raptormodeller Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 (edited) Why was the YF-22 chosen as the winner of the ATF competition instead of the YF-23? This is for me, rather confusing since the YF-23 was alledgedly faster and stealthier than the 22 and still met the agility specification. According to a rather interesting documentary anyway. Maybe the pentagon was scared of that shape. Which to this day still turns heads. Also the YF-23 was supposed to be cheaper right? Off the shelf U/C and cockpit is already a big price reduction with added advantages. Also, wasn't the YF-23 more developped than the YF-22 at the time. Imo the Black Widow should have been chosen. But why wan't it? I'm pretty sure the exotic dhape had something to do with it... RIP Black Widow II Edited January 23, 2016 by raptormodeller Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhantomBigStu Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 the F-22 was more conventional, plus was a lockheed design who already supplied the f-16 succesfully, plus always politics in this as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 YF-23 is the better a/c. It appears there may be spin offs which are kept under wraps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Knight Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 There's a lot more goes into deciding. Ease of maintenance Commonality of parts with other machines Ease of bringing ground crew up to servicing standard knowledge Battlefield battle damage repair Accessibility of internals for speedy repair/replacement Ground handling by service crews 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Boak Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 I think we need to be careful about factors that are described as "allegedly" and "supposed". What if they weren't? However, as for LM's abilities with the F-16, this can always be countered by MacD's abilities with the F-15. I'm sure a Pentagon that wasn't frightened by the F-117 and B-2 wasn't going to be too bothered by the shape of the YF-23. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parabat Posted January 23, 2016 Share Posted January 23, 2016 Politics. Perception battles. Corruption. The dearth of many 'best' projects. Bentwaters may have a point about subsequent black 'spin offs' from the YF-23, ya never can tell. But agreed, how awesome would squadro s of F-23's have been? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raptormodeller Posted January 23, 2016 Author Share Posted January 23, 2016 Agreed. Politics plays a part that I hadn't thought about. Still think the '23 would've been better. Imagine being a SAM operator and you suddenly see the faint black outline of what can only be an alien spaceship and then everything goes up in flames. Imagine the scare points it could get... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 For some reason whatever project is chosen there's always a lot of noise about the one nit chosen was the best one, with the inevitable corollary of politics, corruption, our generals are incompetent blah blah blah... The truth however is that generally the proposal best suited to the requirements wins and the F-22 is no exception. During the test flights both types met the minimum specifications, the YF-23 was marginally faster and had longer range. The YF-22 resulted much more maneuverable. All of this is public domain, there are interviews with the test pilots and even some of the performance data from the test flights available. What is often forgotten is that the YF-22 had several advantages in its systems compared to the YF-23. Most important, it was much closer to production while the YF-23 would have required much more design work to arrive at a production configuration (the demonstrators did not even have room for the radar system). Considering that the YF-22 itself required time to become the F-22, had the USAF chosen the 23 they'd have received the first aircrafts even later. Last but not least, Lockheed showed that they had a project management system in place capable of delivering the final product, the competing team showed serious deficiencies from this point of view. The YF-23 was never the best aircraft, it was simply faster by a fraction of M and longer ranged thanks to its larger size and bigger tanks. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Navy Bird Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 I can't see how Lockheed supplying F-16 aircraft entered into the YF-22 selection because General Dynamics was still the F-16 prime contractor at the time. Lockheed purchased the General Dynamics aerospace business in 1993; the YF-22 selection over the YF-23 was in 1991. I have to admit that I preferred the YF-23 from a modeller's perspective. I only wish there were better choices for YF-23 models. The ultimate kit hasn't been produced yet. If there were any YF-23 spin-offs, presumably black programs, I wish they would be declassified soon! Cheers, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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