Since all these companies had a vast amount of experience and top notch facilities, they had no trouble in designing and building a stealth fighter. The Lockheed led team had Boeing and General Dynamics while the Northrop led team had McDonnell Douglas as their partner. There were 2 consortiums eventually formed. Hence they partnered with other major aviation firms in order to share the workload and funding. However, this was a multi-billion $ program and a single company couldn’t afford to invest that much money for a project in which one design would be rejected.
The main contenders for the ATF program were Northrop and Lockheed, who had a vast amount of experience in designing and building advanced aircraft. But this was the first time in aviation history that an operational stealth fighter was going to be built. The USAF wasn’t new to stealth technology having operated the F-117 already. More on stealth: EXPLAINED: HOW STEALTH TECHNOLOGY WORKS
Airframe made of composite materials and lightweight alloys.They wanted their new fighter to be ‘ invisible’ to enemy radar until it was too late for the adversary to react.īy 1984, the final requirements of the ATF were announced, and they are as follows. The requirement of the ATF was tailor-made to give the USAF, an unmatched fighter jet which would be better than the Su-27 and MiG-29. It would be a generation ahead of the F-15 and have features which were absent or rare in the fighters of that era. So, in June 1981, they issued an official Request for Information (RFI) for the next generation Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF). They believed that the F-15/16 would be obsolete by the beginning of the 21 st century. It all started in 1981 when the USAF felt that the newly inducted F-15 needed replacement with something way more powerful than it. Photo : USAF ORIGINS-The Advanced Tactical Fighter Program F-22 Raptor takes off during a training mission. This article will take you on a journey through the origins, development and production of the F-22A Raptor, which has captured the hearts of millions of aviation enthusiasts around the world. So its successor, a 5 th generation fighter would feature cutting edge technology and several features which were unheard of in fighter aircraft. The current 4 th generation fighters did not boast of any revolutionary new technology. They wanted to avoid this situation and have a clear and broad advantage in every conflict, before it even started. They realized that the latest Soviet fighters were on par with the latest American fighters, and any future conflict would be fought on an equal footing. It was during the height of the Cold War, that the US Air Force felt the need for a fighter aircraft which would have a ridiculous level superiority over its adversaries on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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