again.

Playing outside sounds like she’s a child, and Max has to admit, sometimes she still feels like a child, the way she is so dependent on Agnes for food and water and shelter and really anything else she needs because she still hasn’t applied for a real job, hasn’t been able to—

Max takes her guitar and sits on the sidewalks of downtown Westview and seeds her case with a few dollars and plays to see if anyone will leave anything for her. Well. Mostly she plays because downtown Westview seems like the sort of place that could use some soft background guitar music, particularly the old gazebo. It could use a bit of fixing up, if she’s honest, but she’s not the sort to pull out wood and nails and get to it. Callused as her hands might be; that’s not her calling.

Honestly, Max doesn’t know that she has one at all.

She only knows that she likes to play her guitar and that playing her guitar soothes her in a way that even Agnes with all her warmth cannot.

No one really leaves money, but Max leaves the case open anyway.

Just in case.

Max tries to make herself useful about the house. She cleans the dishes when Agnes cooks, and she cooks when Agnes’s back hurts her so bad that she can barely move out of bed. (Agnes’s favorite is a hearty lamb stew that it took Max years in college to learn to make right. But that last year, in the cold and snowy December when their heat got turned off and she’d set a fire going in the fireplace just to keep from freezing – that was the first time she’d made it right. Or maybe Agnes had been a little too groggy and a little too buzzed to be picky, maybe she’d just craved the warmth a stew cooked over the fire could give, maybe she’d been too comforted when they’d curled up together to conserve heat to consider making Max feel less than adequate.)

Always, always, Agnes beams when she approaches.

When they’d been roommates the first time, in college, that first semester when the school had thrown them together, Max thought it was patronizing. She’d been embarrassed and had curled up in her bed, turned her back to the other girl, and just avoided her. Up until the moment she missed her first class – gone to Standard Mathematics that morning, hoped that a bit of breakfast and time would settle her angry stomach, and decided, when it hadn’t, that she’d better go back to her room and try to rest it off – and found Agnes still in bed, eyes red, cheeks tear-stained.

She still lit up when Max entered the room, but there’d been pain to it.

Too many people read Agnes’s energy and enthusiasm for naïveté and foolishness. Max hadn’t done that, but she’d misread it just as much as anyone else had.

They’d been friends after that. Well. Agnes had always been her friend. Max just hadn’t understood.

And, in the end, Max’s cutting cynicism tore into the students who took advantage of Agnes’s kindness, and Agnes’s gentleness soothed over so many of Max’s odd habits.

Even now, even in Westview, that’s the way of it – Max depending on Agnes’s kindness when something in her brain just seems to break, Agnes swooping in without a hint of complaint and drawing her home.

Sometimes, when Max goes into the basement, her heart beats rapidly in her chest again, her throat constricts, and she can’t breathe. It doesn’t matter that nothing bad has ever happened in Agnes’s basement, just like it doesn’t matter that Agnes’s basement looks nothing like that basement. Her breath still catches. She still feels faint.

Most of the time, Max pushes through all of that, forces herself to her bed, and covers herself with her comforter, breathing deep, timed breaths until she relaxes enough to doze off. (Sometimes, when this happens, she has nightmares. Sometimes, those nightmares are memories. Sometimes, she doesn’t know that they are.)

But not all of the time.

You made me a music major.

You want to point that out to her, in the rare moments when you are conscious of yourself again.

You made me a music major, and I have never been good at music.

You made me a theater major, and I have never been good at theater.

You think this must be her sick idea of a joke, that the entirety of the sitcoms you hadn’t even known you’d been running are the basis for her decisions, and you want to snap at her for it.

You only want to snap at her because you still have rare moments of consciousness.

You only want to snap at her because Max is still miserable, and you weren’t supposed to be miserable.

You hadn’t made Agnes miserable.

You don’t—

“Max?”

The first time Max hides in the spare bedroom upstairs, Agnes finds her within a few moments. She lets out a breath as she sees Max sit up in the bed, wide-eyed, and with one hand still on the doorknob (and the other over her heart) says, “I just heard all this noise and someone coming upstairs and I hadn’t heard the front door open and I was sure, hon, that you were some intruder coming to kill me!” She takes a deep breath in – all of that, one breath, in such a rush – and then sighs. “I’m just glad it’s you, dear, and not someone else.” Her eyes take Max in, and her face softens. “Bad dreams, hon?”

Max doesn’t meet her gaze. Her eyes drop to her hands, and her fingers fidget together. “I hate the basement, Nessie. I hate it.”

Within another moment, Agnes curls up in bed next to her. There’s no I told you so, just the softest, “If you would feel better up here, doll, then you just have to say the word, and I’ll—”

“No.” Max rests her head against Agnes’s chest and tries to match her breathing with that of her friend. “It’s not that bad.”

“If you say so.” Agnes takes a long breath in, holds it for a few beats, and then lets it out. This is normal. She’d learned this in an attempt to help. Max doesn’t need the help, but when she’s there, she offers it without a second thought. She brushes fingers through Max’s stringy hair and tucks it back out of her face. “You’re shivering, doll.”

“I—” A shudder harsher than the shivers cuts Max off. She swallows before trying again. “I know. It’ll pass.” She grits her teeth together. Hard. “It always does.”

Agnes stays with her until the panic passes, not doing much more than holding her, and when the shivering quiets down, she runs her fingers gentle through Max’s hair one last time and asks, “Would you like some tea, hon? I’ve kept some chamomile aside for you.”

Max just clings to her. So tired. So tired. “Stay with me,” she whispers instead, not a question because she doesn’t need to ask. “Until I sleep. Please.”

It won’t be long, Max thinks. Now that the panic is nearly gone, exhaustion takes its place, crippling on the depression she already feels. Already, she can barely keep her eyes open, and cradled safe against her longest friend, she relaxes enough to rest.

It doesn’t happen often.

But when it does, Max wakes to Agnes still curled protectively around her, clinging to Max nearly as desperately as Max is to her.

Are you awake?

Can you hear me?

Are you ready to—?

Strange men come to the house exactly once.

They call Max—

They call her something that isn’t her name, but she can’t quite make it out from where she hides in the basement. She knows they’re there, though, can hear them pounding their boots on the floor just above. She scans the ceiling, catches the glow-in-the-dark stars where they twinkle above her, and listens to voices that seem familiar but unwelcome.

Before she even answered the door, Agnes saw them and told Max to hide. Not to just let her have her own conversation with them, not to just stay out of the way, but to hide. (Agnes would never tell her to stay out of the way because Agnes would never consider her in the way. That’s Max’s bag.) She’d seen something flicker in her friend’s eyes – something like anger, something like fear – and despite her own fragile curiosity, she’d gone.

Agnes finds her afterwards, apologizes. Says, uncharacteristically of her, although Max isn’t sure how she knows that because it feels very right for the Agnes she has always known, “They need help, super star, and I’m….” She grits her teeth together. Her hands clench into little fists. “You told me a little about what happened, hon, but I thought….”

It takes a moment before the smile finds its way back on Agnes’s face. “I’ll be taking on a new job.”

“Why don’t you just tell them no?”

Agnes chuckles, and there is such sadness there. “They won’t let me say no anymore, dear.”

Max’s brow furrows, and she glares – not at Agnes, but past her, fierce as anything she has ever felt – such deep hatred bubbling in the center of her chest like an unhinged furnace. “Then I’ll say no for you.”

“No.” Agnes places a hand over Max’s, stilling a different kind of shuddering entirely. “No. That will only make things worse.”

“Nessie, if you will let me—”

Agnes squeezes her hand so tight that Max can convince herself she doesn’t feel her friend shuddering. “No,” she whispers this time. “I will take care of it, hon. I do not want you to get involved.”

There are a lot of things Max wants to do. A lot of things she can do.

But when Agnes tells her no, she listens.

It’s a boundary. One of their unspoken rules.

And she will not cross it.

While Agnes is gone, Max takes her guitar upstairs, sits on the couch, and strums. It fills the empty house enough to echo in the spaces that Agnes leaves behind.

She hates it almost as much as she hates the basement.

Agnes is frequently gone, and she comes back tired. Exhausted. Weary. She still beams when she sees Max, but it’s a softer thing, and her eyes don’t light up early the same way that they once did. It’s like that second year at college, when Agnes realized she wasn’t good enough to do what she’d always wanted to do, when she’d understood that as easy as the science of everything came to her, the higher level mathematics required to go into the career spaces that most called to her were beyond her, no matter how hard she tried.

She’d been so tired then.

As tired as Max often is now.

But they can’t both be bone deep weary. If Agnes is tired, then Max will have to pick up the slack. She can do that, after all, can slot into those spaces that Agnes fills much better than she does, can stand in the kitchen and cook and clean and make sure that there is enough food for both of them, can do their laundry while Agnes is gone, can curl up in bed with her friend and hold her close so that Agnes can take the time to be comforted in the same way that she so often comforts Max.

Once, while Max holds Agnes against her, cradling her head with one hand, chin laying just atop her crown, Agnes murmurs, voice soft, “You’re so good to me, doll. What did I ever do to deserve someone like you, huh?”

Max opens her mouth to answer – You were good to me first – but something else whispers, soft at first, and then harsher, into her mind: Do you think maybe this is what you deserve?

And her own voice, echoing words she has never remembered – What? You’re…you’re not supposed to talk.

Something even sharper pangs through her head, and Max winces, squeezing her eyes shut, and lets out a little exclamation – wordless – of pain.

“Max?” Agnes shifts, pulls away so that she can pull up, so she can run a finger along her jaw, along her cheekbone. “What’s wrong, hon? What did I say?”

“Nothing.” Max shakes her head. “It’s…it’s nothing.” She winces again. “My head just…. Migraine, maybe.” She starts to reach a hand up to massage her temples, but Agnes’s hands are there first, gentle but insistent. Instantly, she relaxes. “This,” she murmurs, hums. “This is what you did to deserve me.”

Agnes chuckles softly. “This is the least of it, doll. You’ve done more than enough for….” Her voice trails off.

“What?” Max cracks an eye open, then both, and glances at a young woman who is averting her gaze, even as Agnes’s fingers still press soothing into her skin. She takes Agnes’s hand in her own and pulls it away from her forehead. Her fingers press gently against Agnes’s fingertips, against her palm, and then she brings her hand up, brings her knuckles to her lips.

“Don’t,” Agnes whispers, still not looking up.

“Don’t what?”

Agnes hesitates before glancing up ever so briefly, meeting Max’s eyes, and whispering with a tone something like terror, “You don’t know what you’re doing, hon.”

I did not ask for this.

For a moment – just a moment – Max imagines she can hear Agnes’s words speaking directly into her mind. Her brow furrows, and she almost – almost – asks, What did you just say? But she was looking at Agnes’s lips, and they hadn’t moved, so she couldn’t have said anything.

It’s still enough to give her pause.

“What am I doing?” Max asks instead, blinking twice. She isn’t sure if she’s asking Agnes or if it’s a question she’s asking herself, and either way, she isn’t sure that she wants an answer. Worse still, she doesn’t know what the answer would even be. So she squeezes Agnes’s hand, lets it fall away, and then draws her against her chest again, in the same position they were in before, pausing just long enough to kiss the crown of her head before resting her chin there.

Wake up, hon.

You’ve been gone long enough.

It’s time to be done with this foolish scheme of—

Agnes never tells Max not to open the door while she’s gone.

Which, you know, of course, it makes sense. It’s not like Max has anyone to fear. She’s just a thirty-something dried up waste of space who’d gone after music and theater and failed abysmally at both of them and then crawled into her best friend’s basement to waste away another few months in mourning while she figured out what to do with the rest of her life. It’s not like anybody really wants Max.

If they had, she wouldn’t have been such a failure.

So when the doorbell rings – an insidious little tune that has always sounded so familiar, even though Max has never been able to place it – Max opens the door without checking to see who’s outside. She knows some of the Westview citizens by name, at this point, but she spends so much of her time not really interacting with them, outside of playing guitar on the sidewalk downtown, that she’s not certain she would recognize anyone if she did look.

The thing is?

Max knows, when she opens the door, that the kid in front of her is definitely not from Westview. No child raised in Westview would wear a denim jacket like that because no parent in Westview would let their kid wear denim jacket like that. Not with all those words written all over it, not with the paint stripes hard on bits and pieces of it, and – well, they’d probably be fine with the rainbow pride flag pinned, but the rest of it—

The kid looks at Max like she knows her, something that is only confirmed when she says, hushed, “I found you.”

“Didn’t know anyone was looking for me.” Max scans the girl’s face, searches it. Nothing. “Who are you?”

“You don’t remember?”

Max’s fingers drum against her pants leg, against the doorframe. There’s certainly something almost familiar about the girl – maybe she’d been in one of her dreams once, a long time ago; it feels almost like that – but she doesn’t know her. She shakes her head once and then swallows, steps back, and holds the door open as her gaze drops and she tucks strands of her mousy brown hair back out of her face. (Once, she might have pulled the strands across instead of back; once, she might have pulled them between her lips and chewed on them. But she isn’t that young anymore.) “You can, um. If you’re looking for Agnes, she isn’t here, but you can come in.”

The girl was looking for her. She found her, after all. Max doesn’t know why she said that. She bites her lower lip.

“Stephen sent me,” the girl says, like that should mean something. “He said it was an emergency.”

Max blinks twice. “I don’t know who that is.”

The girl’s eyes narrow. “Stephen Strange? You don’t know who that is? You literally crossed the multiverse fighting him to—”

Another sharp stab in Max’s head, and she winces, steps back, one hand flying up to her forehead. It hurts more than the last time. She swallows, hard, heart beating rapidly in her chest. “I think,” she says, and her accent comes on strong, “that you should go.”

“You’re the Scarlet Witch. You should—”

Max slams the door in the kid’s face.

You don’t know why America is here.

You don’t know why Stephen wants you.

You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know—

Agnes doesn’t come back for a week that time, and when she does finally arrive, it’s so late that Max is half-asleep in her friend’s bed. It’s a bad habit, really. Agnes has been gone so long, and Max has felt so…off that she’s crawled into her bed to sleep instead of dragging herself into the basement. She could, if she wanted, but she doesn’t want that.

She only knows that Agnes is home when the woman curls into bed next to her, wraps her arms around her, and buries her head between Max’s shoulder blades.

Agnes must think she’s asleep because she says in a voice so low that even now, Max isn’t sure that she’s heard her right, “I know what you wanted, hon. I’m protecting it for you. But you’re not any better like this. You’re still you. You’re still you. So come back already. I’m not cut out for this superhero bullshit.”

Something in you says that you aren’t either.

….

Something in MAX says that MAX isn’t either.

Max doesn’t know what it is, and she’s scared to think about it.

“Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, hon.” Agnes cracks the oddest grin Max has ever seen – it isn’t happy but it isn’t sad – it’s like she’s trying to beam at her, but it’s broken somehow, and Max doesn’t know why. “Time off for good behavior, don’t you know.”

“I mean again,” Max corrects as firmly as she can. “Don’t go again.” She stares at Agnes as sternly as she can. “They’re hurting you. I know they’re hurting you. So don’t go.”

Agnes’s gaze drops to the mug between her dirty hands. Chamomile tea. Max’s favorite because Agnes ran out of lemon-ginger a few days ago and hadn’t wanted to leave the house. Not that Max minds. She’d go herself if she felt safe leaving Agnes alone, but she’s so afraid that the other woman will leave while she’s gone and that she won’t get to say goodbye and that, for some reason, she won’t come back the next time. She doesn’t know why she thinks that.

Something to do with superheroes and how heroes act and how they just keep dying.

Max sees the news. She knows that much, at least.

Agnes taps broken nails against the scarlet mug. “If they need me, I have to go, doll. I’m the expert. They need an expert—”

“Nessie.” Max reaches across and places a hand over Agnes’s, but Agnes flinches away. “I’m not going to—”

“Can you…can you check something for me, hon?” Agnes asks, stepping back, eyes lifting just enough for her gaze to meet Max’s. “I have a suspicious mole on my back that I just can’t see. If you could take a quick look, I’d appreciate it.” She lifts the edge of her pajama shirt. “It’s right here above my—”

Before Agnes can even finish, Max bends down, runs her fingers along the slope of Agnes’s porcelain skin, and bites her lower lip. “I don’t see one, Nessie. I’m sorry—”

Maybe it’s because it’s belated, maybe not, but the sharpest surge of all streaks through Max’s head, and she lets out a yelp of pain, stumbling backward, slipping, and falling to the kitchen floor, banging the back of her head against the lower cabinets. She whimpers in pain, cradling her head. It throbs again, sharp, sharp, sharp, and then the constriction slowly begins to fade.

“Agatha,” you growl out as she kneels down in front of you. “Don’t you dare.”

As Max slowly raises her head, as her dark eyes slowly meet Agnes’s bright ones, she sees how wide her friend’s eyes have gotten, how pale her already pale face is, and she coughs twice before asking in a rasping voice, “What did I just say?”

“Nothing, hon—”

“I…I called you something, didn’t I? Something…something else?”

Agnes reaches out, cups Max’s face, and offers her such an achingly fond expression that it feels like she should be smiling. Only she isn’t. “You’re fine, doll.” She brushes a thumb across her cheekbone soothingly. “You’re just the way you’re supposed to be.”

Max nods and leans into Agnes’s touch and realizes that she’s crying only because she feels the wet on the tips of Agnes’s fingers.

Before Agnes leaves the last time, Max brings her guitar up to the living room, sits on the couch, carefully tunes, and begins to play. It’s a song that’s been stuck in her head for as long as she remembers, one that finds its way under her fingertips near constantly, but she doesn’t know where she’s heard it before. Every now and again, she plunks out a four note little ditty, and that one feels much more painful for some reason, so she doesn’t do it often (it sounds like a doorbell chime, but it isn’t one that she’s ever heard). But the one that she can’t get out of her head—

If she’s honest, it sounds a bit like Agnes’s ringtone, a bit like her doorbell chime. But she can’t place it.

Max sits on the couch and plays the tune and wracks her mind for the words. She knows there are words. Sometimes – sometimes – she can almost pull them out—

Before she realizes what’s happening, Max begins to hum along with it, harmonizing with it, hates the way that sounds, and then cuts herself off only to realize that Agnes has started to hum the tune, too. For a moment, listening to her friend’s voice, Max pauses to listen, and then she finds it, finds her way, catches Agnes harmonizing when she doesn’t – and they switch off, back and forth, that same tune again and again because she feels like she’s close, like the words are on the tip of her tongue, and then—

It’s too late to fix anything Now that everything has gone wrong—

She stops herself.

Blinks twice.

Looks up at Agnes.

Opens her mouth as though to say something, to ask something, but can’t find the words for what she wants to ask because she doesn’t even know what she’s trying to ask. It’s something, just like the tune, just like the song, just like the rest of the lyrics, just there right where she should be able to grasp for them and catch them and say something, ask something, but—

Agnes jumps. Her phone buzzes – completes the tune with her ringtone – and she answers it immediately. Bites her lip. Goes to the other room.

Then she’s gone, nearly clinging to Max with her last embrace, before Max can even reconsider what she’s trying to ask.

This time, when Max answers the door, it isn’t the kid on the other side, and it isn’t anyone she recognizes from Westview, but it’s a man with a scarlet cloak and a fancy blue outfit and a scruffy sort of beard that seems to be normally well kept but isn’t right now. There are grey streaks in his hair, and his eyes remind her of Agnes’s.

Max takes a deep breath in. “If you’re looking for Agnes, she isn’t—”

“Agatha is hurt, Wanda.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Max growls out much fiercer than she understands, she doesn’t know why she’s suddenly so mad, but she is, and she moves to slam the door in the man’s face, “and I think you should go—”

He catches the door with the end of his cloak – Superhero, Max thinks, and she’s sure she’s seen this one on television at one point or another, but she can’t remember his name – and looks down on her with a tired, tired expression. He sighs, pinches his forehead, and then repeats, correcting himself, “Agnes is hurt, Max.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Max’s brow furrows. “You keep taking her, and you keep hurting her, and you keep sending her back more and more broken, and I told her not to go, and she still—”

“I don’t think you heard me correctly.” The man holds Max’s gaze as well as he can. “Agnes is hurt, Max, and I can’t fix her.”

Max stares up at him. “What are you saying?”

She doesn’t need him to say it, but she wants him to say it anyway.

She needs to hear it.

She—

It’s too late to fix anything Now that everything has gone wrong Thanks to—

There aren’t any tubes.

That’s the thing that strikes Max as wrong.

When someone is in the hospital and they might be dying, there should be a lot of tubes, a lot of stuff hooked up to them to keep them from dying, but the only thing hooked up to Agnes is a singular drip. It’s like…it’s like they aren’t even trying. Like Agnes didn’t want—

Agnes wouldn’t want to die, she would want them to save her, what the—

Max takes Agnes’s hand in her own and squeezes it.

She doesn’t feel a squeeze back.

She wants to say something, but she can’t, she doesn’t know what to say, she—

When everyone else is gone, when it’s dark outside, Max strums her guitar, its soothing tones picked and plunked, chords soft. It’s better than the music they want to use in the background. She keeps trying to sing something, but she can’t get any words out around the thick in her throat, the rasping, the instinct to scream, to cry, to—

The tears come easy, but Max has never needed to see to keep playing.

Her fingers find that tune again: Pity, pity, pity, pity—

They’re new words, and they run over and over and over in her head, just those words and the ones she already remembers, connecting to it. Then nothing. Just a long expanse of nothingness.

Max tries to stay awake.

She doesn’t want to miss a second.

What if Agnes wakes up?

She can’t—

Wake up, hon; I’m dying here.

Funny that you think I care. You could die, and I would be happy.

You’d blame yourself.

I didn’t tell you to get involved with the fucking Avengers, Agatha. That was your choice—

Are you fixed, hon? Is being Max everything you wanted it to—

It’s better than being—

Is it? Is it really, super star? Because – fun fact – if I die, then she—

….

Look, hon. You’ve got a choice here—

Pretty chatty for someone dying, aren’t you?

Better to talk while I still can, don’t you think? Or would you rather—

Wanda opens her eyes.

She grits her teeth, stares at all the golden spiraling bullshit sorcery throbbing through Agatha’s veins and keeping her heart still beating, and waves them all away without a second thought.

Then she gathers the older witch’s broken body in her arms and disappears.

“America came to visit me while you were gone.”

Wanda ladles another cupful of stew into a bowl before carrying it over to Agatha’s bed. She holds a spoon up, blows the steam from the top, and then holds it out to the other witch. Then she hesitates. “You don’t mind taking a bite after I—”

“It’s either that or nothing, love, and if you think I’m going to starve to death over such a small—”

Wanda pops the spoon in Agatha’s mouth midsentence, grinning when Agatha shoots her a glare. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “You were saying?”

Agatha chews the potato as Wanda takes the spoon away and sighs. She closes her eyes. “Nothing,” she says, finally. “I didn’t say anything at all.”

Healing is, surprisingly or not, one of Wanda’s strong suits.

But it still takes her a long time before she finishes with Agatha.

It doesn’t need to take a long time. They both know that. But she takes a long time regardless.

When she’s finished, Wanda brushes a hand through Agatha’s hair and sighs. “You won’t let me go back, will you?”

“If that’s what you want, love, then who am I to deny you?” Agatha spreads her hands out. Then she snorts. “We’ll just end up right back here again. Or I’ll die, and then you won’t have anyone skilled enough to give you your fix.”

Wanda stares down at Agatha and then says, finally, “What if I tell them that you are mine? Do you think they’ll leave you alone then?”

Agatha shakes her head. “First off, no. Second, I don’t belong to you, hon; you don’t own me. Third, you would have to mean that, and you certainly don’t.” She glances up and meets Wanda’s eyes. “Don’t lie to me, dear. That won’t do you any favors.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

Every time Wanda enters the room, Agatha beams.

It’s unsettling, at first, but she gets used to it.

She needs a bit of sun to temper her thundercloud, after all.

(And always, always, always Agatha beams.)

#bandit fic #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #stephen strange #america chavez #dsmom #wandavision #mcu #queue #lament with wanda and agatha

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feralnumberfive · 2 years ago

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Tell me about planes if you want

Oh I certainly will!!! It's taken me a while to answer this between working, not having access to the laptop with these pictures, slow wifi causing the upload process to be incredibly slow, and trying not to get too carried away with descriptions and blabbing forever about aircraft so I hope you can forgive me for taking longer than I'd like to respond. I was really excited to get this ask hehe, it's my life's biggest passion!

I could go on forever and ever about planes so I'll just show you some pictures of planes my sister and I have taken on vacation with some descriptions (and a special picture at the end for you!) ❤️

Here's an 80-year-old Beech 18 doing something it's not supposed to- aerobatics! This specific aircraft was used as a navigational trainer during WWII, now it's doing gentle aerobatics at airshows around the US. The plane is named "Magic by Moonlight" but is also called "Miss Ellie" and the nose are features a pinup elephant on a moon.

Because of this, Matt Younkin (the owner and pilot of this plane) likes to do part of his routine to the music from the 1941 Dumbo, including making the aircraft "dance" to "Pink Elephants on Parade" and it's really fun to watch. He also does a fantastic night airshow routine where he takes off with all of his lights on but then turns his lights off shortly after takeoff so that you can't see him. A few minutes later in the pitch dark you can hear the Beech 18 diving in towards the crowd as he suddenly turns on the lights and the overture from Phantom Of The Opera begins blaring at the same time. It's such a cool thing to see

Skip Stewart pilots his aerobatic biplane "Prometheus 2" at knife edge to cut a ribbon (a bit smoky due to all the show smoke in the air)

Here's a B-2 bomber I got to see. Certainly looks like a ufo!

A fantastic picture of the US Navy Blue Angels in their F/A-18 Hornets as they pass overhead. One of my favorite pictures my sister has taken! When doing formation flying the Blue Angels fly with their wingtips just 18 inches apart from each other's jet

The Polaris Team passing overhead with a MiG-29 leading two Alpha Jets and two L-39s. It was amazing seeing the MiG-29 considering there are only two airworthy in the US and it's one of my favorite planes, but also a little off feeling considering Ukraine is fighting for their lives against Russia with this same kind of aircraft

Here's a super cool picture of shockwaves coming off of an F/A-18F Super Hornet. The pilot of this jet is a woman!

Here's a shitty highlighting by me of the shockwaves

Another shockwave by the F/A-18F Super Hornet

Aaaand another shitty highlighting job by me

Here's a more visible shockwave manifesting as vapor on this EA-18G Growler. Though the Growler looks exactly like the Super Hornet (there are actual minor differences in appearance), the Growler is meant for electronic warfare (EA=Electronic Attack) while the Super Hornet is meant for fighting and attacking (F/A=Fighter/Attacker). The Growler can certainly still defend itself in a dogfight if it needed to though.

These are both newer versions of the F/A-18 Hornet, which is the oldest of the three. The Hornet is slightly smaller with a few noticeable differences in appearance. Fun fact about the jet pictured above: it's from the same squadron that flew the cast of Top Gun: Maverick and I actually got to see one buzzing around the town when I was in Oak Harbor, WA a few years ago!

Here's a cool picture of an F-35A Lightning II flying through pyro smoke with the afterburner lit and vapor trails coming off the wingtips. The pilot of this jet is also a woman! The F-35 family gets its name from the P-38 Lighting, a WWII fighter aircraft.

Here's the weapons bay to the F-35A Lightning II. Since it's a stealth aircraft, it stores its weapons internally to reduce their RCS (radar cross section) and appear smaller on radar. The diamond looking object under the nose there is its targeting system for both air and ground targets. All F-35s have the capability of allowing the pilot to see through the aircraft! There are multiple cameras around the jet that the pilot can use with their helmet to see all around the aircraft

The F-35C Lightning II at sunset with full afterburner and wingtip vapors. The C model of the F-35 is for the Navy, the B is for the Marines, and the A is for the Air Force. Only the B and C models are capable of vertical takeoffs and landings and hovering. If you compare the C model here to the A model above, you can see that the C model has a longer wingspan and lines on the wings towards the wingtips that can fold up for more storage space on aircraft carriers! Fun fact about this pilot: His callsign is "Jiggly"

The F-22 Raptor with vapor forming around it as it pulls hard away from the crowd. The canopy has a golden tint because of a special layer of radar absorbing material to help reduce its RCS. The Raptor is a stealth fighter and arguably/potentially the most capable and deadly fighter aircraft in the world, only owned by the US and never exported for allied countries to use. It has vectoring thrust which means that both engine nozzles can move up and down to point the exhaust in different directions and allow the aircraft to maneuver better as the thrust moves with the control inputs of the pilot.

The Raptor is so maneuverable that it isn't allowed to demonstrate its full capabilities at airshows and even with allied forces when doing military exercises with them! It can turn on a dime, fall like a leaf, slide backwards onto its tail in the air, and do a backflip (these aren't the actual terms but they're great descriptions lol). It's fun to watch it fall like a leaf because not only is it memorizing to watch a jet maneuver like that because it's just insane, but the horizontal stabilizers move a lot so it looks like the Raptor is flapping its tail hehe.

Here's a good video on the maneuvers this jet can pull off and here too. This guy has fantastic camera stability so it looks like a video game and has insane quality! It's just truly amazing what this aircraft can do, and I got a little carried away talking about it because it's my favorite modern fighter jet

The silhouette of the F-22 against orange thunderheads and pyro smoke. This is one of my favorite pictures my sister has taken!

The USAF Heritage Flight is performed at nearly every US airshow and features one or more modern USAF fighter or attack aircraft with one or more warbirds (vintage aircraft that are retired from military service) from different eras. This flight features an F-16 Fighting Falcon/Viper (more commonly called the Viper) painted like a black snake/viper with two WWII fighter aircraft. The lead plane (green) is the P-38 Lighting, and off to its left is the P-51 Mustang.

The P-51 is arguably the most famous warbird ever, and was very impactful during WWII. Hermann Göring, Commander of the Luftwaffe during WWII, saw P-51s escorting bombers over Berlin and allegedly said "When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up." This P-51 is painted after Capt. William T. Whisner's P-51D "Moonbeam McSwine" and has a unique blue nose and tail of the 352nd Fighter Group. And this was my first time getting to see a P-38 fly so I was ecstatic to see it! This specific one is painted like Robin Olds' P-38 during WWII, named "Scat III" and he has named all of the aircraft he flew throughout WWII and Vietnam different numberings of "Scat"

The silhouette of an F-22 forming up on three P-51s in preparation of the Heritage Flight in front of thunderheads

The USN has their own version of a heritage flight called the Navy Legacy Flight. Here an F4U-4 Corsair named "Korean War Hero" (more on that later!) leads an F-35C off to its left, an EA-18G off to its right, and an AD-5W(EA-1E) Skyraider behind it. This version of the Skyraider is an electronic warfare aircraft with three seats compared to the typical ground attack model that only had one seat

A front view of another Legacy Flight with a T-28 Trojan in the lead, two EA-18Gs on the sides, and an FG-1D Corsair in the back. All of them, except for the Corsair, have their tail hooks down. This view provides a great look at the unique wings on the Corsair, which earned the nickname "Bent-Wing Bird" due to its inverted gull wings

(Excuse the poor quality of this picture it was taken years ago on a shitty phone) This here is a B-29 Superfortress bomber named "Bockscar" and is one of the most historic aircraft I have had the pleasure (or perhaps displeasure in this case) of getting to see. On August 9th of 1945, this exact aircraft dropped an atomic bomb named "Fat Man" on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. I was in awe of getting to see such a historically important aircraft, but also saddened by the mission it took a part of

This here is a B-29 named "Doc" after being a part of a squadron called the "Seven Dwarfs" that were used on non-combat missions to test radio systems. There are currently only two airworthy B-29s in the world, and I have been fortunate enough to see both of them flying in formation!

This is a B-17 Flying Fortress, one of the most well known bombers of WWII. This one is named "Aluminum Overcast" and is one of roughly 7 that are still flyable. The B-17 got the name "Flying Fortress" due to the 13 machine guns it has mounted around the aircraft. Here "Aluminum Overcast" has is bomb bays open for a mock bombing run. I have been inside of but have not flown on "Aluminum Overcast" :]

Here is another famous aircraft, though not as well known, that I have been incredibly fortunate to see. This plane is a C-47 named "That's All, Brother" and is the very plane that lead the D-Day airborne invasion. I got to see the progress of the restoration project of the aircraft up to its airworthiness in 2018 so getting to see it fly again was pretty amazing. You can actually purchase a flight on this aircraft, like many other warbirds, and tell people you rode on the plane that led the D-Day invasion!

Fun fact: This aircraft was restored with such incredible accuracy that if you get up close to it you will see that the D-Day stripes painted on it are sloppy and uneven, as they would have been back in 1943 as they were painted on in a rush before the invasion. It's also missing the open quotation on the nose art on the left side of the aircraft (seen here) as evident from pictures back in WWII

The lighting isn't the best in this one, but this group is called Tora! Tora! Tora! and they reenact the attack on Pearl Harbor. Multiple aircraft fly around low to the ground and close to the crowd as they pretend to do strafing runs, dive bomb attacks, and torpedo attacks. An air raid siren blares while near constant explosions are going off on the ground and an American aircraft chases one of the Japanese planes around.

Fun Fact: Though this group consists of three different Japanese aircraft types, the A6M Zero (fighter), the B5N Kate (torpedo bomber), and the D3A Val (dive bomber), all of these aircraft are actually American T-6 Texans and BT-13 Valiants that are highly modified to look like Japanese aircraft. Only 5 Zeroes are currently airworthy, with only two being original and the rest are replicas. There are currently no Vals or Kates airworthy

This is a special and rare flight of aircraft called "Flight Of The Cats" which consist of four Grumman aircraft. The aircraft manufacturing company Grumman is known for naming many of their aircraft after big cats back in the day, hence the name of this formation flight. The formation flight used to be performed at airshows in the past with an F-14 Tomcat, but since none are left flying in the US it is now performed with Grumman's WWII and Korean War fighter aircraft.

The F7F Tigercat leads an F8F Bearcat (off its left wing), an F6F Hellcat (off its right wing), and an F4F Wildcat brings up the rear. Both the F7F and F8F arrived too late to see combat in WWII so they were used elsewhere. The F7F was used for a short time as a night fighter in the Korean War, and the F8F never saw combat in the US but instead was imported to France where they first saw combat. The F7F above is named "Here Kitty, Kitty!"

The F4F and F6F both served in WWII and were some of the most impactful aircraft of the war in the Pacific. The Hellcat boasts an impressive 19:1 kill ratio, one of the highest of any aircraft of WWII. The Hellcat above served two tours in WWII, but it is unknown if it saw combat. It has the name "Death N' Destruction"

The F4F was one of the first true USN fighters of WWII and held its own until the more advanced F6F and F4U Corsair arrived. The Wildcat above was ditched in Lake Michigan during WWII during a training mission before being restored into its current airworthy state. This F4F is painted in early war colors, hence the "Meatball" on the insignia, and is painted after Edward "Butch" O'Hare's Wildcat. Chicago's O'Hare Airport is named after him, and you can find an F4F painted like the one above on display in Terminal 2 in honor him.

Fun Fact: The F6F, F7F, and F8F all have the same type of engine (it's also the same engine the Corsair has). And though these aircraft have radial engines with a prop and not jet engines, they are still incredibly loud! Radial engines also have a distinct sound compared to an inline engine. Radial engines have more of a growl to them and sound thunderous in the air and they sound like they're chugging on the ground, while an inline sounds more high pitched and smooth. I think out of all the cats above, the F7F sounds the best due to it being a twin-engined aircraft

And here it is, my favorite plane of all time-the F4U Corsair. The Corsair is a powerhouse of an aircraft, and was one of the most lethal aircraft during WWII. It was the first single-engine US plane to reach over 400 mph flying level thanks to it having the largest engine and prop on a single-engine aircraft at the time. Later models of the Corsair has a top speed of 470mph, which is faster than the modern A-10 Thunderbolt II, and could dive up to 550 mph. It had an 11:1 kill ratio and served not only in WWII but also in the Korean War and performed multiple roles from ground attack to night fighting. It also served multiple allied countries during WWII and after, still even seeing combat in different wars up through the 1960s.

This specific Corsair is an F4U-4 named "Korean War Hero" and like the name suggests it served in the Korean War and is an actual combat veteran. "Korean War Hero" is my favorite Corsair, having watched it at airshows since I was a little kid up until now where I've gotten to see it yearly since 2017 (not 2020 though). Fun fact: After finding a picture of my younger self next to "Korean War Hero" at an airshow many years ago, I decided to take my senior pictures in front of it :]

The Corsair has a unique design to it, which is its inverted gull wings. The wings are bent to allow for shorter landing gear while still providing clearance for the massive 13ft 2in propeller diameter. Like I mentioned before, this earned it the nickname "Bent-Wing Bird" and gave it an unforgettable silhouette/outline. The Corsair also had the nicknames of "U-Bird" for the wing shape, "Angel of Okinawa" for the important role it played in The Battle of Okinawa, and "The Hog" for its size.

The most famous nickname of the Corsair though is a nickname the Japanese gave to it during WWII, "Whistling Death." It got this nickname because of the loud whistling noise it made as it dived down to attack. The noise is made by wind rushing at high speeds through the multi-purpose air cooling slots located at the leading edge of the inboard part of the wings

Here's an FG-1D Corsair with its wings folded up. US Naval and Marine aircraft typically have the ability to fold their wigs or wingtips closer to the fuselage to allow for more space on aircraft carriers. The Corsair's wings happen to fold upwards. And now you may be wondering (and I have no clue if you are, I doubt anyone is even reading this at this point I've blabbed on for too long lol) "Pine, why does this Corsair have different numbers and letters in front of it?" Well, that's because this Corsair was built by a different company!

The F4U Corsair was originally built by Vought, while the FG-1A & FG-1D Corsair was built by Goodyear, and even a third company, Brewster, made the aircraft and called it the F3A-1 & F3A-D Corsair. Due to the high demand of more Corsair production, Vought licensed Brewster and Goodyear to also make Corsairs, hence why they have different numbers in front of them despite them being the same kind of aircraft as Vought made. Though Vought continued to make multiple variations of the Corsair, Brewster and Goodyear only made models based off of Vought's F4U-1 Corsair.

Every single aircraft up to our current times have extra numbers and letters to mark what variation they are, I have just left those out for every aircraft above, besides the Corsair, to make it potentially less confusing. Like the P-51 I have on here is technically a P-51D but again, I don't want to make things more complicated. Every military aircraft has a letter before their model number to specify what type it is, like an F-22 is a Fighter (they used P for pursuit back in WWII and some later model aircraft during the 50s before changing it to F for fighter), B is for bomber, A is for attack, H is for helicopter, and you can guess the rest from there. Sometimes there's more than one, like the F/A-18 Hornet. And every aircraft has their variation letter after their model number, like the P-51D.

So, why did WWII Naval/Marine aircraft have more numbers and letters to their name compared to USAAC/USAAF aircraft at the time and modern military aircraft? During WWII, the Navy just decided to make it more confusing. The Navy was using "P" for Patrol back then, so they couldn't use "Pursuit" like the USAAC/USAAF was using for their fighter aircraft. So, they decided to go with "F" for Fighter. Then there was a model number after it, and after that was the aircraft's manufacturing identification letter. Finally at the end, there would be a letter and potentially another number to specify what variation it was.

For example with an F4U-4 Corsair it would be read as F=Fighter, 4=The model, U=Vought, and 4= what variation it was. So it's a "Fighter model 4, made by Vought, variant number 4." The Navy had a weird thing too with not having some aircraft manufacturers' identification letter match their starting letter, like "U" stands for Vought. Some aircraft manufacturers even used the same identification letter.

A nice picture of a Corsair at sunset. This here is my happy place, being amongst warbirds at sunset. I love aviation for its history, so getting to walk around aircraft that have had significant roles in history alongside some that are actual combat veterans that have been restored and still fly today leave me in awe.

And anon since you asked me about planes, I am going to give you a special picture.....

Tah-dah, it's me posing in front of an FG-1D Corsair! You can't tell because of the poor quality, but I am wearing a Corsair hat and my shirt has the same Corsair that I am posing in front of on it. If you or anyone else read my plane madness, thanks! ❤️

#anon you have no idea how happy this made me #I have sooo many more pictures and videos and stories that I had to leave out but man oh man do I love planes #anon #aircraft

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aviadefen · 2 months ago

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The Global Airborne ISR Market: Trends, Technologies, and Future Outlook

Aviationanddefense

Introduction: The Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) market has seen unprecedented growth over the past decade, driven by the demand for real-time, actionable intelligence to support military operations and national security objectives. From monitoring adversary movements to assessing battlefield conditions, airborne ISR platforms provide a critical advantage in decision-making, targeting, and threat assessment.

1. What is Airborne ISR?

Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance refer to the use of aircraft, drones, or other airborne platforms to collect, process, and disseminate information for intelligence purposes. ISR missions are integral to modern military operations, as they provide real-time data on enemy movements, detect potential threats, and help optimize operational responses.

Airborne ISR platforms can include:

Manned Aircraft: Fighter jets, bombers, and specialized ISR planes like the Boeing RC-135 or the E-8 JSTARS.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): Drones like the MQ-9 Reaper, Global Hawk, and Predator that offer extended operational durations and high-altitude surveillance.

Satellites: In combination with airborne platforms, satellites play a key role in ISR operations for broader, long-term monitoring.

2. Key Segments of the Airborne ISR Market

The global airborne ISR market can be divided into the following major segments based on platform and application:

a) Platform Types

Manned ISR Aircraft: Traditional aircraft equipped with high-tech sensors and communications gear to conduct surveillance missions.

Unmanned ISR Systems (Drones): Offering endurance and cost-efficiency, UAVs are the fastest-growing segment of the ISR market.

Sensors & Payloads: Advanced sensor technologies, such as radar, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) systems, and electronic warfare (EW) suites, that enable data collection.

b) ISR Applications

Defense & Military: The primary application of ISR, supporting military missions like border patrol, threat detection, counterterrorism, and target acquisition.

Civilian & Law Enforcement: Growing use of ISR platforms in disaster response, search and rescue (SAR), and environmental monitoring.

Homeland Security: Used for surveillance of critical infrastructure, counter-drug operations, and monitoring illegal activity across borders.

3. Market Drivers and Growth Factors

Several factors are fueling the rapid growth of the global airborne ISR market:

a) Increasing Geopolitical Tensions

The rise of geopolitical conflicts, especially in regions like the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Eastern Europe, has increased demand for ISR capabilities. Nations are expanding their airborne ISR fleets to gain intelligence on adversary movements, potential threats, and counterintelligence efforts.

b) Focus on Modern Warfare

The shift towards asymmetric warfare, counter-insurgency operations, and the rise of irregular combat strategies has placed ISR at the forefront of modern military planning. ISR data is crucial for operations in complex urban environments or against non-state actors like terrorist groups.

c) Technological Advancements in UAVs

Unmanned systems are revolutionizing airborne ISR. The development of high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) and medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAVs allows for 24/7 surveillance in conflict zones. UAVs are preferred due to their cost-effectiveness, versatility, and ability to operate in environments where manned aircraft may not be viable.

d) Data Fusion and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The exponential growth of ISR data is creating a need for advanced processing and analysis tools. AI and machine learning are now being integrated to analyze large volumes of ISR data, automate threat detection, and provide actionable intelligence in real time.

4. Technologies Shaping the Future of Airborne ISR

a) Advanced Sensor Technologies

Next-generation sensors such as hyperspectral imaging, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and multispectral cameras are enhancing the ability to collect intelligence. These sensors are capable of capturing high-resolution images in any weather condition, day or night, and detecting hidden or camouflaged threats.

b) Real-Time Data Processing & Dissemination

Real-time data analysis is essential for ISR missions. With the help of cloud computing, big data analytics, and edge computing, ISR data can now be processed and disseminated almost instantly. This ensures that decision-makers have up-to-date intelligence to act upon.

c) AI and Automation in ISR

AI-powered algorithms are enabling the automation of data collection, sorting, and interpretation. AI can detect patterns in ISR data that would be difficult for humans to identify. Additionally, automated ISR systems can prioritize threats and make decisions autonomously during missions.

d) Cyber and Electronic Warfare Integration

Modern airborne ISR platforms are increasingly being integrated with cyber and electronic warfare capabilities. These systems can intercept and analyze enemy communications, disrupt adversary sensors, and even launch cyberattacks, providing a holistic ISR and combat capability.

5. Key Global Players in the Airborne ISR Market

Several defense contractors and technology companies are driving innovations in the airborne ISR space. Some of the major global players include:

Northrop Grumman (U.S.): A leader in UAV-based ISR with platforms like the Global Hawk and MQ-4C Triton.

Lockheed Martin (U.S.): Known for its advanced ISR sensors and the U-2 Dragon Lady ISR aircraft.

General Atomics (U.S.): A major player in the UAV market with its Predator and Reaper drones widely used for ISR missions.

Thales Group (France): Provides advanced sensor solutions and data processing technologies for ISR platforms.

Israel Aerospace Industries (Israel): A leader in UAV technology, particularly in producing long-endurance drones for ISR applications.

6. Regional Insights and Market Share

a) North America

The North American market, particularly the United States, dominates the airborne ISR sector due to its massive defense budget and continuous military operations worldwide. The U.S. is heavily invested in maintaining ISR superiority, particularly in regions like the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific.

b) Europe

European nations, driven by concerns over Russian aggression and the rise of terrorism, are expanding their airborne ISR capabilities. NATO members are collaborating on joint ISR initiatives, particularly in the development of UAVs and advanced sensors.

c) Asia-Pacific

The Asia-Pacific region is expected to experience significant growth in the airborne ISR market, with countries like China, India, and Japan increasing their defense budgets to counter regional threats. Territorial disputes and rising military power in China are spurring investments in ISR technologies.

d) Middle East & Africa

The Middle East is a rapidly growing market for ISR systems due to ongoing conflicts and regional instability. Countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are heavily investing in airborne ISR to bolster their intelligence-gathering capabilities.

7. Challenges and Market Constraints

While the global airborne ISR market is set to grow, there are several challenges that could impede its progress:

High Costs: Developing and maintaining ISR systems, particularly advanced UAVs and manned platforms, is expensive, which can limit procurement for smaller nations.

Data Overload: The vast amount of data collected by ISR systems can overwhelm intelligence analysts and systems, making it difficult to extract actionable intelligence in time.

Cybersecurity Threats: As ISR systems become more networked, they are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks, posing a significant security challenge.

Conclusion:

The global airborne ISR market is on a trajectory of growth as nations around the world invest in enhancing their intelligence-gathering capabilities. With technological advancements in UAVs, AI, sensors, and data processing, ISR systems are becoming more efficient and capable than ever before. The increasing integration of cyber and electronic warfare with ISR platforms points to a future where intelligence operations are more automated, precise, and effective in both military and civilian applications.

As the threat landscape evolves, so too will the need for advanced ISR solutions, ensuring that airborne intelligence remains a cornerstone of national security strategies worldwide. https://aviationanddefensemarketreports.com/product/global-airborne-isr-market/

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gglasco · 2 months ago

Video

youtube

F9-COUGAR 80MM FROM HSD JETS 2ND EVER by FGFRC #aviation #rcjets #rc Simple 4 channel plane but HUGE on performance!

#youtube

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marcedrickirby · 1 year ago

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F22 - Raptor phiên bản rất nhiều tiền #RC #Planes #Aircraft #Jet #Shorts...

MARCEDRIC KIRBY FOUNDER CEO.

MARCEDRIC.KIRBY INC.

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rchobbyproducts · 4 months ago

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Flying RC Aircraft: Safety Precautions You Must Know

Flying remote-controlled planes is truly an exhilarating hobby for aviation enthusiasts. The joy and excitement it provides can bring out the child within you and enable you to indulge in endless fun. However, the dangers associated cannot be overlooked. Imagine flying an RC plane and it suddenly goes out of control and crashes in a busy street. Sounds scary, right? Indeed, it is! That is why taking appropriate safety precautions matters a lot. Whether you are flying the radio-controlled gliders or the RC jets, safety must be prioritized.

In this blog, you will explore the essential precautions to take while operating an RC aircraft. Let’s dive in!

Understand the Aircraft Basics

Having a fundamental comprehension of how RC planes function is indeed crucial to flying them safely. Before you take the aircraft to the sky, try to be familiar with the different elements like the receiver, transmitter, motor, and control surfaces. Gain an understanding of the role of each of the components and how they work together to provide a pleasant flying experience.

Select an Open Area

If you are new to the hobby, it is best to start small. Instead of flying the RC plan in a large field, you can opt for smaller areas like your backyard or a park. However, try to opt for open and unobstructed areas. The core aim is to minimize the chances of potential collisions with trees, buildings, and other objects.

Check the Weather Conditions

There is no denying that weather can have a significant impact on the flight of your remote-controlled aircraft. For instance, a strong gush of wind can make it challenging for you to control the plane and prove to be dangerous. That is why it is wise to get an idea of the weather forecast for the day before taking off. Pay attention to the direction and speed of the wind. It is always better to avoid flying during strong winds or turbulent weather conditions.

Get to Know the Remote Control

Controlling the remote-controlled gliders is the key to an enjoyable experience. For that, you must understand the remote control and its functionalities well. Go through the manufacturer’s instructions carefully and invest some quality time practicing. Moreover, getting guidance from experienced pilots can also help enhance your control proficiency. Gaining mastery over the controls can enable you to fly the RC planes more confidently and avoid potential crashes.

Ensure Proper Maintenance

Before taking the plane to the skies, inspecting the different elements of the aircraft is crucial. Check the control surfaces, wings, and fuselage and look for signs of damage or wear and tear. Ensuring all the parts are in proper condition can enhance safety significantly. Moreover, be sure to invest in regular maintenance to increase the safety and longevity of the RC planes.

Conclusion

Flying the remote-controlled gliders is a fulfilling and thrilling hobby. Are you looking for the best RC planes at competitive prices? EXHOBBY is the perfect destination for all your needs. Explore their vast collection and select the one that suits your needs the best.

Blog Source: https://rchobbyproducts.blogspot.com/2024/09/flying-rc-aircraft-safety-precautions.html

#Flying RC Aircraft #remote-controlled gliders #RC jets

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cyberbenb · 1 year ago

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Russia says it intercepted U.K. military planes over Black Sea

Two Russian SU-27 fighter jets intercepted two Typhoon fighter jets and a RC-135 reconnaissance plane from the U.K.’s Royal Air Force (RAF), Russia’s Defense Ministry told the state-run Tass media out Source : kyivindependent.com/russia-sa…

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tomorrowusa · 1 year ago

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Russia tried to shoot down a UK surveillance aircraft flying over international waters. Fortunately, the pilot was a bad shot and had defective ordnance on his plane.

A Russian pilot tried to shoot down an RAF surveillance plane after believing he had permission to fire, the BBC has learned. The pilot fired two missiles, the first of which missed rather than malfunctioned as claimed at the time. Russia had claimed the incident last September was caused by a "technical malfunction". The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) publicly accepted the Russian explanation. But now three senior Western defence sources with knowledge of the incident have told the BBC that Russian communications intercepted by the RAF RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft give a very different account from the official version. The RAF plane - with a crew of up to 30 - was flying a surveillance mission over the Black Sea in international airspace on 29 September last year when it encountered two Russian SU-27 fighter jets. The intercepted communications show that one of the Russian pilots thought he had been given permission to target the British aircraft, following an ambiguous command from a Russian ground station.

Professionalism is not something which the Russian military is known for.

One Western source told the BBC the words they received were to the effect of "you have the target". This ambiguous language was interpreted by one of the Russian pilots as permission to fire. The loose language appears to have shown a high degree of unprofessionalism by those involved, sources said. In contrast, Nato pilots use very precise language when asking for and receiving permission to fire. The Russian pilot released an air-to-air missile, which successfully launched but failed to lock on to its target, the BBC has been told. It was a miss, not a malfunction. Defence sources have told the BBC that a row then broke out between the two Russian pilots. The pilot of the second SU-27 did not think they had been given permission to fire. He is said to have sworn at his comrade, effectively asking him what he thought he was doing. Yet the first pilot still released another missile. We had been told that the second missile simply fell from the wing - suggesting the weapon either malfunctioned or that the launch was aborted.

Shooting down the RAF RC-135 Rivet Joint could very well have brought NATO directly into the war. NATO's Article 5 stipulates that an attack on one NATO country is the same as an attack on all NATO countries.

In a much more recent incident, debris from a Russian drone fell on NATO member Romania.

Romania calls for calm as debris from possible Russian drone attacks on Ukraine discovered

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, villagers from eight communities near the banks of the Danube River — which forms a border between Romania and Ukraine — received alerts to their mobile phones warning them to keep calm but take shelter, as there was a possibility of objects coming from the sky. Not long after, residents near the small Romanian village of Plauru heard explosions. "We are scared," said Elisabeta Samsanov, one of the few dozen people living in the remote community just 300 metres from the Ukrainian port of Izmail, which has become a frequent target of Russian drones in recent weeks. "One night when they dropped one after another, we came out of the house ... and it felt like an earthquake."

And earlier this year the remains of a Russian Kh-55 missile were found in Poland – another NATO member.

Poland finds Russian missile in forest 500km from Ukrainian border: report

In late April 2023, a civilian reported the presence of a rocket stuck in the ground of a forest in Zamość, close to the city of Bydgoszcz. An investigation was launched by the Polish Air Force Institute of Technology to identify the debris. According to the local media channel RMF FM, a preliminary inspection found the rocket to be a Kh-55 cruise missile. Citing military sources, the radio station reported that the cruise missile was fired during an air raid on Ukraine carried out in December 2022 by Russian aircraft based in Belarus.

A reminder that Russia has no fucking business in Ukraine. Russia started the largest war in Europe since 1945 as an imperialistic land grab. Vladimir Putin is directly to blame for all the violence and destruction that's resulted from this conflict.

If Elon Musk is worried about nuclear war then perhaps he should put pressure on his buddies in Moscow instead of sabotaging Ukraine.

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usafphantom2 · 1 year ago

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On This Day in 1964, the Legendary Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Flew For the First Time.

December 22, 2019 Military Aviation

A Blackbird takes off from Beale AFB. (Image credit: USAF)

The SR-71 was the first aircraft to feature stealth capabilities.

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird flew for the first time on Dec. 22, 1964 at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The first aircraft to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later, 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, California, in January 1966. Throughout its career, that came to an end on Oct. 9, 1999, no SR-71 was reportedly lost nor damaged due to hostile actions: the SR-71 flew above Mach 3 at 85,000 feet, with a reported top speed of Mach 3.4 during flight testing and Mach 3.5 during on an operational sortie while evading a missile over Libya.

Although most historians and experts know it many aviation enthusiasts ignore that the Blackbird can somehow be considered the first stealth aircraft ante litteram.

Here’s what this author explained in a past article titled Well Before The SR-72 Was Conceived, The Iconic SR-71 Blackbird Proved “Speed Is The Real Stealth”:

Ezoic

The Blackbird was the first aircraft to feature stealth capabilities: a special paint that contained iron ferrites and absorbed radar energy instead of returning it to the sender was used for SR-71’s wings, tail and fuselage. The reduced RCS (Radar Cross Section) made any reaction to an SR-71 overflight almost useless: the aircraft was so fast that once the radar detected it, the SAM battery’s guidance system was not able to compute the right parameters for a successful kill. Moreover, the range and bearing of the SR-71 was also denied to the enemy by jamming the radars with the use of the sophisticated electronic countermeasures (ECM) that equipped by the Blackbird.

However, in spite of its radar-evading features, what made the SR-71 almost impossible to intercept, were its incredible flight characteristics: it was able to fly at 3.5 Mach at 88,000 feet. The aircraft could climb higher than that and according to some sources the Blackbird could reach 120,000 feet and above. At that altitude, Soviet SAMs would have been unable to maneuver to hit an SR-71: the air is so thin that any maneuvering capability of a missile is practically nonexistent, as explained by the former Blackbird pilot Col. Richard H. Graham in his book “SR-71 The Complete Illustrated History of THE BLACKBIRD The World’s Highest , Fastest Plane.”

In 2012 a DARPA statement stated that America was gradually losing the “strategic advantage” that its stealth warplanes had long provided, as other countries’ stealth and counter-stealth capabilities continued to improve. For this reason, “speed is the new stealth” is a slogan that accompanied the unveiling of the SR-72 in 2013. However, the SR-71’s story is a proof that speed has always been the key to stealth.

Not only did SAMs fail to catch the Blackbird but even the fastest Soviet fighter jets, including the MiG-31 Foxhound, lacked the necessary speed to reach the SR-71.

The last flight of an SR-71 took place on Oct. 9, 1999, during the Edwards AFB Open House Airshow. Fourteen years later, in 2013, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, the legendary division that designed airplanes which represented a giant leap for their times such as the F-104, the U-2, the Blackbird family or the F-117A stealth fighter jet, revealed the existence of a sort of SR-71 replacement: a Hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike aircraft dubbed SR-72, designed for Mach 6.

The first concept artwork of the SR-72 released by Lockheed Martin in 2013.

On Sept. 27, 2017, Aviation Week reporter Guy Norris scooped the story about the landing of a mysterious, unidentified new aircraft at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 Production Flight Test Facility in Palmdale California.

“According to information provided to Aviation Week, one such [SR-72] technology demonstrator, believed to be an unmanned subscale aircraft, was observed flying into the U.S. Air Force’s Plant 42 at Palmdale, where Skunk Works is headquartered. The vehicle, which was noted landing in the early hours at an unspecified date in late July, was seen with two T-38 escorts. Lockheed Martin declined to comment directly on the sighting.”

Ezoic

In February 2018, Lockheed Martin, pushed back on reports of the SR-72’s development stating that no SR-72 had been produced. In November last year, Lockheed Martin stated that a prototype of the SR-72 was scheduled to fly by 2025. A sort-of SR-72 aircraft (or something inspired to it) is flown by Maverick (Tom Cruise) in “Top Gun: Maverick”, the sequel of the famous 1980s aviation movie.

Once operational the hypersonic strike aircraft will be able to fly about twice as fast as its predecessor. To date, the Mach 3+ SR-71 Blackbird remains the fastest, manned air-breathing aircraft ever produced.

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

@theaviationist via X

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kneedeepincynade · 1 year ago

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Genocide Joe and his cronies lie in the face of the world by saying they don't want to provoke China,but their actions tell a different story

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

🇺🇸 L'avventurismo anti-Cinese degli imperialisti statunitensi nel Mar Cinese Meridionale costituisce la causa principale dei rischi per la sicurezza aerea e marittima nella zona, ha dichiarato la Compagna Mao Ning - Portavoce del Ministero degli Affari Esteri della Repubblica Popolare Cinese 🇨🇳

🤹‍♂️ L'ipocrisia delle tigri di carta statunitensi, che inviano aerei nel Mar Cinese Meridionale e, quando vengono intercettati dai caccia dell'Esercito Popolare di Liberazione si lamentano, definendo la Cina "aggressiva", non ha fine

🇺🇸 Gli USA inviano Gruppi d'Attacco di Portaerei nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, spiano la Cina con aerei da ricognizione che si avvicinano pericolosamente a Shantou? Se la Cina risponde, allora è aggressiva, irosa ed irresponsabile. Questa è la logica dei reazionari americani🤦‍♀️

🌐 Il Mondo sa bene chi è il vero Paese irresponsabile, chi getta sempre benzina sul fuoco dei conflitti e chi promuove costantemente l'avventurismo contro Paesi sovrani e indipendenti 👍

🇨🇳 Wang Wenbin: «Gli USA sono i guerrafondai n°1 al Mondo, sono il principale violatore della sovranità e la prima fonte di antagonismo e scontro tra blocchi» 🇺🇸

一 24/02: il Comando Orientale dell'EPL intercetta un P-8A nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, e invia un Caccia di Superiorità Aerea J-11, armato con Missili Aria-Aria, per scortare l'Aereo USA al di fuori della Zona Cinese 🔥

🇺🇸 Aereo USA nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, la Cina risponde, ed è la Cina ad essere aggressiva per le tigri di carta, come si può leggere qui, su CNN: "US says Chinese jet conducted ‘unnecessarily aggressive maneuver’ intercepting US spy plane over South China Sea" 🤡

四 26/05: Il Comando dell'EPL intercetta un RC-135V nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, pericolosamente vicino alla Città di Shantou, e invia un Caccia Multiruolo J-16 per scortarlo fuori dalla Zona Cinese 🔥

🤔 Di nuovo la stessa retorica, questa volta su ABC News: "Chinese jet carries out 'aggressive' maneuver in front of US military plane, officials say" 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Gli imperialisti USA inviano cacciatorpedinieri e portaerei nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, così come P-8A, RC-135V e altri, e poi si lamentano delle conseguenze? ❔

🇺🇸 Gli USA affermano che la Cina sia una minaccia e che stia militarizzando il Mar Cinese Meridionale e l'Asia, ma la realtà mostra come, su 750 basi militari USA nel Mondo, quasi la metà siano intorno alla Cina 😡

📊 Il 42,7% delle basi USA all'estero puntano le armi direttamente al collo della Cina, dalla Base Navale di Yokosuka alla Base di Seoul, sono 313 le Basi USA con gli occhi puntati sulla Cina 😡

🇺🇸 Mappa con le Basi Militari USA nel Mar Cinese Meridionale 🗺️

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 🌟

🇨🇳 南海有一些岛屿属于中国。这些岛屿的主权属于中国，而不是日本军国主义者、菲律宾人或美帝国主义的其他傀儡。南海诸岛问题应由有关国家自行解决，不受美国反动派的干涉 🇺🇸

📄 南海各方行为准则 - Codice di Condotta nel Mar Cinese Meridionale 🤝

🏝 南海诸岛主权自古以来就属于中国领土 🐲

🌊 Mar Cinese Meridionale, teatro di scontro militare tra Cina e USA? - Parte I, Parte II ⚔️

🌟 严正以待 - L'Esercito Popolare di Liberazione è vigile e pronto per la battaglia

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan 😘

🇺🇸 The anti-Chinese adventurism of US imperialists in the South China Sea constitutes the main cause of risks to air and maritime security in the area, said Comrade Mao Ning - Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳

🤹‍♂️ The hypocrisy of the US paper tigers, who send planes into the South China Sea and, when intercepted by People's Liberation Army fighters, complain, calling China "aggressive", has no end

🇺🇸 Does the USA send Aircraft Carrier Strike Groups to the South China Sea, spy on China with reconnaissance planes that come dangerously close to Shantou? If China responds, then it is aggressive, angry and irresponsible. This is the logic of American reactionaries🤦‍♀️

🌐 The world knows well who the truly irresponsible country is, who always throws fuel on the fire of conflicts and who constantly promotes adventurism against sovereign and independent countries 👍

🇨🇳 Wang Wenbin: «The USA is the No. 1 warmonger in the world, it is the main violator of sovereignty and the first source of antagonism and clash between blocs» 🇺🇸

一 24/02: PLA Eastern Command intercepts a P-8A in the South China Sea, and sends a J-11 Air Superiority Fighter, armed with Air-to-Air Missiles, to escort the US aircraft out of the Zone Chinese 🔥

🇺🇸 US plane in the South China Sea, China responds, and it is China that is aggressive for the paper tigers, as you can read here, on CNN: "US says Chinese jet conducted 'unnecessarily aggressive maneuver' intercepting US spy plane over South China Sea" 🤡

四 26/05: PLA Command intercepts an RC-135V in the South China Sea, dangerously close to Shantou City, and sends a J-16 Multirole Fighter to escort it out of the China Zone 🔥

🤔 The same rhetoric again, this time on ABC News: "Chinese jet carries out 'aggressive' maneuver in front of US military plane, officials say" 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Do the US imperialists send destroyers and aircraft carriers to the South China Sea, as well as P-8A, RC-135V and others, and then complain about the consequences?

🇺🇸 The USA claims that China is a threat and that it is militarizing the South China Sea and Asia, but reality shows that, out of 750 US military bases in the world, almost half are around China 😡

📊 42.7% of US bases abroad point their weapons directly at China's neck, from the Yokosuka Naval Base to the Seoul Base, there are 313 US bases with their eyes on China 😡

🇺🇸 Map with US Military Bases in the South China Sea 🗺️

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 🌟

📄 南海各方行为准则 - Code of Conduct in the South China Sea 🤝

🏝 南海诸岛主权自古以来就属于中国领土 🐲

🌊 South China Sea, theater of military clash between China and the USA? - Part I, Part II ⚔️

🌟 严正以待 - The People's Liberation Army is alert and ready for battle

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collectivoshaoshan 😘

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