For every F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or F-22 Raptor that enters service, there’s a long list of competitor fighters that didn’t quite make the cut for one reason or another. Sometimes, these fighters aren’t chosen because the jet Uncle Sam ultimately picked was simply the better competitor… but that’s not always how these decisions are made.
Like all military forces, the U.S. military has to a balance capability against capacity. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you have 300 of the most advanced fighters on the planet if you need 500 fighters to accomplish your mission, so Defense officials have to balance the cost of the fighter’s advanced capabilities against the capacity (or number) of fighters they need to make mission. In this example, it might mean only purchasing 100 of those advanced fighters along with 400 cheaper, less capable platforms that can meet the mission requirements at hand.
In fact, this specific example (with different topline figures) mirrors the justification the Air Force recently provided for purchasing new F-15EXs, despite its lack of stealth capabilities. In a perfect world, the Air Force would only fly stealth fighters, but when it comes to balancing capability against capacity, stealth jets are just too expensive to buy and operate for America to transition into a stealth-only force.
Other times, fighter programs don’t survive because the Defense Department doesn’t have faith in the contractor to deliver what they promise, or because the capabilities offered by the aircraft aren’t ones the nation has a pressing need for at the time.
For whatever reason, these fighters didn’t make it into production… but if they had, they each would have offered some incredible, and often unique, capabilities.
5. F-16XL: The better F-16
For more than forty years, the F-16 Fighting Falcon has served as the backbone of the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet, but one year before the first F-16 entered service, the team behind its development had already developed a better F-16, in the F-16XL.
The fighter was so capable, in fact, that it went from being nothing more than a technology demonstrator to serving as legitimate competition for the venerable F-15E in the Air Force’s Advanced Tactical Fighter program.
Ultimately, it would lose out to the F-15E based on production cost and redundancy of systems, but many still contend that the F-16XL was actually the better platform.
While that assertion may be subject to debate, there’s little debate as to whether the F-16XL could have been one of the most capable 4th generation fighters on the planet. You can read our full feature on the F-16XL’s development here.
Related: F-16XL: Why America didn’t get the best F-16
4. A-12 Avenger II: America’s first real stealth fighter
On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II, not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s, which sought to arm an SR-71 sibling jet with air-to-air weapon systems. Once completed, the Navy’s A-12 would have been a flying wing-design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or forthcoming B-21 Raider, though much smaller.
Although the A-12 Avenger II utilized a flying wing design, its overall shape differed from the triangular B-2 Spirit under development for the Air Force.
The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname, “the flying Dorito.“
For some time, it seemed as though the A-12 Avenger II program was going off without a hitch, but then, seemingly without warning, it was canceled by Defense Secretary (and future Vice President of the United States) Dick Cheney in January of 1991. You can read our full feature on the A-12 Avenger II’s development here.
Related: The A-12 Avenger II would’ve been America’s first real ‘stealth fighter
3. YF-12: The biggest, fastest fighter in history
The SR-71 Blackbird may be among the most iconic airframes of the Cold War, but this incredibly fast design wasn’t always intended to serve only as a high-flying set of eyes. In fact, a variant of the SR-71’s predecessor program, the faster and higher flying A-12, actually had a fighter-interceptor sibling in the form of the YF-12, and eventually (in theory at least) the F-12B.
The biggest changes the YF-12 saw when compared to its A-12 sibling were at the front of the aircraft, where a second cockpit was added for a fire control officer tasked with managing the interceptor’s air-to-air arsenal.
The nose was also modified to accommodate the Hughes AN/ASG-18 fire-control radar that had been developed for use in the defunct XF-108 program.
But the most important change between the A-12 and the YF-12 came in the four bays designed originally to house powerful cameras, film, and other reconnaissance equipment. One of the four bays was converted to house fire control equipment, while the others were modified to house an internal payload of three Hughes AIM-47 Falcon air-to-air missiles. You can read our full feature on the YF-12’s development here.
Related: America’s YF-12 was an SR-71 armed with air-to-air missiles
2. ASF-14 Super Tomcat for the 21st Century
While the F-14D took on the title “Super Tomcat,” the effort to modernize the F-14 began under the moniker “ST21,” which, appropriately enough, stood for “Super Tomcat for the 21st Century,” and make no mistake — that’s exactly what it could have been, with improved avionics, more power, more range, and more capability across the board.
But while both the ST21 and AST21 were billed as re-manufacture programs for existing Tomcats along with new-build aircraft, Grumman’s pitch to the Navy eventually included an entirely new-build Tomcat dubbed the ASF-14.
The ASF-14 would have looked like its F-14 predecessors, but the similarities would have been largely skin deep.
The ASF-14, with some 60,000 pounds of thrust and a better thrust-to-weight ratio than the F-14D, thrust vector control, massive internal fuel stores, huge payload capabilities, and incredible situational awareness provided by powerful onboard radar and a multitude of sensor pods, could have been a 4th generation fighter with few — or maybe no — peers to this very day. You can read our full feature on the ASF-14 proposal here.
Related: Super Tomcat: The 21st century F-14 that would still be flying today
1. YF-23: The Raptor meets its match
In the decade and a half since it first entered service, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor has been an air superiority fighter without equal, but that hasn’t always been the case. For a short time in the 1990s, the YF-22 that would lead to the operational F-22 may have met its match in the form of Northrop’s YF-23.
Two YF-23 prototypes were ultimately built. The first, dubbed the Black Widow II by those involved with the program, was all black and powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney engines that allowed the jet to supercruise at Mach 1.43 during its first round of testing in 1990.
The second YF-23, painted grey and dubbed “Grey Ghost,” switched to General Electric YF120 engines, which offered improved supercruise capabilities, reaching Mach 1.6 in testing, just slipping past the YF-22’s Mach 1.58.
Ultimately, while the YF-23 could just about match the F-22’s acrobatics, Lockheed won the perception war by demonstrating their fighter’s capabilities in a more dynamic way. Lockheed test pilots showed off the aircraft’s ability to utilize a high angle of attack, fired missiles, and executed maneuvers that placed more than 9Gs worth of force on the airframe. While the YF-23 could have done the same, Northrop didn’t in the demonstration. Many contend that it was this salesmanship, rather than strictly platform capabilities, that helped the YF-22 stand out in the minds of defense officials. You can read our full feature on the YF-23’s development here.
Related: Could the YF-23 have been better than the F-22?
While the “showmanship” aspect of the YF-22 vs YF-23 selection has some merit, one of the significant factors in the decision to select LockMart was the ease of developing a carrier-borne variant of the F-22 as well as the planned (at the time) FB-22. The YF-23 was technically a bit more advanced, but this actually could have restricted its further development. Unfortunately, the geniuses didn’t even make more than 187 F-22As, much less an F-22N or the FB-22.
On the YF-12A/F-12B Blackbird, Kelly Johnson, then the VP/GM of the Lockheed Skunk Works, offered to sell the US Air Force 100 F-12Bs at a unit cost of $14 million USD in 1965 dollars, minus government supplied equipment; such as the Pratt & Whitney J-58, the AN/ASG-18 fire-control radar and so on. But Robert Strange McNamara, then Sec of Defense, for the Kennedy/Johnson administration, cancelled the follow-on F-12B contract. (As a note to the editor, I’m a published author working on my 29th book. My most resent book to hit the book shelves is the 384 page book with over 1100 photos and is titled…. “75 Years of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works” and I’m an acknowledged authority on the Blackbird family of aircraft.)
The F-12Bs were to be based at Wendover AFB, MA and Paine AFB, Everett, WA. Each wing would have three squadrons with fourteen F-12Bs per squadron.
On the Navy A-12, there so many problems with the A-12 Avenger II and it’s all composite airframe, even the Lockheed famed Skunk Works felt the design, and how it was built problematic. And the straight trailing edge made for a very large RCS. If you can find the book, James P. Stevenson penned a book back in the 90s called the “The $5 Billion Misunderstanding.” The real story behind the cancelled Navy A-12, Avenger II program. It’s from the Naval Institute Press.
On the Northrop YF-23, again, I asked Ben R. Rich, then the President of the Lockheed Skunk Works if he had an answer, and he did. Ben said there were a number of reasons that Lockheed got the F-22 contract, even though the YF-23 had a larger internal weapons bays, it flew faster in non-afterburning ‘Super Cruise”, and finally, the Defense Department didn’t want all low observable technology to reside in just one company, Northrop.
For James C. Goodall
I have a question that I have not been able to find an answer for on the Internet about all versions of the Blackbirds and perhaps you may know the answer to it seeing as how you have talked to Ben Rich. Rich is credited with being the head of design of the inlets on the CIA A-12 Oxcart, and is on record saying that at 3.2 Mach the P&W J-58 engines served as “pumps to keep the inlets alive”. I have read in official Lockheed Internet websites that at 3.2 Mach the inlets provided 54% of the thrust propelling the A-12 (and all Blackbirds) through the air. The J-58 provided 17% of the thrust, and the ejector 29% of the thrust. The J-58 in the A-12 generated 32,500 pounds thrust at sea level. But at higher altitudes this drops down significantly, to what I don’t know, due to I believe a decrease in density of the air. What I have been trying to learn is what is the total thrust necessary to propel an A-12 (I reference the A-12 since all the design, engineering, development, and debugging was originally done on the A-12.) at 85,000 feet and at 3.2 Mach, AND, what was the thrust contribution in pounds of the inlet, the thrust of the J-58, and the thrust of the ejector. Because of way reduced air resistance at 85,000 feet I believe that the total thrust is at 3.2 Mach and at 85,000 feet is very likely less than the thrust of the J-58 by itself at sea level. But I have never been able to find answers to these questions on the Internet. I have learned a lot about the inlets on the Blackbirds, how oblique shock waves in the inlets slow the air down to subsonic velocity and also facilitate pressure recovery which is what creates the ‘thrust’ in the inlets. But even though I’m an engineer I only had one class in thermodynamics and don’t understand the physics.
I am not an aeronautical engineer, I am a retired electrical engineer. But my interest in Blackbirds goes back to 1965. I was 18 in 1965 and remember seeing centerfolds in Hot Rod magazines of the A-12. A year later when I was 19 those centerfolds of the A-12 were one of the reasons I enlisted in the USAF in May 1966. To make a long story shorter, I got stationed at George AFB in the Mojave Desert working on F-4 Phantoms, 40 miles east of Edwards AFB. I went to an open house at Edwards in October 1967 and saw my first Blackbird. I don’t remember what it was, could have been a YF-12A, less likely it was an SR-71, seriously doubt it was an A-12 (and 100% certain it wasn’t an M21). In my last week in the Air Force I was driving off Edwards and saw a Blackbird come in for a landing.
Any thoughts or information you may have on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jim Bagge
Forgot the Northrup F-20.. even though it was a highly modified F-5 it out performed just about any plane on the planet with its advanced radar fly by wire technology.. it was so hot and maneuverable that several pilots crashed due to g-force black out..
Canceling the Bombcats by Cheney was an action bordering on sabotage . The American right blatantly favors the latrine queens even when it’s counterproductive. Turns out the Navy needs upgraded F-14s to deter China rather than overpriced wonder weapons that can’t even reach Mach 1.
The US tries to make big jumps in technology when often we would do far better with a more conventional aircraft (tank, ship, etc) and more of them. We are investing a LOT in stealth – which we have never needed and likely will never need. The stealth fighter was shot down by the Serbs after all – the Russians would also be able to shoot them down. We need more total aircraft so we can spread them out and have a reasonable number of them. How useful is the B-2 bomber since we really cannot afford to lose even one. The best purchase we have made in years is more F-15s, they will everything that we need to do for decades; after all our default bomber is the B-52. The one aircraft that we bought that was the RIGHT decision was the A-10, and the Air Force has been trying to get rid of it for years.
Two Vought products were consideration worthy.
The XF8U-3 Crusader III was a pure performance champion over the F-4 Phantom.
Also the YA-7F Strikefighter was an amazingly capable F-16/F-18 competitor on the cheap.
You forgot the F-20 Tigershark.
Yes! The F-5 and F-20 would have given us tremendous capability for a very reasonable price. The Air Force wanted bigger aircraft which meant we had far fewer. Often, we have tried to take far too large a leap in capability and wasted tremendous time and effort.