There was that time too when those Mig-29's came to shoot down the presidents Air Force 1 and those F-15's came to the rescue and took almost all of the Migs out.

It was a close call.

Still waiting for you to post a definition of "fighter" that includes the F-117 and the A-12.

It never had a mission, it was a reconfigured A-12, and the USAF never flew it on any "mission", it was cancelled.

The A-12 isn't a fighter, and I never claimed that it was.  Why do you bring it up?

As to the F-12, I posted 3 definitions already.  Do you not read the thread before you post?

So you're still dodging the question.

The fact someone thought about using a long range surveillance aircraft as an interceptor doesn't make it a fighter, any more than designating the F-117 a fighter made it one.

"The MX1554 "Ultimate Interceptor, 1954" produced the Convair F-102 that fell far short of the planned speed, altitude, and range performance. It could only fly at 677 Knots at 35,000 feet, with a maximum ceiling of 51,800 feet and 566 nautical mile combat radius. While the F-102 and its improved area-rule follow-on F-106 served as "interim interceptors," the Air Force developed further requirements for a long range interceptor. These long range interceptor requirements, first developed in April 1953, were rewritten in July 1955 and November 1956, after several attempts failed to get an acceptable proposal from competing airframe contractors.

The Air Force sought an interceptor to counter the perceived 1960 bomber threats of Mach 2.0 speed at 61,000 feet, and the revised 1963 bomber threats of Mach 2.2 to 2.7 speed at 65,000 feet. Design studies to satisfy these requirements began in 1953 at Air Research and Development Command and in industry with the MX1554 designed to achieve a Mach 4.5, 150,000 pound gross takeoff weight aircraft, but the aircraft appeared to be beyond the state of the art. So another round of design studies attempted to meet the 1955 LRI (long range interceptor) requirements. These studies called for an aircraft with a cruise speed of Mach 1.7 at 60,000 feet and combat speed of Mach 2.5 at 63,000 feet, with a gross takeoff weight of 98,500 pounds. But this aircraft would have had only marginal capability against the postulated 1963 bomber threat.

A subsequent design competition in 1955 between Lockheed, Northrop, and North American was little better than previous ones, but North American came closest to meeting the goals. North American Aviation's letter contract of 06 June 1956 called for a long range interceptor that could operate at 70,000 feet with a combat speed of at least Mach 3. The all-weather interceptor aircraft was to have two engines, two crewmen, and at least two internally carried nuclear or conventional air-to-air missiles. This Weapon System 202 configuration sported a single vertical tail and large delta wing, and was adopted in 1958 after considering iterations with as many as three vertical tails and a large canard."

It would seem, good sir, that USAF disagrees with you on that.   The mission was long-range, high altitude bomber interception.  The same mission as that intended for the North American XF-108 Rapier.  When the XB-70 Valkyrie was converted into a research program, rather than a bomber program, the economies of scale would no longer support production of the F-108, as it shared the same engines.   Hence an existing aircraft with the speed, altitude, and payload was selected to start from to develop an aircraft for that mission.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-12.htm

Mostly correct.  What were those reconfigurations?

1.  A second crew position was added for a "weapons system operator" or WSO. (This is a "clue")
2.  What did the WSO operate?  Hughes AN/ASG-18 fire-control radar.  (This is also a clue.)
3.  What weapons does the fire control radar control?  AIM-47 air-to-air missiles.  Oh look - a clue!

The modifications were those necessary to turn a recon airframe into a fighter.  Nothing shocking about that - fighters get modified for recon, and vice-versa, all through the history of powered flight.

It flew a number of missions, many for the air force - it was just never operational for its intended mission.  Funds were appropriated to by 93 production F-12B - but SecDef refused to release them.

Did the YF-12 have reconnaissance equipment? No,it carried missiles instead. Was the guy in back a Reconnaissance Systems Officer? No,he was a Weapon Systems Officer. Had it been fielded,it would have been an interceptor or by the definition of most people,a fighter aircraft. In order for the YF-12 to not be considered a prototype interceptor,or had it been funded an operational interceptor,I would have to posit that an RF-8 or RF-101 are actually fighter planes rather than reconnaissance aircraft even though they carried no weapons and that would be crazy talk.

One of us is dodging.  Its not me.  I've posted the definitions IN THIS THREAD.  You have yet to.

Apples and oranges.  Interceptors are fighters.  Unlike the F117, the F-12 has systems and weapons to engage enemy aircraft.  That's a big difference, wouldn't you agree?

Was it ever fielded?

Was a single operational aircraft ever built?

Or was it an experiment that failed because grafting a fighter mission into a reconnaissance aircraft is stupid.

LOL cut and paste.

There was never a single F-12 aircraft ever built.

So if we're now talking about fantasy airplanes...

So is the S-3 Viking a fighter?  

I bet @KA3B knows the story.

Maybe you guys could take the fight about nomenclatures somewhere else.

Your argument is quite frankly as absurd as saying that the YF-23 was not a fighter because it was not purchased.

Top Gun fan, huh?

Am I the only person in this thread that doesn't give a fuck whether the YF-12 was considered an actual fighter or not?

The main rule with debates over semantics is everyone is generally fucking wrong.

The real world doesn't like clean definitions that can be rubber-stamped onto every possible evolution of a concept.

Seriously, I can't stand the pseudo-intellectualism of nomenclature debates. The YF-12 was a purpose build aircraft for a mission that was obsolete before it went into service. It doesn't fit easily into a category because those categories are defined to be applicable to things people actually need to discuss that are in common use. Trying to shoehorn it in is a stupid debate. Final answer: It's kinda a fighter, but also kinda not...

Now can we please get back to shitting on the Soviet garbage heap that is the Mig-29

ETA: Mig-29 in it's natural state.

Shitting on a MiG-29 would improve it.

Is engaging enemy aircraft the primary mission of the Viking?

F16

No, no you're not.

I'm not sure why that hijack even happened.

More MiG-29K model mystery:

Russian MiG-29 Crash after Syria mission over the Med: More than meets the eye

Serious question - is there anything really wrong with the F-16 that will make it ineffective against the current generation of commie hardware being fielded?  Not including the latest vaporware.   Would a fully upgraded and modernized f-16 be good enough for most countries?

If a major shooting war broke out tomorrow, it seems like we should be damned glad the production lines are still open.

The F-94 and F-106 were built to do the same mission that the F-12B would have done,had it entered service. Since they were designed to do nothing but shoot down bombers and not dog fight other fighters,I suppose that you could have an autistic fit and screech that they are not "real" fighter aircraft. This would be stupid though. If the YF-12 or the F-12B that was to enter production had kept reconnaissance equipment then yes,you could say that it was "kinda a fighter but kinda not" but no, they would have had a very distinct mission and that mission only: to shoot down Soviet bombers. It would have been the American Tupolev 128,which you can argue wasn't a fighter because it was just too big and an unmaneuverable,even though it only had one job: shoot down B-52s and V bombers.

The 25 was pretty much a straight rip off of the Avro Arrow.  So the tech was from the 60s.  For the time, the Arrow was a definite air superiority platform, then the entire program was scrapped just as production was going to start.  3 years later, 25 appeared.  The RCMP just made a statement that the entire program was "decisively penetrated by the KGB at all levels".  So Avro did all the hard work, but the Soviets execution was a bit lacking.

Unsurprising on all counts.

That the KGB was able to eat the Canadians lunch, that the Arrow would have been a decent, if not exceptional single role interceptor and that MiG, even when given the blueprints, still made a decent, if not exceptional mobile SAM launcher even with another 10 years of tech development.

No.  The only way the Arrow was going to see Mach 3 is if it had a 700 mph tail wind.

Or another 10 years of tech development. We were pushing an XB-70 at Mach 3 with technology less than a decade removed from the Arrow.

I kick myself for not doing one of the MiG-25PU rides they were offering in the late 1990s to 80k feet.

Without looking down.  Mig-29

Canada isn't the US, and the US was building upon a series of indigenous Mach 2 aircraft as stepping stones - not the case with Canada.

There was quite a bit of tech transfer, and the Mach 2 aircraft we were building were worthless pigs, too.

Flanker is a good fighter, especially AESA Flanker

Probably the same thing that the "F" in F-117 stood for.

Fedex seniority number?

There was a good documentary of this showing the penetration of the Avro Arrow program, how they placed them for industrial espionage, and how they exploited the program.

I don't recall where I saw it, as it's been a few years, but it was pretty definitive.

A-5 Vigilante was already developed by the US in the 1950s, but for carrier-based nuclear attack, not high altitude interceptor.







I've seen silly claims that the F-15 was copied largely from the MiG-25, as if the Avro Arrow and Vigilante never existed:



If you look at the inlet geometry of the A-5, you see its influence on the following aircraft:

MiG-25
Concord
F-14
F-15
Su-27
MiG-29

I wonder if they include having to replace slagged engines as part of that ride?

Avro Arrow is/was/will always be a POS.  I've never heard that the Sovs stole the design from them for the Mig-25.  I have always heard that the Mig-25 was based loosely off the A-5 Vigilante, which was similar in size and layout to the Mig-25.

I would like to find the GPS coordinates of every surviving piece of the Arrow and have them put into the mix of targets for 2000lb JDAMS when the Great American-Frostback war of 20XX starts.  Then I would authorize reattacks on any remains.

The only thing the Arrow did was force the Canucks to buy MacD, and even when they went with a superior Fighter A/C manufacturer they messed up and picked the lesser of their product offerings, the Voodoo instead of the Phantom.

My grandmother's cousin, from Blakely GA flew that plane.

Attached File

The tech transfer was letting them build F-86s and DC-4s under license - not exactly a route to a Mach 3 fighter.  In addition, there is value to building a Mach 2 aircraft, even if a "worthless pig", (which, not all of them were, BTW ....) as it means you have design teams, wind tunnels, engines, material suppliers, factories, etc.  Mush easier to go from that to better hardware than starting basically from square 1.

Indeed.  Now for the bonus:  Did the F-117 have air-to air capability?  Did the YF-12?

The Canadians were far more than building knock down kits in the 1950s, and even their knockdowns were considered superior to US production models (certainly in the case of the F-86.)

The Century Series, other than the F-100, were worthless pigs...massive investments in aircraft that were single mission losers, nearly always inferior to their naval brothers, and nearly all to the F-4.

Building a fighter that is transonic in a dive =/= building a Mach 2 fighter.

Now the F-11 with the J79 would have been a real beast, and the F-4 turned out awesome, but other than that naval fighters were gutless short-legged pigs, to the point that the navy was seriously considering this ....



... as a fleet defense fighter, (speaking of "missile trucks") ...

I would submit that the -104, -100, and -106 gave good service, and even the -101 performed admirably for a long time.

-102 sucked bigly, though.

Yeah those vaunted Skyrays, Tigers, Cutlasses, and Demons were all world beaters.

The only Naval fighter that had any performance pre-F-4 was the Crusader, which had an appalling mishap rate to go along with its "gunfighter" mystique.

No worse than the -104. The Grumman Tiger and Super Tiger were decent...The P6M would have been far superior to the B-58, the later Panthers were about as good as a F-100, the -101 moderate, the -102/-106 overtaken by events.

Lol

Not really. The YF-23 was designed to be an actual air superiority aircraft. The YF-12 was a slightly modified reconnaissance plane.

I don’t give a fuck either. But it is fun to argue with people who really dogmatically take positions on things they don’t know anything about.

Thought we were discussing the Iranian f313 for a second with its advanced avionics.

F22 beware.

Air superiority is not the only type of fighter, that is a fighter - yes?