Fighter jets (and "attack" jets)

[Delvo]

OK, a bit of background first for those who might not have read a bunch about this stuff already, so if you're already familiar with our "F" and "A" planes, don't select the white text, and just skip to the questions... the white text is just there for people who aren't caught up on the basics yet so far.

The "generation" of fighter planes that the USA and some of its allies have been flying since the 1970s or early 1980s consists of the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18.

F-14 & F-15: Navy's & Air Force's heavy fighters; like all fighters, mainly meant for shooting down other planes, so they stay far from intense ground action and shoot ground targets from high above and far out or not at all; sleek & unarmored with big engines and lots of wing & fin surface to maximize speed & maneuverability; large size (for a fighter) allows them to carry lots of stuff like fuel (to give them long range), more or bigger missiles, and big fancy radar & electronics packages, at a cost in maneuverability and dollars (and increased complexity)

F-16 & F-18: Air Force's & Navy's light fighters; smaller in length, width, and height, and leaner in shape, to make them lighter, to give up some range and payload capacity in order to decrease costs and increase maneuverability; designed after the 14 & 15 to complement them as more maneuverable, simpler, lower-mainenance little brothers, but also to be cheaper & easier to produce in numbers to match the cheap Soviet Mig production numbers that could otherwise overwhelm our supply of expensive heavies alone; 18 is also made in a somewhat bigger & heavier version in response to the Navy's Congress-ordered decommissioning of the 14 last year (because 14s are complex & expensive)

(This doctrine of having two classes of fighter at any time goes back at least as far as the Vietnam war with the heavy F-4 and light F-5.)

F-22: Newest, most advanced heavy fighter; originally meant to replace 14 & 15 but plans for a Naval version got dropped before the final selection competition, so only the Air Force gets these; first squadron was delivered for full active duty last year; pilots' term for flying against other planes that came before is "clubbing baby seals" because the other planes are so helpless against a 22

F-35: Newest, most advanced light fighter; little brother to 22 incorporating some of its features; not quite yet in mass production to go into full active service, but about to be soon; planned to replace F-16, some F-18s, some foreign planes such as Harrier jumpjets, and also an American "attack" plane I haven't mentioned yet, the A-10

So, on to the discussion...

What will the Navy do now? With the cancellation of the idea of developing a Naval F-22, and then having the rug yanked out from under them by Congress with the decommissioning of the F-14 while they were still using it, the Navy now has no true heavy fighter and no prospect of getting one any time soon.. and they really like their fighters heavy so they can fly long ranges and carry big heavy missiles for shooting at ships. (Even within each weight class, they've selected heavier planes than the Air Force has for the same class; F-18 is bigger than F-16 and F-14 is bigger than F-15.) Congress said they can't have a "new" plane made to replace the 14 because of the costs of development, selection, and procurement, but did allow the "upgrading" of an existing one, the 18. So now they've got a slightly bigger but still lean version of that, which doesn't do what they want a true heavy fighter to do, and they're not happy with the step down at all. The Navy's gotten weaker (having its heavy fighters taken away) while the Air Force has gotten stronger (getting new advanced heavy fighters without even having yet lost the ones it had before). Between this and the Littoral Combat Ship that I see military hardware buffs complaining about, could it be that someone in high political office(s) just WANTS the Navy to get weaker and less important, or that the Navy's top dogs representing them to Congress are losing duels with the Air Force's counterparts in a political battle for resources?

If the Navy were ever to be able to convince Congress that it needs its heavy fighters back, the only realistic route I see to do that is to hold a new competition between the same finalists that the Air Force just picked from a while ago, because most of the money has already spent by the Air Force's advanced fighter program anyway: the 22 (with a revival of the original Navalization plan) and 23 (which, Navalized or not, was the last competitor the Air Force considered against the 22 before picking the 22... but the Navy, with their different standards, might prefer the 23). But so far, Congress isn't even letting them do THAT because of money. So is the Navy doomed to go on in this weakened state indefinitely, with its prominence and importance sliding away into the Air Force's growing auspices?

Anyway, on to the F-35...

Where did the number "35" come from? The others go in order without any big numerical gaps I can't account for, up to 23, and then there's a big gap I've never heard the story for starting at 24. The two finalists for the advanced light fighter were the X-35 ("X" being a developmental designation before a plane gets chosen and switched to "F") and the X-32 (which looked like an F-16 that had swallowed a bus!). So what happened to 24-31 and then 33 and 34? There couldn't have been that many competitors/proposals for the advanced light fighter program before it was narrowed down to the finalists, could there? Do these numbers result from some other country's or countries' naming scheme(s), since the project is international rather than just American?

Also, about the international nature of the F-35: are we holding back some technology from it that's in the 22 but which we don't want other countries seeing yet? If so, why not keep it and its technology ours alone (or just ours and the UK's) and get a more advanced plane? The other countries' financial contributions are pretty small.

The 35's STOVL version swings it jet outlet downward for taking off, landing, and hovering; can any version swing it upward a bit from the "straight back" position in forward flight, and can this be used for maneuvering? (The 22 can do this, but doesn't even have STOVL ability; its thrust vectoring is just there for the in-flight dogfighting maneuverability alone. It seems like it would be a bit of a waste to build thrust vectoring into at least some or all 35s and not take this one more little next step from there when its bigger brother does have it.)

Last but not least (in fact maybe "most of all"): How can a fighter replace an A-10? An A-10 is a dedicated "close air support" plane for aiding our infantry, cavalry, and artillery against the enemy's equivalent stuff, up close and personal while the ground battle is going on, where the plane stands a good chance of getting shot at from the ground. It's got lots of armor, the ability to fly with big chunks blown off, low stall speed (to let it fly slower and stay on a scene longer than a fighter could without just passing by too soon due to high speed), and a big ol' honkin' gun that fires big ol' honkin' really dense ammo, in addition to being able to carry numerous small bombs, missiles, and multi-rocket firing pods. Fighters lack armor (to save weight) and have a smaller gun and lighter ammo (to save weight and because they're meant for shooting at other fighters, which are also unarmored targets like themselves), and, being designed for high top speed, naturally come with a higher stall speed along with that (so they can't slow down to linger near a ground battle scene). These are all bad traits for the A-10's kind of job. The F-35 is stealthy to radar, but how important is that? Close air support is a role where the enemy will use their eyeballs and ears and infra-red to find you anyway because you're already so close that radar's not needed (and stealth tends to fail at such short distances anyway because it doesn't make you radar-invisible, it just shortens the distance from which you can be seen by radar). In a way, the A-10 is already stealthier for the circumstances, because enemy troops on the ground are more likely to use heat-seeking missiles than radar-guided missiles, and the A-10's engines (deliberately) vent over the top of the horizontal tail surfaces, which obscure the engines' heat signature... and the F-35's engine exhaust is exposed, making it easier to see and shoot at with typical ground-troop equipment at than the A-10's are. Radar stealth like the F-35 and F-22 possess is meant for a specific context, and this isn't it. The only design feature I see in the 35 that looks like it might be influenced by the close air support role at all is the gun bore being at most a compromise, halfway between the size of an A-10's gun and the size of the smaller gun carried by all other American fighters... but that just means, from the close air support perspective, that it's just lighter and weaker than the A-10's anyway.

The Air Force hasn't ever really liked the A-10 and has apparently tried to get rid of it a couple of times even though it's proven effective at its role (whether because its role is too Army-centered and thus not something they care about, or because it doesn't have that sleek look and high speed and acrobatic ability that Air Force guys think are cool, or something else). Given that and the apparent lack of close air support traits (and essentially complete dedication to air-to-air fighting traits) in the A-10's supposed replacement, it seems like they're just pulling a stunt here, trying to convince people it's OK to let the A-10 go because its replacement is here now, without having to actually make anything that really replaces it. Can anyone give me a reason to think that's just too cynical? Is there something I don't know about the F-35's close air support ability? And if so, how could such a trait possibly not be detrimental to its performance as a fighter, since those are such different roels for planes to serve?

[Trebuchet]

The F-35 designation came about because the prototype was X-35. Which should of course have been YF-twenty-something. Or A-something, as a "strike" fighter the A designation would have been justified. For a time the F-22 was being referred to as F/A-22 which was a sham. At least that got dropped.

The Air Force has never liked nor wanted the A-10 (it doesn't look cool enough) and were trying to get rid of it before the first gulf war. The only thing wrong with it is the writing on the side. It should say "U.S. Army". The Marines could also use it. Unlike the Harrier, it can actually survive combat damage.

[SockMonkey]

Nope, I don't think that's cynical at all.
Back in the old days the air force was the army air corps and took it's orders from the army. The air force still chafes from that. It makes sense for the A-10 to take orders directly from the army in it's CGS role and that just chafes the air force's behind.

Granted this is not the whole reason and I've waaaay simplified it but it's there.

[Ronald Brak]

Isn't more close air support going to be done from drones?

[HenrikOlsen]

If you could make a drone you can put a halfway decent gun on, you might have been right.

[Ronald Brak]

If you could make a drone you can put a halfway decent gun on, you might have been right.

A request for more information might have been right?

[Delvo]

Unmanned flying weapon platforms for either close air support, farther-away bombing/striking missions, or air-to-air fighting might come someday. But the current state of drone technology isn't up to the tasks yet. (Some have said that the F-22, which is supposed to be the USA's main "front-line" manned fighter for at least 30-40 years, could end up being the last, because by the time it gets a successor, that would be an unmanned vehicle.) Personally, I don't think it would be good because you'd have to either give the thing too much onboard computing power or make it subject to remote control signals that can be interfered with by the enemy.

[Ronald Brak]

Thanks Delvo, although I'm not sure what you mean by too much computing power. When one considers the rate at which computing power drops in price and the cost of training pilots I don't imagine it will be long before A.I. is more cost effective.

[Delvo]

My concern with that is not over cost effectiveness, but over other issues with what amounts to artificial intelligence, which would be the subject for a completely different thread.

[Delvo]

The F-35 designation came about because the prototype was X-35.

The question, though, is why that number.

Which should of course have been YF-twenty-something.

I'm not clear on the difference, so I'm not willing to say that was a problem. The 22 and 23 have had BOTH of those designations at different times, so I took them to indicate different stages of the process: first development and initial tests and tweeking, then final prolonged in-depth competetive evaluation.

The Air Force has never liked nor wanted the A-10... It should say "U.S. Army". The Marines could also use it.

So why IS it an Air Force plane? It seems to me like even the Army and Marinies would rather have it themselves than go through the Air Force, and having something's ownership and command be in the hands of the people who really use it for themselves, the people it's really meant for, is just more efficient management for all concerned.

Granted this is not the whole reason and I've waaaay simplified it but it's there.

What other reasons are there?

I just think that, if the Air Force doesn't want the A-10 or any other true close support aircraft, then going about it this way is weird. It's like trying to fool someone because it's dishonest, but it's too transparent to actually fool anyone. And in the meantime, any concessions to the "attack" role that do get incorporated into the F-35 just to keep up the pretense can only be detrimental to what they really want it for. For example, armor would make it less agile if it had it. And that gun is bigger than the gun that other fighters carry, which means it's deviating from the size that they already decided long ago was the right size for a fighter (adding weight in both gun and ammo, and presumably introducing extra recoil when it's fired). You'd think that if the reason the Air Force dislikes the A-10 is that it just loves its fighters, then they'd want to AVOID doing things like that to one of their precious fighters!

[mugaliens]

OK...

Lot's errors in the assumptions, here, so am going to have to address this issue piecemeal:

F-14 & F-15: Navy's & Air Force's heavy fighters; like all fighters, mainly meant for shooting down other planes, so they stay far from intense ground action and shoot ground targets from high above and far out or not at all

Both are capable of, and dropped, many of the guided munitions during both the Gulf War and OIF/OEF.

sleek & unarmored with big engines and lots of wing & fin surface to maximize speed & maneuverability

More wing/fin surface results in less speed, but more maneuverability - get your aerodynamics right.

F-22: Newest, most advanced heavy fighter

"Heavy?" Hardly, as it's weapons capacity sucks.

but plans for a Naval version got dropped before the final selection competition...

Never heard of a Naval version of the F-22...

F-35: Newest, most advanced light fighter; little brother to 22 incorporating some of its features; not quite yet in mass production to go into full active service, but about to be soon; planned to replace F-16, some F-18s, some foreign planes such as Harrier jumpjets, and also an American "attack" plane I haven't mentioned yet, the A-10...

Yet the A-10 what?

Regardless, the F-35 appears in three varients, the USAF varient with smaller wings, the USN varient with a reinforced body designed to handle the forces of a carrier landing, and the USMC varient with VTOL capability provided by a center fan.

What will the Navy do now? With the cancellation of the idea of developing a Naval F-22, and then having the rug yanked out from under them by Congress with the decommissioning of the F-14 while they were still using it, the Navy now has no true heavy fighter and no prospect of getting one any time soon.. and they really like their fighters heavy so they can fly long ranges and carry big heavy missiles for shooting at ships. (Even within each weight class, they've selected heavier planes than the Air Force has for the same class; F-18 is bigger than F-16 and F-14 is bigger than F-15.) Congress said they can't have a "new" plane made to replace the 14 because of the costs of development, selection, and procurement, but did allow the "upgrading" of an existing one, the 18. So now they've got a slightly bigger but still lean version of that, which doesn't do what they want a true heavy fighter to do, and they're not happy with the step down at all. The Navy's gotten weaker (having its heavy fighters taken away) while the Air Force has gotten stronger (getting new advanced heavy fighters without even having yet lost the ones it had before). Between this and the Littoral Combat Ship that I see military hardware buffs complaining about, could it be that someone in high political office(s) just WANTS the Navy to get weaker and less important, or that the Navy's top dogs representing them to Congress are losing duels with the Air Force's counterparts in a political battle for resources?

Sorry, but all I read here is WAH-WAH-WAH.

From what I know (my Dad's a retired Navy O-6 and I know active O-9s), the Navy selected the F-35 as their most viable option, while realizing that the super Hornet is merely a stopgap, but one that might well continue for several decades (it's a very good airplane).

Where did the number "35" come from?

Beats me. What in the world does this have to do with anything relavant to the topic at hand???

The 35's STOVL version swings it jet outlet downward for taking off, landing, and hovering; can any version swing it upward a bit from the "straight back" position in forward flight, and can this be used for maneuvering? (The 22 can do this, but doesn't even have STOVL ability; its thrust vectoring is just there for the in-flight dogfighting maneuverability alone. It seems like it would be a bit of a waste to build thrust vectoring into at least some or all 35s and not take this one more little next step from there when its bigger brother does have it.)

The USMC version of the 35's STOL was a mission requirement not common to the F-22. The USMC's F-25 STOL capability was a requirement for ingressing and egressing short/non-existent landing fields. The F-22's maneuvering nozzels were a requirement of it's role as an air superiority fighter. Are you not able to understand the difference? If you're not, then why would you be raising so much flack about issues about which you have no understanding?

Last but not least (in fact maybe "most of all"): How can a fighter replace an A-10?

All I know is that an A-10 decked the F-14 on our B-52 *** as we ingressed a Red Flag target at the ranges north of Nellis AFB back in 1993.

Questions?

Nope, not taking questions at this time. Just go figure, and I think the gist of this guy's pedantic nonsense rant is pretty much done for.

Copy?

Out.

Sheesh....

[Moose]

The question, though, is why that number.

Pretty much the same thing that happened to the F-5 through F-13.

Every serious proposal to build a fighter would have been designated with a number. Even if no prototype was ever built, even if it never passed the model aircraft stage, it likely would have gotten a number.

The XF-17, for example, was the loser of a competition that resulted in the creation of the F-16. There are a few F-17s out there, last I'd heard, and they're mostly used as Red Team "Migs".

But ultimately, and as a civilian fan-boy I may well be utterly wrong in anything other than this next bit: the numbers are arbitrary.

[tbm]

A request for more information might have been right?

It would take a BIG drone to carry the Avenger GAU-8 30mm cannon into battle. That weapon is umatched in the ability to puree any armored vehicle in the world.

In most cases, the A-1 Skyraider would be a better choice for close support than any other jet besides the A-10. Loiter time and survivability are far more imortant than speed when it comes to CAS.

I think the Navy will rue the decision to mothball the F-14. It still is an incredibly able weapons platform for both attack and fleet defence. It's long range Phoenix missle will be missed.

The F-18 Super Hornet is indeed a fine plane. But it is an incremental improvement, not a quantum improvement that the F22 promises. Supersonic cruise and stealth are just not the F-18s bailiwick.

The army needs a good CAS aircraft. Their helos are just too fragile to stay over the battlefield for any length of time. Just look at how many have been shot down or severly damaged by simple ground fire and RPGs.

tbm

[SockMonkey]

So why IS it an Air Force plane? It seems to me like even the Army and Marinies would rather have it themselves than go through the Air Force, and having something's ownership and command be in the hands of the people who really use it for themselves, the people it's really meant for, is just more efficient management for all concerned.

IIRC it's an old rule that goes back to the old air force/army rivalry that says something like "if it's pistons or turboprop it can be army but if it's a straight jet it's air force".

Slight side note: The A-10 has impressive psychological impacts too. Various articles I've read can be summed up by saying foes are scared to death of the thing.
Planes like the B-2 creep them out in the "always worrying about it in the back of your head" way, while the A-10 is scary in a "there's a train coming and I can't move in time" way.

[Lianachan]

I have it at the back of my mind that to add weapons to an unmanned drone is actually illegal.... is this the case?

[Delvo]

Lot's errors in the assumptions, here, so am going to have to address this issue piecemeal

...and yet you didn't actually point out any.

Both are capable of, and dropped, many of the guided munitions during both the Gulf War and OIF/OEF.

Like I said.

More wing/fin surface results in less speed, but more maneuverability - get your aerodynamics right.

That does not contradict what I wrote. Get your reading comprehension right.

"Heavy?" Hardly, as it's weapons capacity sucks.

Weights & weapons:

F-14
Empty weight: 42000 pounds
Loaded weight: 61000 (difference from empty: 19000)
Maximum takeoff weight: 72900 (difference from empty: 30900)

F-15:
Empty weight: 28000
Loaded weight: 44500 (difference from empty: 16500)
Maximum takeoff weight: 68000 (difference from empty: 40000)

F-22:
Empty weight: 31670
Loaded weight: 55352 (difference from empty: 23682)
Maximum takeoff weight: 80000 (difference from empty: 48330)

All can carry at least 8 missiles/bombs at a time, although it might be up to 10 with the F-15. Most load configurations for the F-22 have 8; one goes up to 12.

Never heard of a Naval version of the F-22...

Well, now you have.

Yet the A-10 what?

I was wrong. You don't have a reading comprehension problem. You take perfectly easy-to-understand things and put on a childish pretense that they're not. It's not a reading comprehension problem but an attitude problem.

Sorry, but all I read here is WAH-WAH-WAH... the Navy selected the F-35 as their most viable option, while realizing that the super Hornet is merely a stopgap, but one that might well continue for several decades (it's a very good airplane).

Yes, they've got good options in the light and "medium" fighter roles. That doesn't answer what they'll do about the heavy fighter role.

Beats me. What in the world does this have to do with anything relavant to the topic at hand???

A question that's asked in the first post of a new thread IS, by definition, the topic at hand. Who is anybody else but the author of the first post, to decide something isn't? (Maybe you should move the "s" at the end of your psudonym to the beginning.)

The USMC version of the 35's STOL was a mission requirement not common to the F-22. The USMC's F-25 STOL capability was a requirement for ingressing and egressing short/non-existent landing fields. The F-22's maneuvering nozzels were a requirement of it's role as an air superiority fighter. Are you not able to understand the difference?

Are you? You just said exactly the same things I said when asking the question in the first place.

The 22's thrust vectoring nozzles can go up or down, but only by a narrow angle (20° each way I think, which would total 40). The 35's can go at least 90° down. That proves that the nozzle can swing, while in use, at least as widely as the ones on the 22. The difference in the reasons why they have those abilities don't change the fact that, since the 35's exhaust can be redirected at an angle at least as wide as the 22's, the potential is there to make one that swings both up and down for VIFF (vectoring in forward flight) maneuvering. The question is whether that opportunity to enhance the plane's maneuverability with what would seem to be a fairly minor adjustment has been taken, not whether or not it's the original purpose for the slightly different F-35 thrust-vectoring that I do know of.

why would you be raising so much flack about issues about which you have no understanding?

I have raised no flak. You keep trying to. Fortunately, I am not you.

All I know is that an A-10 decked the F-14 on our B-52 *** as we ingressed a Red Flag target at the ranges north of Nellis AFB back in 1993.

What does one plane "decking" another plane, on another plane's "***", mean? Did the A-10 "shoot down" an F-14 which was pursuing the B-52 (on its "butt")? I know that A-10s can carry an ECM pod and a cople of Sidewinders, but how this story relates to my questions is not clear...

[Musashi]

I have it at the back of my mind that to add weapons to an unmanned drone is actually illegal.... is this the case?

It has already been done, so my guess is no.

[SockMonkey]

From what I've seen the 35's nozzel redirects a little slowly compared to how fast it would have to for agility purposes.

[Serenitude]

Everyone - please remember civility. Post and respond with respect. It's getting a little out of hand with the insults. No warnings, but keep it in mind

[MrClean]

Predator Drone took out a number two Al-queda man with a guided missle. Could have gotten more if some well known newspaper hadn't been told that we were tracking folks with their cell phones. Not that the news media has our defeat in mind, they just have a good habit of helping the enemy every chance they get.

[Ronald Brak]

MrClean, your last post has plenty of potential to derail this thread.

[BigDon]

Delvo, After bootcamp and training I spent 3.5 years working on Tomcats in VF-211 (Now VFA-211 *heavy sigh*). Their weapons systems and avionics. Tomcats actually have several tons of titanium armour around their engines. Not so much to protect them from external threats but to keep the bird from being cut in half by its own turbines in the event of catastrophic engine failure. I've seen birds come back home where you could look down the intake and see daylight.

One weird effect that's almost surrealistic is when the lead turbine tries to climb out the intake. As the spinning turbine tries to climb out the intake, the outer edge of the fan blade embeds in the intake wall and snaps off at the base. So you end up with a helical spiral of turbine blades stuck in the intake wall from back to front. With the hub itself laying in the bottom of the intake.

The intakes on a Tomcat are square and they have a wide section in the middle that sort of bellies out at the bottom. Quite comfortable to sleep in BTW. Just be sure to sleep in the starboard intake. The port side intake has an ice sensor that one, will poke the hell out of you and two, was brittle and easy to snap off accidently.

As far as wing area, Tomcats had that serious variable wing. We could dogfight anything in the sky at the time. (I don't know the F-35 at all) But we definately could eat up anything the Airforce or Navy could throw at us at the time. And thats without using the Phoenix. The very best anyone ever did against us was to die 4 to 1. Elite Airforce squandron out of Japan. Normally they died at 7 to 1 to 12 to 1.

[Delvo]

I have it at the back of my mind that to add weapons to an unmanned drone is actually illegal.... is this the case?

You might be thinking of a case in which a small drone with a missile or two had a nifty target in its sight and could have fired, but wasn't allowed to because the team controlling it had to wait while they tried to call someone back in the USA for permission to fire.

I don't know whether the legal issue there was that it was a drone and drones work with extra restrictions that piloted planes don't have, or that the flight had been defined as a recon/spying mission and not a shooting mission so firing at an unexpected target of opportunity would have violated the plan and the mission type, or something else. I heard later that the people who write the rules were trying to redo that one to making "getting permission to fire" less of an obstacle, but I never heard the outcome.

[Musashi]

That sounds like an ROE problem.

[SockMonkey]

Was abandoning the whole swing-wing concept more a matter of policy trends or technological limits?

[MrClean]

MrClean, your last post has plenty of potential to derail this thread.

Just the facts Jack.

Predator drone following a cell phone took the guy out. We 'inadvertantly' told our targets how we were following them. It's an oopsies on somebodies part, somewhere.

[Nicolas]

Pretty much the same thing that happened to the F-5 through F-13.

Every serious proposal to build a fighter would have been designated with a number. Even if no prototype was ever built, even if it never passed the model aircraft stage, it likely would have gotten a number.

The XF-17, for example, was the loser of a competition that resulted in the creation of the F-16. There are a few F-17s out there, last I'd heard, and they're mostly used as Red Team "Migs".

But ultimately, and as a civilian fan-boy I may well be utterly wrong in anything other than this next bit: the numbers are arbitrary.

You had YF-16 and YF-17 competing for a light, all weather fighter with bombing capacity. YF-16 won and became F-16. YF-17 was very good as well, and hence the design was picked up by the Navy and became F-18.

btw I'm still amazed at the range and weapons capacity of a fighter as small as the F-16. F-16XL would have even further increased that, but would have lost a bit of the "small" aspect .

[Delvo]

Japan has developed an enlarged F-16 they call F-2. The idea is to get the size, range, and payload of a "heavy fighter" but keep the simpler design of the F-16 and thus make the plane a bit cheaper than some other more complex heavy fighters, while possibly also taking advantage of the aerial agility of the F-16's overall design.

If anyone's wondering what happened to the other "missing numbers" that I said earlier are already explained and thus not a mystery at all, here it is...

19 was not used. The company making the next plane after 18 asked for 20 instead, and the government agreed to let them use it. Maybe the company thought a "round number" would sound better than a highish prime number. Or maybe they wanted to avoid the religious, cultist, numerological, and superstitious meanings of the number 19. They never really did explain it.

20 was a small, light, cheap, single-engine fighter (based on the old F-5's fuselage) that never found buyers because it was too much like the F-16 and everybody who wanted something like that was getting the F-16 instead. Only five demonstrators were made.

21 wasn't even made by an American company or ever intended to be used in American regular service, so I'm not sure why it got a number. It's a small Israeli plane which Israel called "Kfir", which the USA bought a couple dozen of just to stand in for "enemy planes" during training flights.

22 and 23 were the finalists in the Air Force's advanced fighter selection program.

That's why there's a question about what happened at 24 and after. That's not only the only skip I don't know the explanation of, but also by far the largest skip.

[Larry Jacks]

Pretty much the same thing that happened to the F-5 through F-13.

Not exactly. Back in the 1960s in one of the few worthwhile things he ever did, SecDef McNamara ordered the Navy and the Air Force to reconcile their naming conventions. Up until that time, the Navy used a fairly complicated naving convention based on the mission type, the manufacturer, and the number of planes of that category that the manufacturer had produced. So, an F11F Tigercat was the 11th Fighter (the first F) that Grummand (the second F) had produced for the Navy. There was the Vought F-8U Cursader that was still in service at the time, so it was designated the F-8. The F4H Phantom became simply the F-4 (it was named the F-110 by the Air Force for a short time when it was being evaluated). This naming order must have come after the F-111 Aardvark was under development.

It seems the deciding factor for future designs is more versitility in multiple missions than excellence in a single one. The F-14 was designed as a fleet defense interceptor and it excelled in that mission. In its last 10 years of so of service, it also carried bomb racks for the air-to-ground mission. However, towards the end it was just getting too difficult and expensive to maintain. I've read that it required something like 40-50 man-hours of maintenance for every flight hour.

The Air Force's F-15 comes in 3 basic versions. The F-15C & F-15D are single and two seat (respectively) air superiority fighters. I've never seen bomb racks on either of those. The F-15E is an interdiction aircraft designed to penetrate deep into enemy territory and drop bombs while still having an air-to-air capability.

The F-22 is just now entering service. Its combination of stealth, very advanced avionics (especially the radar which may be usable as a weapon in its own right), advanced maneuverability, and high speed make it a very formitable air superiority fighter. It can also carry at least the same internal bombload as the F-117. Using Small Diameter Bombs, it may be able to attack as many as 8 different targets on a single mission. There was discussion of a Navy version of the F-22 but I guess it was too expensive. It was dropped some time ago.

The F-16 and F-18 are fighter/attack aircraft with more emphasis on attack than air-to-air fighting. They're more versitile than the F-14 and F-18, with the added advantages of being cheaper to buy and operate and more reliable (needs less maintenance).

The A-10 has met a lot of resistence from what some call the "figher mafia" (those in the Air Force who want fighters more than anything else). After many years of grudging respect, the Air Force is getting ready to field the A-10C upgrade to all of the planes in service. This upgrade will extend the plane's operational life and capabilities until about 2028.

Why they skipped from the YF-23 (Northrup's ATF prototype designation) to the F-35 is something of a mystery but one I don't lose any sleep over. The Air Force version of the F-35 made its first flight late last year. It's still in the early phases of flight testing. The Navy version will have larger wing area and a beefed up structure to handle carrier operations. They'll be very similar in many ways, especially in the most expensive parts (engines, avionics, basic systems, weapons systems). The STOVL version is intended for the Marines and the UK but the Air Force has expressed interest in buying a few hundred of them as A-10 replacements. All of these versions can carry a pretty good weapons load internally (for stealth reasons). For mission where were stealth isn't required, they can carry weapons externally on conventional bomb racks.

Whether you can replace a super rugged plane like the A-10 with a fighter type is open to debate. The Air Force fighter mafia proposed making an A-16 version of the F-16 back in the 1980s but that idea didn't go anywhere. Getting down and dirty with the ground forces means you're going to get hit. Stealth might help some but I doubt it'll be enough to completely avoid getting hit. You don't necessarily need a 30mm cannon to take out armor. I read of cases where Bradley armored fighting vehicles managed to take out a few MBTs (T-72s, IIRC) using a 25mm chain gun firing depleted uranium.

[scotsman]

This is a one thread I can actually get involved with .

A-10 - the A-10 fleet is presently in the process of upgrading to the C standard - the process involves re-winging the fleet , and adding the ability to use the current generating targeting prods such as LANTRIN/LIGHTNING/SNIPER - partly to reduse the blue on blue problems that have occured in the past , and partly to allow the A-10 to use longer ranged stand off weapons, to avoid coming into the range of small arms MANPAD anti aircraft weapons.

All this represents a fairly substantial investment in an aircrft the USAF didn't want!

As for the whole heavy/Vs light fighter argument . I don't beleve it did start in the Vietnam period , it was very much a product of the "Fighter Mafia" work in the 70's to introduce smaller more agile aircraft. Their belief that despite being built as a pure Fighter , the F-15 was still too big, and a smaller more agile aircraft was required , hence the develpemnt fo the F-16. and its naval counterpart the F/A-18 .

As time has gone on , its become apparent that the F-15C really is the predominant fighter in the sky, (105-0 kill ration comes to mind), and the need for the F-16 to retain its austere avoinics fit to save weight was unecessary - hency its development into a massivly capable strike fighter , the latest BLock 52+ for the UAE, and Greece among others are light years removed from original block 5-10's from the mid 70's

The retirement of the F-14 is a a huge loss to all those of us who flew model tomcats round the room humming the theme to Top gun, but capable as the basic airframe was , without re-opening the production line and building a fleet of brand new F-14's the fleet really had to be retired. Maintence requrements were becoming huge , with something like 200 man hours of maintenance effort required for one operational sortie.

The combination of F-14 , and LANTRIN targeting system , done on a shoe string was a brillaint effort ensuring that the fleet stayed operational , with a real role to do throughtout the '90's , but without that role , the F-14 would have been a distant memory by 1997 , let alone 2007

What I think the original posters seemed to miss is that modern combat aircraft have become , in the wonderful phrase from The Simpsons "Delivery Vectors", the weapons are key , what drops them, so long as they can interface with the weapon, pass the correct coordinates to it , and release it at the correct time, the actual aircraft is unimportant. You could drop GBU-38 class weapons from a Tanker and it wouldn't matter - hence the fact that the B-52 is still in service , and likley to remain so for the forseeable future .

The F-22 is an intresting case , there's no doubting the fact that is offers a massive imrovement in all aspects of air to air warfare , compared to the F-15C , and exercises such as the recent Red Flag have confirmed it . however it also incorporates, according to USAF spokesman, and Raptor crews better jamming/ELINT capabilities than the old F-4G Wild Weasles, and with the addition of the new Small Diamater Bomb the ability to target , and destroy multiple ground targets , being able to "Kick in the Door" , allowing the conventional strike aircraft to operate unopposed.

Again its the weapons , not the aicraft that's increasingly important . That's also the main reason for the Super hornet reigning supreme in carrier air wings , the ability to both reach out and destroy air to air threats , while still being able to attack ground targets , at the same time . It may not be an elegant soloution, and compared to the Tomcat suffers from a serious charism bypass , it still is a better all round aircraft in the long run.

Oh and as to why Variable Geometry dropped out of favour , simple too heavy for the benefits accrued, all 3 main VG aircraft in the west, F-111, F-14 and the tornado have large heavy beams that hold the wings on , the weight of which eats into the overall performace of the aircraft, the improvent in performance with the introduction of FBW controls effectively killed VG dead as a concept.

Why 35 - well X-34 and 35 were the next numbers in the X series , they were issued to Lockheed and Boeing , for their technology demonstrators, and when the winner was announced as the X-35 , it became an obvious step for it to become the F-35 ...

Sorry for the rambling reply ....