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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

The F-16 actually had a carrier demonstrator, the Vought 1600, for VFAX.

While the F16 beat the YF17 for LWF, it’s carrier version was defeated by the carrier version of the YF17 (which would become the F/A-18).

I would agree that the F16 is not a peer to the F15 or F14, the entire point of the 16 was to be a small and cheap workhorse. Not just because of the LWF program, but because that was its designers’ ethos inside General Dynamics.

The 15 is 50% heavier when empty, And the 14 more than double (though part of that is changes and reinforcements for carrier-based operations, the Vought 1600 was also quite a bit heavier than an F-16).

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> The F-16 actually had a carrier demonstrator, the Vought 1600, for VFAX.

To be clear, the Vought 1600 (a partnership with GD where Vought took on the prime role and GD became a sub, similar to the what happened with Northrop and McDonnell-Douglas with the YF-17 and F-18) never left the conceptual design phase. You won't find a Vought 1600 airframe in any museum.

> Not just because of the LWF program, but because that was its designers’ ethos inside General Dynamics.

And also on the part of the USAF instigators of the LWF program (the so-called "fighter mafia"). The interesting thing is that if you look at the combat & military exercise record of the F-15C, it contradicts a lot of what the fighter mafia took and preached as gospel, at least as far as the air-to-air theater goes. The F-16 did/does enjoy a great deal of success as a multirole fighter with a non-trivial emphasis on the ground attack role.

> The interesting thing is that if you look at the combat & military exercise record of the F-15C, it contradicts a lot of what the fighter mafia took and preached as gospel, at least as far as the air-to-air theater goes.

I dunno. Another way of looking at it is that the F-15 has never had to compete in a war the fighter mafia was designing around: specifically total war.

Israel/US vs Lebanon/Syria/Iraq was never a peer state conflict, and so allowed staged strikes or long-range AWACs-supported intercepts, both of which played to the F-15's strength, without exposing the weaknesses the fighter mafia claimed to address (feasibility of procuring large numbers and visual range dogfighting).

The F-16 was designed for a scenario where the number of F-15s became a limiting factor and where any-fighter >> no-more-fighters. I.e. NATO-vs-WP

Sure, in a pure mass vs. mass scenario where the adversary's systems are no more advanced than yours, more mass likely wins. But this is really the only scenario in which aircraft like the F-16 or F-18 give you "air dominance".

The fighter mafia tended to overextrapolate from Vietnam that systems/technology were never going to be the force multiplier originally thought, and you needed to equip lots of smart men with incredible knife-fighting ability.

The maybe underappreciated lesson from the F-15 (air-to-air variants anyway) is that the systems did indeed catch up to airframe capabilities and proved their mettle. Not just in combat with lesser-trained adversaries but also in western military exercises. Moreover the F-15 doesn't give up very much in the WVR dogfight situation either, despite a lack of fly-by-wire (until F-15SA) or lack of relaxed static longitudinal stability. I'm sure you can setup a WVR fighter maneuvers set where the F-16's characteristics give it an advantage but that is likely to be a small window in the envelope of potential engagements. The F-15's size actually ends up being a pretty sweet spot and is (ironically?) a better airframe for getting within the adversary's OODA loop.

That all being said, John Boyd is credited with keeping the F-X program from foolishly pursuing a more complex and less maneuverable design - design direction which deserves immense praise.

Compare the LWT idea the "figher mafia" proposed to what the F-16 actually is though.

It’s been nice in my opinion to see the international market for the Viper generation to maintain relationships. It’s a spiffy development imho for a really practical machine.

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