On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:53:51 +1000, Richard Stewart
wrote:

Hi Guys,
Just wondering what the alternate (losing) choices were for the main US
older fighter aircraft?

eg. I know the YF17 lost out to the F18...

But what were the competitors to the rest (you don't need to go back too
far) - that's if they actually HAD competitors...

F14?
F15?
F16?
A10?
F117?
(have I missed any?)



The AH-64 (Apache) won over the AH-63 for the AAH program which itself
was formed after the AH-56 Cheyenne was deemed to ambitious (ie $$$).

The YF-107 lost to the F-105 and the XF8U-3 lost out to the F-4.
Neither of these were formal competitions AFAIK but they were being
developed at the same time and the services decided they could only
afford one so it ended up being that way.

The B-52 won over the YB-60

The B-47 won over the XB-46 and XB-48

The Blackbird won over the Convair KingFisher

The F-111 won over the Boeing and Republic for the TFX. Pretty much
everybody felt the Boeing design was the best but good old MacNamara
thought he was an aircraft designer and had a different agenda to boot
so they got the GD entry. Personally I thought the Republic design
looked the coolest.