The Smithsonian's new military aviation exhibit opens on Veterans Day with three aircraft that tell the whole story

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum opens its Modern Military Aviation exhibit to the public on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. It covers U.S. military aviation from the end of World War II through the post-9/11 era, and it does that with three aircraft: an F-86 Sabre, a Bell UH-1H Huey, and an MQ-1L Predator. According to WTOP News, the gallery sits on the museum's top floor and spans the early Cold War to the drones used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For anyone new to the subject, the exhibit is a compact course in how military aviation changed after 1945. The aircraft on display are not random picks. Each one marks a shift in how American air power fought: combat over Korea, rotary-wing warfare in Vietnam, and the armed drone era that followed. According to WTOP News, curator Michael Hankins of the museum's Aeronautics Department frames it as both the broad Cold War, with the invention of nuclear weapons, and the specific conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

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