What ever happened to the F-16 XL?

Short time there was also a proposal called F-16X, which was generaly tailess delta with thrust vectoring, but without cannards. Proposed as advanced F-16 succesor, but it did not have chance against JSF. Another bizare versions of F-16 can be found here.


Mod edit to fix link

[edit on 21-7-2005 by Seekerof]

cyberdude78

I read somewhere where a guy took a B-52, took off the 8 tubojets and gave it a set of 4, 747 turbofan engines. Paintied it black and set it up for Air to Air carring dozens of air to air missiles.

Nice thought bit not to feasable.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
cyberdude78

I read somewhere where a guy took a B-52, took off the 8 tubojets and gave it a set of 4, 747 turbofan engines. Paintied it black and set it up for Air to Air carring dozens of air to air missiles.

Nice thought bit not to feasable.

Sounds like "Flight of the Old Dog" by Dale Brown.

reply to post by JIMC5499


If I were the decision maker for the Indian M-MRCA competition for 126 a/c, I would have without hesitation included and ensured selection of the F-16XL fitted out with a supercruise engine and hopefully plasma cloud stealth (PCS) as well. Of course I would have insisted on it being named F-17 or F-19 (it is a different plane after all) for marketing purposes. I would have made advance payment available up front for serial production as per India's specs and charged 8-10% on all future sales to any other country (as done by UAE) excluding Pakistan and China of course.

reply to post by AnuragK


Last November at the Edwards AFB show we did see one fo the remining birds as a static display. However, given the tooling etc is long gone, its doubtfull they could dust it off for the competition. (I posted a thread here with pics)

As far as Plasma Stealth goes, even if its stealthy against radar, other sensors would be able to detect its field rendering it visable on some spectrum.