The jump from the YF-23 to the F-35 is easily explained, if a little hard to understand why.

It is simply the changing of the role identity letter of the Experimental X-35 to the fighter F-35. I don't know why the X-35 couldn't lead to the production fighter 'F-24' but there it is.

Also ghost, your list of US fighters has too many gaps as you have missed off several aircraft, McDonnell F-3, Douglas F-10 and Grumman F-11 being three of them. I don't know how many more you missed but those are the ones I noticed straight away.

No, it was never named the F-19, that's just what the press assumed it would be... technically it's a bomber anyway so wouldn't have had the "F" prefix. The fact it's now F-117 really was just because that's what people called it, so they went with it.

Yep, as far as I know, the F-117 has always been called such by those working on it...way before public acknowledgement.... It was the press, not Lockheed, that went with the F-19 designation...

perhaps the northrop design that competed against the F-117 was the mystery designation.

the airforce had two designs for a stealth plane, one from lockheed and one from northrop. the lockheed design won out at the radar range, thus the northrop design never made it to proto-type. the lockheed design was then made into the have blue aircraft, then eventually into the F-117.

Ben Rich put out a book that is describes this and other things at lockheed. if you are going to talk the talk, it is better to read the books that the people who built the things wrote, than fiction from a best selling author.

still, this doesn't truly answer the question, it just points out that there were two competing designs for the F-117.

The paint exists..it is real...but it is used in more than just aircraft.
Also someone had it correct...the paint is just part of a "system" of features designed to work together to conceal. Electronically as well as visually. This is not new information. Thanks Orangetom

Good point Ghost!

The F-19 design isn't too far off from the Have Blue design though.

The Aurora was supposedly called F-121 Sentinal according to some sources.

XST is eXperimental Stealth Technology?

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
Good point Ghost!

XST is eXperimental Stealth Technology?

No, but that is one of the most common myths about Have Blue. XST actually stands for eXperimental Survivability Testbed. (Don't feel bad, it took me six years to learn that)

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

I had that model when I was a kid. I had a flight simulator for the Commodore 64 called "F-19 Stealth Fighter" where you got to fly one on missions over Europe and the Middle East.

I'm sure I read somewhere soon after the F-117 was released that the whole F-19 was a brilliant misinformation campaign by the AF to hide the F-117 when it started to receive a lot of press. The F-117 had several crashes and was in the news a lot. The popular theory was that a stealth aircraft would be rounded so radar would reflect off of it. As we all know, the F-19 pictures show a long aircraft with graceful curves while the F-117 is short and stubby with all hard angles. Even the name "Stealth Fighter" was meant to be misleading since the plane is actually a surgical precission bomber.

I remember the reading in Time magazine about one of the F-117 crashes where the Air Force spokesman said "I can tell you it wasn't an F-19".

That picture look a lot like the raptor

Originally posted by waynos
The jump from the YF-23 to the F-35 is easily explained, if a little hard to understand why.

It is simply the changing of the role identity letter of the Experimental X-35 to the fighter F-35. I don't know why the X-35 couldn't lead to the production fighter 'F-24' but there it is.

Also ghost, your list of US fighters has too many gaps as you have missed off several aircraft, McDonnell F-3, Douglas F-10 and Grumman F-11 being three of them. I don't know how many more you missed but those are the ones I noticed straight away.

F-1 phantom I
F-2 banchee
F-4 phantom II
F-5A/B freedom-fighter
F-6 skyray
F-7 cutlass
F-8 crusader
F-9 panther

I've missing too many being between from P-1 to 86.
I've had P-12,26,35,36,38,39,40,43,47,51,54,55,59,63,75,80,83,84,86, but rest of being between it which I have never known.

Get the Italeri version. That version looks cooler. Or, just get the Academy Su-27B or Su-27UB, a great build, also cheap, and it acutually exsists.

[edit on 30/4/05 by W4rl0rD]

Whats funny is that even though the F 19 doesnt really exist Tom Clancy had to slip it into his little compensator book Red Storm Rising. You knw what it did, it flew behind enemy lines to shoot down Russian radar Jets. I wish i could write retard like him.

The F-19 was supposed to be the first american stealth fighter, but the F-117 "Nighthawk" won, so the never actually made F-19...

I think i know the plane your on about , there is another model company who made the F-19 , it was made by a japanese company called Kasatosi

also look for Monogram/Kasatosi F-19 stealth fighter

Originally posted by Gazrok


Funny tidbit...a certain shade of pink is actually the best color for visual stealth, but nobody wants to fly a pink plane, hehe....(though at night, color really doesn't matter much)...

Ive heard this before a pastel pink," but real men don't fly pink jets"

The Pink Baron That just sounds wrong

What about the RAF and their 'Desert Pink' camouflage applied to everything that flew in the Gulf War?

Everyone knows the RAF are the best, most macho real men pilots there are

[edit on 26-10-2005 by waynos]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX

Originally posted by Gazrok


Funny tidbit...a certain shade of pink is actually the best color for visual stealth, but nobody wants to fly a pink plane, hehe....(though at night, color really doesn't matter much)...

Ive heard this before a pastel pink," but real men don't fly pink jets"

The Pink Baron That just sounds wrong

I dunno, I believe if it did anything to help, the pilots (and the air forces) would swallow their pride and just do it. I'd rather fly a pink plane than be dead or captured!

Yeah well not that this is always true, but fighter pilots are infamous for having pretty big egos. So don't expect them to just adopt a pink plane over a grey plane any day soon, even if it would save their life most of them wouldn't be caught dead in a pink plane.

As for the number skips, I have no idea. Maybe they thought they should save a number like F-19 for something cool. That or get people thinking that F-19 was really a secret plane, and then when they make a new fighter, designate it F-19 so it sounds really awesome. The money the USAF would save on recruiting alone would practically make it all worth it. But thats just another crazy theory.

Or maybe as people said, it was a secret loser to the F-117. Or maybe it was actually designated F-119 (you know, the century series idea) but hoping to cover up what it actually was they just skipped F-19. You know, get everybody all paranoid and everything.

But just out of curiousity, is there an actual system the US military uses for designating numbers. I had thought it went by counting up from 1, but they don't seem to be going quite in order anymore.

Military aircraft Mission Design Series (MDS) designations, starting in 1962, were initially assigned in an orderly fashion. There have been notable exceptions, especially regaring the system of assigning designations to classified aircraft.

MDS designations are regulated by Department of Defense (DoD) Direction 4120.15, "Designation and Naming Defense Military Aerospace Vehicles," and under the same title for each service: Air Force Joint Instruction 16-401, Army Regulation 70-50, and Navy NAVAIRINST 8800.3A.

Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command Cataloging and Standardization Center (HQ AFMC/CASC) in Battle Creek, Michigan serves as the control point for DoD MDS designators and aerospace vehicle popular names and assigns such designations as requested. Headquarters U.S. Air Force (HQ USAF/XPPE) at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. administers the MDS Designator Program for the DoD and exercises approval authority for all new MDS designations.

The process for requesting MDS designators is as follows:
The Military Departments must submit a written request for assignment of a distinctive MDS designator as early as possible in the development cycle. Coordinate requests with the Military Department point of contact and CASC as soon as possible to have an MDS designator assigned. CASC will assign and reserve the next available consecutive design number within each basic mission for new vehicles. Do not use MDS designators before approval. NOTE: Air Force agencies must coordinate MDS requests through the applicable system program office (SPO). CASC will assign the MDS designator and transmit the request to HQ USAF/XPPE for processing and approval.

The "X" designation is used to denote piloted, autonomous, or remotely piloted aerospace vehicles designed for testing highly experimental configurations.

About 40 piloted and 26 unpiloted X-planes have been designated, including variations and rebuilt/modified airframes. Arguably there are some aircraft that, by their nature, deserved X designations (such as the D-558-I, D-558-II, M2-F1, M2-F2/M2-F3, and HL-10 to name a few). For other aircraft, a YF designation (Service Test, Fighter) would seem more appropriate, such as the X-32 and X-35 Joint Strike Fighter technology demonstrators.

Some X-designations were assigned to planes that ultimately were not built. Some of these reached the mock-up stage and others were only "paper airplanes," never going beyond the design stage. Occasionally an X-designation was applied to an aircraft before that designation was officially assigned, leading to later confusion when an official MDS was assigned. Examples include the "X-35 Crew Return Vehicle" which was later officially designated X-38, and the "Lockheed Martin X-32 Joint Strike Fighter" concept mock-up which underwent extensive redesign before becoming the X-35 while X-32 was assigned to the Boeing JSF design.

The orderly assignment of numbers is being fouled up by X-planes transitioning to operational platforms. The X-35 became the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the X-45 will probably become the A-45 Joint Unmanned Combat Air System.

Classified aircraft have received anomalous "F" (usually "YF") designations even when the aircraft were not fighter planes (i.e. YF-117D TACIT BLUE). Until recently, these were always three-digit designators (such as YF-117A and YF-113G). In the late 1990s, however, a classified prototype was flown as the YF-24.