“Air Force officials say that the effort was designed to provide “the only USAF search and targeting capability in the infrared spectrum designed specifically for air-to-air, providing air-to-air attack capability in a radar-denied environment”
I might be talking about a horse of a completely different color here, but haven’t the Russians included such a system on the Fulcrum and Flanker since the late 1980s?
Yes, so did the USN use such a system for the Tomcat. The three main ‘Euro-Canard’ fighters also have IRST in service or development.