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Oh, I agree the F-16 and F-18 are nice in a Luke Skywalker kind of way.

But anyone with any sense of aesthetics has got to love the F-4. It’s the rumbling Harley Davidson of fighter jets.

In the end, fighters have to be judged not on style but on how good they are at their defining mission of killing peer level opponents. In a gun versus gun dogfight, other things being equal, the smaller, harder to see, and more nimble F-16 beats the F-4.

Of course, the unfair part of such a comparison is that they are fighter designs from different eras. The F-16 was innovative in its clean lines, high maneuverability, fly-by-wire control system, high visibility bubble canopy, and g force resistant semi-reclined pilot seat.

Pilot critics these days like to refer to deride the F-16 as the lawn dart. Yet if one compares the F-4, F-16, and F-22, it is easy to see just from appearances that the F-16 is in the middle of that evolutionary line, with the F-4 now looking old.