Maybe you have just a smidgen of knowledge about military aviation, and still, you would be quite likely to name the F-16 Fighting Falcon as a famous aircraft. It is a quick and flexible plane that has been the US Air Force’s primary weapon for a long time. However, an amazing diversion of that kind of machine, the F-16XL, is hidden in the past of flight.
For instance, this new plane was to surpass all the limits of applied fighter tech with its imagination blending with high-spirited objectives. Its progression is an over-time story of inventiveness, rivalry, and subtle influence. As far as mass production is concerned, it didn’t go through.
The idea of the F-16XL came from the so-called “Fighter Mafia,” an eclectic bunch of extremely imaginative Air Force strategists who held the belief that the usage of the fighter energy and agility, together with the efficiency of less fuel, would mean more than just the two parameters of size and firepower.
Their thinking mainly revolved around John Boyd’s energy-maneuverability theory, which put the winning air combat scenario to a fighter’s capability of quick turning of speed and direction.
General Dynamics concretized the idea with the F-16 SCAMP (short for Supersonic Cruise and Maneuver Prototype) as a result. What the airplane should be able to do was the so-called “supercruise,” or continuous supersonic flight without the serious consumption of afterburners. So, it was not simply an extension of a way to become more efficient, but also a bold move to mission endurance.
The most spectacular thing of that time about the XL was its cranked-delta wing, not a beautifying but a physical one. Parts of the wing allowed the lift 25% to be greater, the performance at both very low and high speeds to be excellent, and the total surface area to be more than double that of a standard F-16 wing.
The angles were extremely well thought out-you closed to the root at 50 degrees for high speed and 70 at the tips for lower and more agile turning. What you got was no longer a plane, which was very limited in its possibilities of flight, but rather one that could fly under the most instructive conditions.
Such a wing extension gave the XL the capacity of carrying twice the payload of a normal F-16 and the ability of flying 44% farther than the latter, er as well as its capability of staying in supersonic flight even when fully loaded with bombs. With 27 weapons stations, the number of which was considerably more than the 15 on the F-15E, the XL offered both range and punch of a much bigger jet, but without the necessity of using heavy external tanks.
However, when it came to the Air Force’s Enhanced Tactical Fighter competition, the story was somewhat different, and the XL was not so fortunate. The thing was that the F-15E Strike Eagle, its competitor, already had a reputation as a reliable old hand. In addition to that, having two engines made it hard for the plane to be destroyed on long missions, and there were not many unknowns in terms of development, so the Strike Eagle was less risky and more cost-effective to take. So, the F-15 got the contract despite the XL’s amazing potential.
Nevertheless, the F-16 story had not been completely told. Both prototypes took up a new post at NASA, where they became important research platforms for the study of aerodynamics and airflow at high speeds. The information gathered became part of the technologies for the next fighter designs, which, for example, had something to do with the European projects or the supercruise capabilities of the F-22 Raptor.
To a large extent, the F-16XL is one of aviation’s great “what if” scenarios. It didn’t have any requirements for the fight, but its innovations still had an impact on the next generation of aircraft. Quite often, the planes that have never been down in history are the ones that changed the way wars have been fought. The XL is evidence that even the projects that haven’t been released into production can still affect military aviation’s evolution for a long time to come.