Free Republic

I the late 1980s, F-14 Tomcat pilot and Topgun instructor Paul Nickell found himself strapping into the cockpit of a brand new Navy jet that would never land on an aircraft carrier. Instead, it was built specifically to challenge the skills of the best fighter crews the Navy had to offer. It was a stripped down, up-engined, exotically painted variant of the already nimble F-16. General Dynamics built only 26 of them, and the fleet served less than a decade before being controversially retired, but the impression the jet made was legendary. For part one of a multi-part, in-depth series...

As Lockheed Martin’s Marietta, Ga., plant prepares to begin building the 187th—and last—F-22 super-fighter, the military is already dreaming of its successor. In a query to the aerospace industry earlier this month, the Air Force laid out its wish list, and it wants everything: a plane that can win dogfights, demolish air-defense missile networks, support ground troops, and run surveillance missions; a partial prototype would be ready by 2020, with entry into service by 2030. This may be wishful thinking, given the saga of the current wondercraft, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. With a development and production price tag of...