How did they improve so massively from the F-4 to the F-15 to the F-22?

Edit: I just realized this is a self-promotion to drive clicks to the posters blog @dang

This “article” is simply taking some numbers from Wikipedia and tossing them in a word salad with a single excel chart.

The difference is the computing power available increased, allowing for better solutions. The money being available is also a key factor.

It’s not terribly complicated; we iterated on ideas, tried new things, and had far more computing power and more mature tools.

That affected the materials science that this all relied on in similar ways.

> So, the reason, at some level, is government committing large sums of money over a long term into engine research and development.

That's a rather bold statement about a government that's had a 42-year hardcore ideology of free markets, and shifting DoD to civilian contract labor. Not to mention that the US government is constitutionally constrained to budgeting yearly.

A huge part of this was computers. The AWG-9 and the Phoenix missile changed everything about air combat. The APG-63 and AMRAAM sealed the deal on the F-15. The rest was just improvements through massive economic investment during the cold war era.

I don't know, F-4 was a darn good camera! Never heard about F-15 and F-22.

That's a bad chart....