Fighter mafia
Encyclopedia
The Fighter Mafia was a group of U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

 officers and civilian defense analysts who, in the 1970s, advocated the use of John Boyd
John Boyd (military strategist)
Colonel John Boyd was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant of the late 20th century, whose theories have been highly influential in the military, sports, and business.-Biography:...

's Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory
Energy-Maneuverability theory
Energy Maneuverability theory is a model of aircraft performance. It was promulgated by Col. John Boyd, and is useful in describing an aircraft's performance as the total of kinetic and potential energies or aircraft specific energy. It relates the thrust, weight, drag, wing area, and other flight...

 to develop fighter aircraft. The theory enabled quantitative one-to-one comparison of the performance of aircraft in terms of air combat maneuvering, and identified deficiencies with both designs in service and proposed designs of the time. They influenced the specifications of the F-X, and went on to independently develop specifications for the Light Weight Fighter
Light Weight Fighter
The Lightweight Fighter program was a U.S. Air Force technology evaluation program initiated in the 1960s by a cabal of officers and defense analysts known as the "Fighter Mafia"...

. The nickname, a professional jest coined by an Air Force member of Italian heritage, was a rejoinder to the "Bomber Mafia
Bomber Mafia
The Bomber Mafia were a close-knit group of American military men who believed that long-range heavy bomber aircraft in large numbers were able to win a war...

", theorists at the Air Corps Tactical School
Air Corps Tactical School
The Air Corps Tactical School, also known as ACTS and "the Tactical School", was a military professional development school for officers of the United States Army Air Service and United States Army Air Corps, the first such school in the world. Created in 1920 at Langley Field, Virginia, it...

 in the 1930s whose ideas led to the primacy of strategic bombing
Strategic bombing
Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...

 over the fighter within the Air Force.
The Fighter Mafia was instrumental in a return to air-combat maneouvrability as the defining quality of fighter planes after the Vietnam war showed that long range missiles were unlikely to be the deciding factor in air combat. This led to a new generation of warplanes such as the F-14, F-15
F-15 Eagle
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is a twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter designed by McDonnell Douglas to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. It is considered among the most successful modern fighters with over 100 aerial combat victories with no losses in dogfights...

, F-16
F-16 Fighting Falcon
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a multirole jet fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force . Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft. Over 4,400 aircraft have been built since...

 and F/A-18.

History

In the 1960s, both the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy were in the process of acquiring large, heavy fighters designed primarily to fight with missiles. Project Forecast, a 1963 Air Force attempt to identify future weapons trends, stated that a counterair force must be able to destroy aircraft in the air at long ranges using advanced weapon systems. The Air Force felt that these needs would be filled for the next twenty years by missile-armed variants of the F-111 and F-4 Phantom II
F-4 Phantom II
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a tandem two-seat, twin-engined, all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor fighter/fighter-bomber originally developed for the United States Navy by McDonnell Aircraft. It first entered service in 1960 with the U.S. Navy. Proving highly adaptable,...

. Their F-X fighter acquisition program, initially merged into the TFX program (which developed the F-111), was written along those lines.

Real-world combat during the Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 demonstrated that the entire "Missileer" concept did not work in practice. Rules of engagement
Rules of engagement
Rules of Engagement refers to those responses that are permitted in the employment of military personnel during operations or in the course of their duties. These rules of engagement are determined by the legal framework within which these duties are being carried out...

, limitations in communications, poor performance of the missiles and a wide variety of other problems conspired to make air-to-air combat devolve into dogfight
Dogfight
A dogfight, or dog fight, is a form of aerial combat between fighter aircraft; in particular, combat of maneuver at short range, where each side is aware of the other's presence. Dogfighting first appeared during World War I, shortly after the invention of the airplane...

s in almost every situation. In spite of a huge technical superiority on paper, the US Navy and Air Force F-4s found themselves fighting at close quarters with the "inferior" MiG-21, and losing the fight all too often. The heavy and poorly maneuverable fighters imagined as part of F-X would be even worse off in these situations.

Boyd's work with E-M theory demonstrated that the F-111 would be poorly suited to the role of fighter, and the Air Force F-X proposal was quietly rewritten to reflect his findings, dropping a heavy swing-wing
Swing-wing
A variable-sweep wing is an aeroplane wing that may be swept back and then returned to its original position during flight. It allows the aircraft's planform to be modified in flight, and is therefore an example of a variable-geometry aircraft....

 from the design, lowering the gross weight from 60,000+ pounds to slightly below 40,000, and the top speed to Mach 2.3, from 2.5. The result was the F-15 Eagle
F-15 Eagle
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is a twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter designed by McDonnell Douglas to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. It is considered among the most successful modern fighters with over 100 aerial combat victories with no losses in dogfights...

, an aircraft that was far superior in maneuverability to the F-111 fighter variants. The Air Force had also been studying a lighter day fighter
Day fighter
A day fighter is a fighter aircraft equipped only to fight during the day. More specifically, it refers to a multi-purpose aircraft that does not include equipment for fighting at night , although it is sometimes used to refer to some interceptors as well.Examples of planes that were classified as...

; starting in 1965, the Air Force had pursued a low-priority study of the Advanced Day Fighter (ADF), a 25,000 pound design. After they learned of the MiG-25 in 1967, a minor panic broke out and the ADF was dropped in order to focus work on the F-15. The F-15, originally a lighter aircraft, grew in size and weight as it attempted to match the inflated performance estimates of the MiG-25. While Boyd's contributions to the F-15 were significant, he felt that it was still a compromise.

Boyd, defense analysts Tom Christie
Thomas P. Christie
Thomas P. Christie was a career defense analyst working for the U.S. government.Christie graduated from Spring Hill College with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and from New York University with a master's degree in Applied Mathematics....

 and Pierre Sprey, and test pilot Col. Everest Riccioni and aeronautical engineer Harry Hillaker formed the core of the self-dubbed "Fighter Mafia" which worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to pursue a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15. Riccioni coined the nickname, a joke on his Italian heritage that harkened back to the "Bomber Mafia" (whose acolytes still occupied the upper command positions of the Air Force), and dubbed himself the "godfather". In 1969, under the guise that the Navy was developing a small, high-performance Navy aircraft, Riccioni won $149,000 to fund the "Study to Validate the Integration of Advanced Energy-Maneuverability Theory with Trade-Off Analysis". This money was split between Northrop
Northrop Corporation
Northrop Corporation was a leading United States aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman in 1994. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, although only a few of these have entered service.-History:Jack...

 and General Dynamics
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...

 to build the embodiment of Boyd's E-M theory - a small, low-drag, low-weight, pure fighter with no bomb racks. Northrop demanded and received $100,000 to design the YF-17; General Dynamics, eager to redeem its debacle with the F-111, received the remainder to develop the YF-16.

Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard
David Packard
David Packard was a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard , serving as president , CEO , and Chairman of the Board . He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969–1971 during the Nixon administration...

, who entered office with the Nixon administration
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 in 1969, were interested in these studies and threw their support behind the notion. In May 1971, Congress issued a critical report of the F-14 and F-15 and advocated spending $50 million on developing an alternative lightweight fighter. This was followed by the assignment of $12 million in the 1972 fiscal year budget for the LWF. On January 6, 1971, an RFP was issued to industry for a 20,000 pound fighter to complement the F-15. Sprey insisted on a fly-off between two prototypes, as he had earlier on the A-X program, pitting the planes against MiG-17s and MiG-21s secretly maintained in Nevada, as well as an F-4. Furthermore, the evaluating pilots would not be test pilots, and each would fly both airframes.

In retrospect, the group's greatest contribution was in the introduction of E-M as a basis for evaluating and designing aircraft for air combat maneuvering. However, their disdain of "gold-plating", or technological add-ons, would prove wrong, as the same technology would protect aircraft from missiles in an increasingly sensor-saturated battlefield, and would enable the multi-mission capabilities of modern aircraft (though, they often argued that the ground attack mission should be handled by more appropriate aircraft such as the A-10, which has had an outstanding record in that area).
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