Fighter Mafia

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The Fighter Mafia was a controversial group of

Light Weight Fighter (LWF).[1][2] Mafia member Harry Hillaker designed the purely air superiority day fighter prototype YF-16, which won the LWF contest but then turned into the multi-role fighter-bomber F-16 Fighting Falcon. The group's nickname, a professional jest coined by Everest Riccioni,[3] an Air Force member of Italian heritage, was a rejoinder to the "Bomber Mafia
".

History

In the 1960s, both the

F-4 Phantom II with no gun.[4] Their F-X Program fighter acquisition program, initially merged into the TFX Program
(which developed the F-111), was written along those lines.

Combat during the

MiG-21
, and losing the fight more often than expected. Heavy and poorly maneuverable fighters originally imagined by the F-X program would be even worse off in these situations.

Boyd's work with

MiG-25 in 1967, the ADF was dropped in order to urgently 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.[5]

Boyd, defense analysts

Chuck Myers, test pilot Col. Everest Riccioni and aeronautical engineer Harry Hillaker formed the core of the "Fighter Mafia" which worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to pursue a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15. The group strongly believed that an ideal fighter should not include any of the radar-guided missile systems, active radar or rudimentary ground-attack capability that found their way into the F-15.[6] Riccioni coined the nickname, a joke on his Italian heritage that harkened back to the "Bomber Mafia", theorists at the Air Corps Tactical School in the 1930s whose ideas led to the primacy of heavy bomber aircraft performing strategic bombing
over that of fighter (whose acolytes still occupied the upper command positions of the Air Force), and dubbed himself the "godfather". Their assertions included:

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

F-14. Packard was interested in the idea of prototyping weapons before sending them into production, given issues stemming from McNamara's "Total Package Procurement Concept" where analysis and quantification was done on paper.[5]
The 1972 fiscal year budget assigned $12 million for Lightweight Fighter prototypes. On January 6, 1971, an
U.S. Marine Corps
that preferred a twin-engine versus single-engine fighter and strike aircraft.

Legacy

As the Fighter Mafia attracted considerable controversy, the actual extent of their contribution to U.S. fighter design is a matter of debate.[6] The F-15 was the first jet plane in the USAF's history that was designed with maneuverability specifications in mind thanks to Boyd's E-M theory.[5] The Fighter Mafia argued for a bubble canopy (found in the F-15 and F-16) since it would allow the pilot more visibility to spot other airplanes to sneak up on them, to avoid being surprised, or to have better situational awareness in dogfights. However, not all of the Fighter Mafia's ideas were implemented.

The Fighter Mafia's preference was for an aircraft dedicated to

cruising speeds
.

In light of the Mafia's disappointment with the F-15, the lightweight fighter was supposed to be the air-to-air superiority fighter that they wanted. Compared to the Red Bird concept, the LWF would cost even less. As the Mafia's civilian associate member Pierre Sprey argued that sneaking up on an unaware opponent was the most important criterion of a good fighter, the LWF's small size would also make it less visible to the eye.[12] A faster supersonic cruising speed would make it more difficult for enemies to sneak up from behind. While conventional wisdom at the time considered twin engines to be safer, the F-16 challenged that view with a single-engine design.[2] However, production F-16s lacked supercruise capability as the Air Force saddled the F-16 with multi-mission equipment, air-to-ground features, and an active radar. Whereas the prototype YF-16 "whipped" other airplanes in dogfights, the production version was less maneuverable and performed worse in air-to-air combat.[5]

Hillaker, the F-16's chief designer, commented: "If I had realized at the time that the airplane would have been used as a multimission, primarily an air-to-surface airplane as it is used now, I would have designed it differently."

F-16XL, that also greatly outperformed both the YF-16 and the production F-16 in fields such as range and speed. However, it lost in the USAF Enhanced Tactical Fighter competition to a new F-15 model, the 15-hardpoint F-15E Strike Eagle, in part due to the latter's lower cost and twin engines.[13]

Criticism

Critics argue that the F-15 and F-16 succeeded because they moved away from the Fighter Mafia's ideas, seeing significant export success because they were multi-role aircraft with active radar homing missiles.[11] The "Red Bird" concept designed by the Fighter Mafia included no radar, no sophisticated avionics, and was armed only with a cannon and infrared homing missiles.[11] By comparison, the F-16 includes sophisticated avionics systems, AN/APG-66 radar, as well as AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided missiles.

Proponents of the

F-35 argue that fourth-generation fighters like the F-15 and F-16 will fare poorly in a "high-threat" environment because they lack stealth technology and other advanced fifth-generation fighter features (such as sensor fusion).[14][15]
They argue that criticism of the F-35 from surviving members of the Fighter Mafia (and defense reform movement) is thus unfounded.

The Fighter Mafia have been criticized for their lack of combat experience and aeronautical expertise. Only Boyd had brief air combat experience (in the Korean War) and did not achieve any kills as a fighter pilot. Riccioni had seen no combat before he was assigned to the Pentagon. Sprey has been characterized as "a dilettante with an engineering degree but no military experience".[11]

References

  1. ^ Bjorkman, Eileen. "The Outrageous Adolescence of the F-16". Air & Space Magazine.
  2. ^ a b c Hehs, Eric (15 April 1991). "F-16 Designer Harry Hillaker". Code One Magazine.
  3. ^ "Member of Fighter Mafia Passes". Project On Government Oversight. 2015-05-06. Retrieved 2021-03-16. Colonel Everest E. "Rich" Riccioni USAF (ret.) passed away on April 15 in Monument, Colorado, at the age of 91.
  4. ^
    ISBN 0-07-134696-1
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-316-88146-5
    .
  6. ^
    Air & Space Power Journal – Chronicles Online Journal. United States: Air force. Archived from the original
    on 2006-04-26. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
  7. ^ a b Sprey, Pierre. "Evaluating Weapons: Sorting the Good from the Bad" (PDF). Pogo archives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-19. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  8. ^ Sprey, Pierre (May 1974). "Notes on Close Air Support" (PDF). Pogo archives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-01-13. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  9. ^ Sprey, Pierre. "Combat Effectiveness Considerations In Designing Close Support Fighters" (PDF). Pogo archives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-05. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  10. ^ Higby, Patrick (30 March 2005). "Promise and Reality: Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat" (PDF). Pogo archives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 January 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
  11. ^ a b c d Michel III, Marshall L. "The Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed After Vietnam" (Doctoral dissertation). Auburn University. Retrieved 2013-05-26.
  12. ^ Sprey, Pierre (April 1982). "Comparing the Effectiveness of Air-to-Air Fighters: F-86 to F-18" (PDF). Pogo archives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2023-09-12.
  13. ^ https://www.military.com/air-force/f-16xl-why-america-didnt-get-best-f-16.html/
  14. ^ "F-35 Managing the Battlespace". Lockheed Martin.
  15. ^ "F-35: Pierre Sprey vs (ret.) Lt Col David 'Chip' Berke debate". You Tube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.

Bibliography

External links

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