When you supersize the airforce you get this…- F-16XL

[Music] this here is Harry haker the chief designer behind the development of the legendary F-16 and this is definitely not the F-16 as we know it in one of the interviews he said if I had known that the F-16 was going to be used primarily as a ground attack aircraft I would have designed it differently and he did this is the story of the better actually the best F16 design that was Superior in every way and also why the Air Force never chose [Music] it the F-16 is undoubtedly one of the best multiroll fighters in the world proven time and time again in various conflicts it sets a standards for what a multi-roll fighter should perform like but believe it or not the F-16 was not actually designed as such it was designed to just be a fighter jet at first let's go back in time Jo we in 1965 the US Air Force needed a new fighter jet the current theory was that Jets were getting bigger and better and combat would be settled by missiles to missiles exchanges and thus the FX program was started to come up with the next jet but there was one problem Vietnam the military found that the heavier and more advanced US aircraft were failing to match in close range combat against the Soviet design creations and thus the FX Direct ction was flawed but don't worry enter the fighter mafia they were a group of us engineers and offices who would influence the development of Next Generation fighter aircraft for the US Air Force and they came up with something called the John Boyd's energy maneuverability Theory now that's a big mouthful but it was a theory that relates to thrust weight erod Dynamic drag Wing area and other flight characteristics of an aircraft into a quantitive model this would allow combat capabilities of various aircraft or prospective design trade-offs to be predicted and compared against each other so theoretically you could design the perfect Jet and that's what the fighter Mafia set out to do their studies indicated that excessive weight would have severely debilitating consequences on the maneuverability of aircraft a big fact contradiction to the current military Doctrine the FX of larger and more powerful Air Force jets that were designed to fire those missiles Over the Horizon so by 1973 the Air Force was forced to complement its new jet program with an additional extremely agile light fighter that would supplement the much larger FX fighter in air superiority but then just a year later the program changed yet again from a lightweight fighter to an air combat fighter program with a focus of multi-roll capability in the spotlight and it would no longer be a CL classic fighter jet there were two different prototypes in the race to become this new light Fighter the yf-16 winning against the yf7 because of the better maneuverability and the lower operating cost due to the pratton Witney F100 engine being the same as the winner of the FX program the McDonald Douglas F-15 now keep in mind because this guy's going to come back later but the creators of the yf-16 General Dynamics looked at their award-winning design and thought how could they make it better they started working on another proposition that would more more suitable for a larger multi roll aircraft for the FX program or its eventual successor after all the yf6 was never actually really designed for multi-roll capability many options were considered like the F-16 with forward swep wings or the F-16 with canards but in the end a cranked delta wing was a way to go and that is how we got the F-16 extra large hey don't forget we've got a Discord there's a link down below where you can come and chat to everybody at the end of the video this video would have not been possible without the patreons I wanted to thank them so much we've got a link to patreon there where you can see videos early just like this one and see some behind the scenes content thanks so much for all the people that support me on this channel and I really do actually generally appreciate that so thanks so much and lastly I'll say we've actually got a merch store so if you want to jump on there and check out some merch to support the channel there's a link down in the description the F-16 was and still is a very small aircraft compared to other fourth gen fighters of the era and thus the fuel capacity wasn't impressive to begin with but after the program requirements change the F-16 was some 25% heavier than the yf-16 with all the same thrust provided by the F100 engine this meant that the use of fuel tanks was mandatory due to a limited range so a team led by Harry Hill AER sat down to fix these floors and came up with the Scamp project or supersonic cruise and maneuver prototype this jet would keep as many parts as possible from the original F-16 but improve its performance significantly firstly they changed the whole Wing design to the famous at the time European configuration horizontal stabilizers were removed and instead a cranked or double delta wing was chosen after the team tested various variants in Wind tunnels with more than double the size of the original this Wing design was already popular with the S dra and offered much better lift performance and 65% more fuel capacity than the original F-16 ventral fins on the lower fuselage were also removed and the fuselage itself was elongated by around 1.24 M or that's 10% weapon mounting points were changed to further minimize drag so in air-to-air scenarios four half recessed am Rams would be paired with two wing tip side winers and air to ground configuration would have either larger bombs on four pylons or up to 16 smaller bombs in a checkerboard style for maximized Carnage and this is a game Cher because you in combat a regular F-16 would need another jet to escort it into the theater but the F-16 XL could carry enough ornament for both self-defense and to perform these strike missions fixing another floor the wing design of the XL consisted of two Blended Wing surfaces a first section that was swept back by around 70° and optimized for supersonic speeds and the second was swept at around 50° helping the low speed performance and Landings this Wing design was also present on supersonic airliners like the Concord or the 2144 which needed both High Supersonic and subsonic performance in total the wings gave the F-16 XL 25% increase in lift to drag ratio and 50% increase in range due to larger fuel capacity but all of this would come with an additional 50% increase in payload capacity as well by God this jet is starting to sound incredible the F16 XL was capable of just bit under the Mac 1 Cruise speed but even achieved super Cruise or supersonic speed without the use of an After Burner pretty darn amazing so gang sitting there at home all in all this jet is very clearly Superior than the original F-16 so what the hell happened and why don't we see it in service today firstly the Air Force was pretty much on board and massive ly impressed by the work done so far the Air Force gave General Dynamics the green light fought two prototypes a single and two seater F-16 XL in the early 80s and 1981 at the same time the US Air Force started a new program under the name of enhanced tactical fighter to replace the F1 arvar with a new Strike Fighter that was the exact chance that General Dynamics was waiting for and this time they were ready the F6 XL had its first flight just a year later and after an impressive performance in comparison to the bass F-16 variant General Dynamics decided to enter the competition with the XL as their bid there was just this one little teeny tiny issue their main idea was to improve over the base F16 design and not fulfill certain requirements of the program oh and the fact that the competition was none other than the derivative of the famous F15 oh no although the xojet was much more suited for ground attack missions in comparison to the original F16 it was still Far Cry from the ultimate fourth gen aircraft the F-15 by now the f-15e had a higher maximize speed a bigger range and better combat radius higher flight ceiling most importantly a much bigger payload capacity but even all of these weren't the deciding factors the f-15e required only minor changes to the original f-15b whilst the F-16 XL was almost a completely different aircraft by this point also the f-15e was a twin engine aircraft and with its missions being deep strikes Behind Enemy Lines survivability was one of the key factors for this new Strike Fighter political support along with the lack of funds for both aircraft at the time and because at the same time the at F program the B1 B2 and several other big projects were being funded the f-15e was chosen as the economical winner and entered production the F-16 XL was an amazing plain design but simply at the wrong time due to financial constraints the Air Force couldn't put both the F-16 XL and the F-16 into service and plus the jet couldn't really compete against the Best in Class the F5 but this wasn't the end of this platform in 1988 both prototypes were transferred to NASA to test the supersonic lamina airflow for the high-speed civil transport project and they were tested throughout the years successfully but the funding was eventually cut in 1999 due to Boeing losing interest in the concept nevertheless it helped in developing super Cruis ability for future aircraft and during the testing of the F-16 XL it achieved speeds up to Mac 1.1 without using the afterburner in 2007 the F-16 XL was briefly removed out of storage because Boeing and NASA wanted to further test the platform with the US Air Forces experiences on the F-16 throughout the years but the tests were again suspended by 2009 and the F16 XL has remained dorant ever since but this project actually left a mark proving that the swing design was optimized for a fourth generation multi-roll aircraft and today most of the European Fighters follow this design like the griin Raphael and the Euro Fighter the F16 XL remains one of those God I wish is actually entered service aircraft and a great addition to the channel you could only imagine what the American Air Force would be like had this aircraft been built and put to work being a very capable aircraft that may have even superseded the f116 itself and become the international best hit that General Dynamics needed meanwhile the F-15 proved to be a great choice and the F-16 proved itself in combat so I guess at the end of the day there was a happy ending for this story just the bigger cousin never got to see the action thanks for watching and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 365,949

Keywords: aviation, news, documentry, history channel, flying, engineering, history, discovery, real engineering, mustard, wendover, airforce, soviet, usa military, cold war, ww2, world war 2 documentry

Id: IcwbpceL1JY

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024