The Cool Aviation Picture 2 - Electric Boogaloo

[Ash19256]

The AX-A/FX was a program in the early to mid 1990s intended to replace the A-6 Intruder and F-14 Tomcat in the all-weather strike and air superiority fighter roles with the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet intended to serve as an interim aircraft. Unfortunately though, it fell prey to the post-Cold War peace dividend like many other programs.

Do you have any more images like this? Or a source for them? That sort of "NATF-22" type aircraft has come up in a play-by-post game I'm participating in on SB (my PC owns Grumman via a merger with Hughes Aircraft - it's a sort-of-long story) and having reference images available for at least roughly what the aircraft in question looks like would be awesome.

Either way, thank you for more or less singlehandedly creating this thread!

 

[JudgeKing]

Lockheed Martin's navalized F-22 proposal for the Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF) program.

Model of Northrop/McDonnell-Douglas proposal for navalized YF-23 as an entrant to the NATF program.

Three view image of Lockheed/Boeing A/F-X

 

[RanulfC]

Kinda always wished they'd had a modern "LWFP" decision with the YF-22/YF-23 in that the Navy would develop the YF-223 for their needs. Wasn't going to happen with the post-Cold War budgets though.

Randy

 

[JudgeKing]

Boeing Sonic Cruiser in Air Force 1 colors

Vickers Type 1180/1181 Superb

BAe Harrier being used as a troop transport

 

[JudgeKing]

General Dynamics F-111B Aardvark

AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo

Shin Kazama's F-20 Tigershark shooting down a Asran rebel fighter (Area 88)

 

[RanulfC]

Fun little note but the F-111B airframe was 'baselined' as the model for flight testing the Marquardt Mach 4 SERJ (Supercharged Ejector RamJet) engine concept with some thought to using the 'standard' F-111A airframe for the initial peroxide/kerosene version of the engine. Obviously never flew at all but...

Randy

 

[JudgeKing]

The North American Rockwell NA-335, one of the entrants to the USAF's F-X program in the late 1960s through early 1970s. Ultimately, the McDonnell-Douglas MD-199 won the F-X program and become the F-15 Eagle.

 

[paulo]

Su-47 Berkut

 

[JudgeKing]

Cutaway of the Canadair CL-246 tiltwing transport aircraft

Cutaway of the Hawker P.1121 fighter-bomber

The Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet started its life as the McDonnell-Douglas Hornet 2000 back in the 1980s when it was offered as a low cost alternative to the EFA (European Fighter Aircraft) program.

 

[JudgeKing]

F/A-18 Hornets of the Royal Navy

F-35C Lightning II of the Royal Navy

 

[JudgeKing]

The LTV V-1100 was Ling-Temco-Vought's entrant to the USAF's Lightweight Fighter Program in the 1970s. It lost out to the General Dynamics Model 401 which became the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

 

[JudgeKing]

Dassault Mirage 4000 was a French fighter aircraft intended for export. It attracted interest from Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. While neither Iran or Iraq could afford to obtain the Mirage 4000 due to the Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War, Saudi Arabia was ready to buy 300 Mirage 4000 if France built at least five pre-series planes. Unfortunately, the new French Government of François Mitterrand had no desire to build these five pre-series planes and as a result, the project did not go further.

 

[paulo]

The never-made French F-15E alternative.

 

[JudgeKing]

The Mitsubishi F-2 as it would've looked like prior to the Japanese MoD's decision to use the F-16 Agile Falcon proposal as the basis for the FS-X program.

 

[JudgeKing]

F-15J Eagle, F-2, and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet in flight by zephyr164

 

[JudgeKing]

The YF-21 and YF-19 from Macross Plus.

VF-1 Valkyrie and weapons set

VF-25F Messiah and weapons suite

 

[JudgeKing]

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress with Rolls-Royce RB.211-535 engines

RAF Vickers VC.7 in flight

Proposal for SEPECAT Jaguar wing revision

 

[JudgeKing]

General Dynamics Model 44, one of the entrants to the USN's VFX program.

Vought V-507

North American Rockwell NR-323, the only fixed wing entrant to the VFX program

 

[JudgeKing]

The Convair Model 200.

 

[JudgeKing]

Cutaway of Boeing Super Phantom proposal

Dassault Rafale in USN colors

Cutaway of F-5 Freedom Fighter with larger wings. This proposal would have larger wings that were repositioned halfway up the now shortened fuselage. The landing gear was placed in the fuselage with retraction forward leaving space for a new hardpoint, increasing the total number of hardpoints to six.