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Well, let's make it really detailed then. The F-15 entered service in 1976. US aircraft losses in the first five years of service were twenty-three aircraft lost, fourteen fatalities. The F-16 entered service in 1978. US aircraft losses in the first five years of service were thirty-five...

The F-14, F-15, and F-16 all had absolutely horrific accident rates in their early years, primarily due to the major design fault of having extremely unreliable engines. And the only reason the F-15's accident rate wasn't even higher was that it had two engines.

F-15: 123 USAF aircraft lost with 52 fatalities, plus about another fifty export aircraft lost. F-35: Eight aircraft lost with 1 fatality.

The vaunted Kinzhal is nothing more than an air-launched variation of the Iskander -- so it's basically a broad equivalent of the cancelled Skybolt.

Correction: was cancelled because it competed with SLBMs, which were McNamara's pet project. While McNamara *was* admittedly correct about the long term potential of SLBMs as a concept, his habit of aggressively shutting down competition for his favorites was *not* a good thing since he...

The Boeing Clipper is the most aesthetically majestic and magnificent civilian aircraft of all time, even beating out the mighty 747.

That has absolutely no correlation with the An-2, which is a massively bigger aircraft with a high-drag frame. Your argument is like claiming a semitrailer should be super high performance because it has more horsepower than a Porsche.

Note that this particular Mirage IV is the specific one that was used for the "Tambour" tests, so that is an aircraft with the very rare distinction of having deployed a live nuclear weapon.

Let's see, I should have a bunch of those... Dassault MD-450 Dassault Mystere IV Dassault Mirage IVB Dassault Mirage 2000 Dassault Rafale-A

I reiterate, the Air Force's actual, professional not-fanboy evaluation was that the F-16XL was just as effective as the F-15E in meeting the performance criteria specified. Your continued attempts to insist that the F-16XL was a flawed design are simply not supported by any evidence whatsoever.

The difference is that a Delorean is an iconic looking but factually shitty car even before you convert it, whereas the F-16 is an absolutely superb fighter and the modified F-16XL was found to deliver excellent performance. The USAF simply found that the F-15E delivered the same required...

The F-16 was designed as a low-cost lightweight fighter to fill in numerically "under" the Eagle and Tomcat, although the lightweight role for the Navy was ultimately spun off to the Hornet. It does have an advantage in flexibility with multirole capability that the air superiority only Eagle...

The developmental risk imposed by the obviously extensive physical changes was one of the key factors the Air Force cited in selecting the F-15E over the F-16XL. The F-15E was marketed as being a relatively easy and inexpensive upgrade of the existing two-seat F-15B, primarily an avionics refit...

I would say drones only count towards an 'ace' standing at the point where they're capable of actually participating in A2A combat as opposed to being A2G platforms that can't really even maneuver defensively.

The F-16 was not a “pretty old airframe” at the time the F-16XL was developed; General Dynamics started development work on enlarged variants pretty literally before the ink was even dry on the original F-16 contract, with the cranked arrow XL design being finalized by 1980 and subsequently...

Yes. It was a very impressive upgrade of the F-16, but the F-15E was simply better, especially in terms of flexibility since unlike the F-16XL, it isn’t limited to carrying a ludicrous number of 500 pound bombs.

Here's a better picture of that Rafale-A demonstrator. She's on display at the Musee de l'Air, literally right next to the Mirage 4000.

If we're posting prototypes...

Eventually they'll run out of room for improvement, true, but keep in mind that Raytheon has already developed *both* a new rocket motor for the AMRAAM that gives it almost as much range as the vaunted Meteor at a fraction the cost, and their own ramjet motor option which is on par with (if not...

The bottom line reason for France dropping out of the Eurofighter joint project and proceeding with their own Rafale was actually very simple: France absolutely needed a new carrier-based fighter to replace their aging F-8 Crusaders. While there was certainly also much bickering over industrial...