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

Pierre Sprey : claims to have designed the F-16/15 H.J. Hillaker : "You're not that guy."

The fighter maffia where not good designers They also said that these things are useless: radar, radio, advanced sensors, missiles and other things that are crucial in today’s air to air landscape

When he said fighter mafia, the laserpig inside me woke up

Pierre sprey was NOT an aviation engineer. He was a record producer, do research

The Light Fighter Mafia (later rebranded itself the "Fighter Mafia" after the F-15 was a rousing success that combined high performance and heavy payload in one airframe) was far less influential than they want people to think in historical retrospect. They were right in broad strokes, but the way they were right is actually extremely trivial (and they were extremely guilty of pushing things like James Burton's horrifically flawed "Blitzfighter" concept that would have gotten every single man flying it killed - and no, Blitzfighter was not a "precursor" to the A-10 Warthog, it was an attempt to design a smaller, stripped-down, COMPLETELY VULNERABLE A-10 Warthog and it was laughed out of the room every time it was introduced). "A plane with high thrust and low weight will be a better dogfighter than a plane with moderate thrust and high weight"? NO FUCKING SHIT! The LFM wanted to take the things that made the F-16 a worthwhile fighter aircraft away from it, and leave it as a single-engine light fighter with a maximum capacity of four Sidewinders - and they didn't even really want the Sidewinders.

Pierre sprey and the fighter mafia being given any credit is a massive red flag to the validity of anything said in this video tbh They were horrible designers with wrong predictions, Sprey wasnt even a designer he was a jazz label producer who lied to gain fame with his ludicrous claims

I find it funny that Hillaker was the only member of the Fighter Mafia who was actually qualified to design a plane, and he tends to be among the lesser known members due to being one of the more reserved ones and even began to distance himself from the group in later years, wich I think speaks volumes.

Still sad to see the blasphemy of Fighter Mafia being spread around, I've lost all respect for Pierre Spray. And regarding the F16XL, regarding how much of a significant improvement it was in all aspects, from weaponry, range, payload, fuel economy, etc; the air force really should've kept the F16XL. Would've opened up so many options for it today.

Lol my man actually hyping up the Fighter Mafia

Funny how the Fighter mafia claims to hate missiles while they claim to build aircraft with lots of missiles on them

Nice thing about the 16 being a cheap parts collection and modular from the start is that it can also serve as the basis for a shitload of experiments, hence why NASA loves them as a starting point.

Ahh the falcon dorito Wizard squadron flashbacks

The rumored F-36 Kingsnake makes use of a wing similar to the F-16XL.

This is why we have LazerPig on speed dial.

Ah, the American version of the Saab 35 Draken.

AMERICAN DORITO PLANE

This gives me Ace Combat nostalgia

Oh, to see it come back, with Conformal Fuel Tanks, DSI air intake, GE engine with thrust vectoring and bl. 70 built and avionics, hardpoints rewired for SDBs / JAGMs.... and YF-16 vertical stabilizer for good measure.

f16 in an oversized hoodie

SCAMP was original purpose of the XL, not multirole combat. You don't supercruise and maneuver at supersonic speed when lugging bombs under the wings. The emphasis on bombing came later when the design was repurposed and entered in the Enhanced Tactical Fighter competition, was was won by the F-15E. The video omits the fact that the XL didn't really achieve supercruise until it was later given a more powerful engine by NASA. It also doesn't mention that the XL was inferior to the production F-16 in subsonic high G maneuvering due to greater energy bleed.