The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum will open its latest gallery, “Modern Military Aviation,” on Nov. 11. The Veterans Day debut will bring together more than 150 aviation artifacts covering nearly 80 years of American military aviation.

The gallery traces aviation from the period after World War II through the present day. Its story stretches from crewed aircraft such as the B-29 and P-51 to drones and other unmanned systems that have become prominent in modern warfare.

Michael Hankins, curator of U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps post-World War II Aviation, said the gallery focuses on the human decisions behind the technology. Even the most advanced aircraft began with people weighing needs, risks, and possibilities.

Hankins emphasized that “everything in here was designed by people making choices,” giving visitors a framework for understanding how military aviation developed. The gallery presents those choices as central to the evolution of American airpower.

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“I hope that people can start to see what some of those choices were, why some were made or not made, and how these things evolved over time through the lens of the people behind them,” Hankins said.

The exhibit also connects aviation technology with America’s geopolitical force posture. According to Hankins, it explores “and what it means for the United States to be interacting globally in this way, and how it uses these technologies to get there.”

Compressing that sweeping story into one gallery was no small assignment. “We’re covering almost 80 years of history in this room, which is a challenge to do,” Hankins said.

Among the aircraft displayed is an MQ-1 Predator drone. The aircraft was one of three Predators that were weaponized and sent into combat operations in Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

Almost directly beneath the Predator sits a fragment from one of the two commercial airliners hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The placement links the attack with a military aircraft used during the response that followed.

“We really felt strongly that we should include it because it’s hard to think of a more historically significant event, certainly of my lifetime and many of our visitors’ lifetimes, but something that really changed world history in a significant way,” Hankins said.

Preserving the damaged fragment created special challenges for the museum. Hankins said the metal appears distressed and requires careful work to prevent further degradation without changing the artifact too much.

“Our conservation department does a really marvelous job of doing all of that stuff,” Hankins said. He described staff members with advanced knowledge of chemistry, metalworking, and engineering who work to preserve artifacts for future generations.

The gallery also features a UH-1H Huey that completed multiple combat tours in Vietnam. Another major object is the specific Hycon B camera that directly contributed to the Cuban Missile Crisis while carried aboard a Lockheed U-2 aircraft.

According to the museum, that camera captured “definitive images of Soviet nuclear missile sites.” Visitors can scan through the images produced by the camera, examining the photographs that helped bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.

For Hankins, the gallery is about more than a collection of aircraft, cameras, and fragments. It examines how aviation technologies reshaped modern warfare, America’s response to threats, and the nation’s use of diplomacy.

Hankins said America’s position as a global superpower is enabled in large part by the technologies displayed inside the gallery. “The aviation technology that was developed over those 80 years is what lets America project power globally across the world.”

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