During Red Flag exercises on straight out air to air, the F-111 sucked. But crank up it’s advantage of TFR ( Terrain Following Radar ) and it got low, no plane in the world would even try and take it. TFR used to take up half of an aircraft’s “black boxes”. Now it’s only one small chip.
Yes, and the space shuttle computers were 286’s. Great in it’s day, but so 20th century now.
Yes it was a great low level jet.
TFR gave it a heck of an advantage at night.
Today, with FLIR and TFR, the F-15E is now the low level night strike fighter.
Have to give the F-111 guys credit; at the Mach, just off the deck at night with nothing but black out the front windscreen. . .took big balls. (At least the F-15E has FLIR so the aircrew can see where they are going while TFR low-level at night).