Another thread on the YF-24 (or rather: "what's in a name?")

This is pure speculation on my part, but i wanted to share it.
I don't claim to put an end to the whole question but, rather, i think this thread can contribute to a discussion eventually useful for future research in the chase of the YF-24.


All of this research started for me with a simple question: how could a Colonel of the US Air Force let slip in his biography the name of something so important as that of a classified aircraft?

The conclusion i've come at is the following: the YF-24 was a designation he was so much used to, that he didn't even consider it as classified, and went on to include in his flight information references without paying to much attention to it.

So in this regard, I thought that we could assume the YF-24 was not a “black program”, and as such covered in utter secrecy, but rather a “grey program”. Something we've already seen flying around, probably.

My personal take on it, is that the YF-24 is none other than the designation used for the F-22 EMD aircrafts, and the following are some of the reasons of why i think this is the case.

Timeframe background

In Colonel Lanni's office there are two interesting patches of programs he has taken part into. While the first one is still undisclosed, the second one is the following:



As you can see this patch sports the typical combination from classified programs of 5+1 stars above the eagle's head and 3 other stars under its claws which represents AF Flight Test Center Detachment 3; in other words the location of the program was, most probably Area 51, Groom Lake.

For my reasearch i've taken into consideration only this interesting timeframe from Col. Lanni's assignments:

• July 2001 – December 2002, Vice Commander, Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center, Las Vegas, Nev.
  
• December 2002 - May 2004, Director, F/A-22 Combined Test Force, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
  
• May 2004 – present, Commander, 412th Test Wing, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
  

On a parallel track we know, from here, that the Raptor's EMD production run was the following:

• FY 1997: 1
  
• FY 1998: 1
  
• FY 1999: 2
  
• FY 2000: 3
  
• FY 2001: 2
  
• FY 2002: 0
  

From here we also know that the F-22's program milestones comprise:

• In the year 2000: On 15 March Raptor 03, piloted by Lt. Col. Bill Craig, is flown nonstop from Marietta to Edwards AFB.
  
• In the year 2001: On 30 January Raptor 04, the first avionics aircraft, is ferried to Edwards AFB by Col. Gary Plumb.
  On 11 March Raptor 05 is ferried to Edwards AFB by Maj. Brian Ernisse.
  On 18 May Raptor 06 is flown from Marietta to Edwards AFB. Full afterburners are used for the first time on takeoff from Marietta.
  
• n the year 2002: On 5 January Raptor 07 is ferried to Edwards AFB.
  

So in the period running from March 2000 to January 2002 there were at least 5 Raptors conducting test flights out at Edwards AFB. What area is a remote detachment of Edwards AFB?

Hint: it's an Area whose designation starts with a 5 and ends with a 1.

And who was Vice Commander of Detachment 3 around the July 2001 to December 2002 period? Yep. Colonel Lanni.

Back to Colonel Lanni's patch in his office, it sports a bald eagle carrying a sword in its claws, and if we have good memory we can remember that we've already seen a combination of these two symbols in another patch:



This patch comes from MDD-Boeing's Bird of Prey program, whose first flight was back in 1996 (the first F-22 EMD was built in 1997). Take note of the sword's shape.
And i'd like to remember you that the eagle is part of the accipitridae family of the birds of prey, incidentally known, also, as raptors. Which to my ears ring a bell.


Platform analysis



As we can see from this comparision the YF-22 and final F-22 differs greatly from each other. The F-22 has many improvements over its predecessor, and while the general arrengement of the design has been kept the same, we can clearly say that they're two completely different aircrafts.

So if the YF-22 and F-22 are so much different from each other, why did the latter maintain the same numeral?

Most probably for political/marketing/PR reasons. The plane that came out of the ATF competition was the YF-22, and no matter how many differences there could be between it and the final platform, the production aircraft had to be named F-22, because in a period of crunching budgets no
one, of the general public and/or devoid of technical background, would have accepted that the competition between two aircrafts, named YF-22 and YF-23, would have spawned a third different platform: the YF-24.

Moreover, once again on a parallel track, if we are to consider the experience Boeing had accumulated with its Model-24 (note how this is an internal designation) studies and taking a look at the F-22's final design, we can see that the latter one incorporates many features present on the Model-24, the wings shape being only the most evident one, and all of these changes would have finally contributed to the evolution from the YF-22 to the F-22.



A historic parallel comes to mind in this regard, the evolution of the F/A-18 Hornet from the YF-17 Cobra design.



But then, times were different and this is probably why nowadays we don't have F/A-17 Cobras on aircraft carriers.

a reply to: CiTrus90

Nicely laid out thread and well put together.

Thank you, the logic is impeccable.

P

a reply to: CiTrus90

You forget that we have pictures of the f-24 though

If you got pics, can you provide them here or in PM? I'd really love to take a look at this baby

a reply to: B2StealthBomber

In a thread awhile back I did some looking and came across Col Lanni`s LinkedIn profile. (There are pics of him at Edwards AFB and that's how I know its him.)Here
Has some ties to Lockheed Martin in Dayton Ohio, one of the cities that football game displayed the Northrop Grumman commercial initially.

Personally I think the sweptwing rendering of the YF-24 would look better on the carrier deck than the F-35C

One more edit: I think the reason the F-17 was changed to the F/A-18 was due to the fact it became a carrier based multi-role fighter and the F-17 was intended as a ground based light weight export fighter that is the F-16.

originally posted by: B2StealthBomber
a reply to: CiTrus90

You forget that we have pictures of the f-24 though

Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, in most cases. I would be happy to take a look to make sure its T&C compliant.

a reply to: CiTrus90

Very well written. It's wrong, but it's very well written.

a reply to: B2StealthBomber

As StratosFear pointed out, "extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence".

Moreover, Colonel Lanni's bio came up on the net in 2004:

web.archive.org...://www.edwards.af.mil/units/bio/lanni-bio.html]Col. Lanni biography

But the first reference i find out in regards to the F-24 were from 2001, on this site:

web.archive.org...://www.geocities.com/useours/Aircraft-index.html]Aircraft Index

Now, while i cannot be sure that the person behind that site didn't simply make a mistake in typing or some other kind of intentional or unintentional error, i do believe that he honestly stumped across the F-24 designation associated with the picture and just stick to it, without paying too much attention.

And the aircraft depicted on that page is an F-22 EMD, in a still taken on 18 November 1999 during the first aerial refuelling from a KC-10.



For comparision:

F-22, first KC-10 Refuel

The fact that the first image is the un-cropped one, makes me think that it pre-dates the one on the CodeOneMagazine site.

And remember, that site was made in the early 2000s.

I think these are all circumstancial evidences, together with the ones i posted in the opening post, that at some point the Raptor program was known by the ones working on it as F-24.

a reply to: CiTrus90

The YF-24 was a completly separate program for an undisclosed reason. Hopefully it will be declassified and you can find out what and why.

I hate threads like this, CiTrus90, because they muddy the waters with false data based on uninformed speculation.

Lanni did not accidentally include the YF-24 in his bio any more than Dennis Sager did with the YF-113G in his bio. Both of these are, in fact, unclassified designations for classified aircraft. Such designation have been used since 1968 when the U.S. acquired a MiG-21 for testing at Area 51. The fact that the U.S. possessed such an airplane and the means by which it was acquired were classified. That did not make the airplane or its pilots exempt from all of the usual documentation inherent in military aircraft operations (maintenance records, flight logs, etc.). So, the actual designation, MiG-21, was replaced with an unclassified designation, YF-110B. This practice has continued ever since for acquired foreign military aircraft (MiG-17, MiG-23, SU-22, Su-27, etc.) as well as domestically produced "black" aircraft (YF-117A, YF-117D, YF-118G, etc.).

Between 1992 and 1997, Lanni flew hundreds of sorties in 10 different classified aircraft to evaluate performance, flying qualities, avionics, and military utility. His assignment to the “Red Hats” during this time suggests that many of these aircraft were foreign types but at least one or two may have been entirely new aircraft. He made "first flights" in two airplanes. I believe that the second of these was most likely the YF-24. The fact that it has a two-digit designator is interesting since it departs from the usual formula. I have heard rumors of a YF-43B, as well, but have not confirmed the use of this designation and have no idea who might have flown it.

Any attempt to tie the YF-24 designation to the EMD F-22 aircraft is simply ludicrous. The EMD aircraft were designated F-22A. This is well documented.

a reply to: Shadowhawk

As i stated in the opening post, i don't claim to have the truth in the palm of my hand.

But logic dicates that if Col. Lanni or whoever for him wrote a CV with reference to an YF-24, and when this raised more than an eyebrow, his bio was redacted/pulled down and not left there with that reference, such a thing was not intended to be known. This is not a matter of unclassified designators for classified aircrafts.

I'm fairly aware of the use of the YF-11X designators, thank you.

Any attempt to tie the YF-24 designation to the EMD F-22 aircraft is simply ludicrous. The EMD aircraft were designated F-22A. This is well documented.

Which part of my opening post, which, once more i insist, i said was speculative in nature, is ludicrous if i may ask?

BTW

Thanks Pheonix358 and Zaphod.
Zaph, i dearly hope i'll be proved wrong!

a reply to: Shadowhawk

I think this the key point really.

"All of this research started for me with a simple question: how could a Colonel of the US Air Force let slip in his biography the name of something so important as that of a classified aircraft?"

Just because the plane itself is important and classified doesn't mean the name is too. Releasing the name doesn't change anything about the secrecy of the project. Anyone who knows Groom Lake exists, also knows that classified aircraft are flown there, releasing an unclassified name doesn't add or subtract anything from that.

I was gonna say, I thought the YF-24 had nothing to do with the F-22 Raptor???

Maybe it was a just a technology demonstrator like the Bird of Prey?

a reply to: gfad

Indeed, my initial point was simply that use of the term YF-24 in an official USAF bio was not a mistake. Quite a few official Air Force bios include unclassified terms for classified aircraft (YF-110, YF-113, etc.). Lanni probably never expected it to generate any excitement; the same for Sager with the YF-113G. Thanks to the Internet, these sorts of trivia are now fodder for speculation. Nothing wrong with that, but it usually leads to more confusion than answers.

a reply to: gfad

Just because the plane itself is important and classified doesn't mean the name is too. Releasing the name doesn't change anything about the secrecy of the project.

As i wrote in the post above yours, that's the point. If the name is not important (classified platform-unclassified name), then why pulling away its reference in Colonel Lanni's bio?
Could it be that the issue is not one of classification but of "political" opportunity?

Indeed, my initial point was simply that use of the term YF-24 in an official USAF bio was not a mistake.

I never claimed it was a mistake.

Once more, if i may ask, why calling someone else effort "ludicrous"?

I know Zaphod won't just post the photos/infos he has in order to protect his sources, and clearly told i'm wrong on the point (even if at least he recognized my op was well written).

But i don't get why in your opinion i'm mudding the water. I'm just trying to connect bits of info that *i* think are correlated to each other, and providing sources for what i'm saying. If i'm so wrong in what i found, you could just point out my mistakes.

Like saying, it can't be possibile because in this timeframe there were no flights of F-22 at Edwards, or the Model-24 design is completely unreleated to F-22 developments because of this and that, etc.

ATS motto is deny ignorance, not deny the ignorant (which in this case is me); so you can just tell me what's wrong with my reasoning.

a reply to: CiTrus90

www.scribd.com...

I'll just leave this here..

a reply to: CiTrus90

ATS rules actually don't allow me to post classified info, not that I would anyway..

a reply to: B2StealthBomber

Yeah, you don't need anymore accounts.

a reply to: CiTrus90

Well I`ll take that as a sort of reply, I wasnt saying I don't believe or calling BS on anything. Im just instigating conversation, I eat this sot of stuff up in cognito most of the time and only reply if I think I can contribute or curiosity gets the better of me. Having read rumors and not firmly "knowing" an old companion aircraft has been the focus of many daydreams and Im uncertain if that and this YF-24 are the same aircraft. If the green lady is a soft spot for Zaph then consider this old Gulf War veteran a soft spot for me. Respected members have dropped enough hints for me to believe this nighthawk companion exists but I cannot say if its the YF-24, I know stuff but that that much stuff.

a reply to: StratosFear

It's not.

originally posted by: B2StealthBomber
a reply to: CiTrus90

www.scribd.com...

I'll just leave this here..

Is there a place I can DL this as a PDF without having to join the site with membership?

Also just throwing this out there for everyone, take a look at the 5 year stock trend for LMT and try not to kick yourself. Last time I checked it was 143.?? now look at it. I`d like to think my pittance bought a few bolts and washers flying around out there. The others have not done so good but Ive been watching RNT as well and it is looking promising. NOC and BA seem rocky in the short term but the long term looks good as well.

originally posted by: Sammamishman
a reply to: B2StealthBomber

Yeah, you don't need anymore accounts.

Ahh, now I feel left out of a really good joke, and Ive got a few myself that might be kneeslappers.