YF-24? Very interesting .pdf

reply to post by SneakyPete


www.flightglobal.com...

Look familiar at all? Heh.

This may be an answer: f-35, since it logically should have been reffered to as f-24 was referred to as such in house and in some other situations. The author actually supports the undeclared secret aircraft theory but it may be that the pilot in questikn flew an f-35.

Except the YF-24 qoute deals with an aircraft project he flew in the mid to late 90s. Not even the competing X-32 and X-35 prototypes of the JSF were flying in the mid 90s.

a reply to: johnthejedi24
I know that this thread is nearly ten years old, but I should inform all that the current resume of Joseph Lanni (who is now a USAF Brigadier General) makes no mention of "YF-24" at all despite saying that "numerous classified prototypes" are among the aircraft flown by Lanni. In all probability, the May 2004 edition of the resume by Joseph Lanni mentioning "YF-24" among the aircraft flown by him (see web.archive.org...://www.edwards.af.mil/units/bio/lanni-bio.html) is merely a typographical mistake, but it is possible that the kind of aircraft that crashed at RAF Boscombe Down in September 1994 was one of the classified aircraft flown by Lanni at Edwards AFB.

In any case, the FlightGlobal article titled "Was There Ever a YF-24?" can no longer be found at the FlightGlobal website, but can be found at this link at the blog The Dragon's Tales, yet it's clear that the USAF never allocated a cover YF-24 designation to a classified USAF prototype aircraft:
thedragonstales.blogspot.com...

a reply to: Potlatch

The Air Force most certainly did use the YF-24 designation for a plane that Joe Lane flew. Whether it was a "clean sheet" design" or an acquired foreign military aircraft has yet to be confirmed. It is common practice to refer to foreign types (MiG-21, MiG-23, etc.) undergoing exploitation testing as "classified prototypes" because they are carrying the Y prefix in the designator (YF-110B, YF-113E, etc.).