The "What-If" YF-23 Stealth Fighter Debate: We Are All Missing a Bigger Point

David Axe

Security,

"So it perhaps is natural that we'd ask whether the F-22 was the right choice. Maybe, just maybe, the F-23 could've succeeded where the F-22 failed. What if the Air Force had picked the other stealth fighter design? What if America were stronger? What if we were safer? What if the whole world were a better place?"

The YF-23 won't save us.

A stealth fighter demonstrator that last flew in 1994 has enjoyed a cultural resurgence in recent years. But the YF-23's renaissance reflects a pernicious kind of magical thinking that actually undermines America's national defense.

(This first appeared late last year.)

The YF-23 was Northrop Grumman's entry in the U.S. Air Force's Advanced Tactical Fighter competition that aimed to pick a new fighter to replace the F-15.

Northrop built two of the twin-tail, twin-engine demonstrators. They flew opposite Lockheed Martin's own YF-22 demonstrators in a series of evaluations in 1990 and 1991. In August 1991, the Air Force selected the YF-22. Lockheed developed the YF-22 into the F-22, which finally entered front-line service in 2005.

Northrop donated the YF-23s to NASA, which ultimately passed them to museums. The planes flew to the space agency's Dryden Flight Research Center in California some time in 1994. It was the last time they would fly.

More than two decades later, the YF-23s are popular subjects of a certain brand of "what-if" journalism. "Many analysts ... have argued that Northrop's YF-23 was truly the better plane," Kyle Mizokami wrote at Popular Mechanics. "What would an operational F-23 have looked like?" Dave Majumdar asked at this very site.

In the ultimate expression of YF-23 what-if-ism, Tyler Rogoway at The War Zone collaborated with digital artist Adam Burch to produce some gorgeous conceptual art depicting an operational "F-23A" version of the YF-23. Rogoway explained that he wanted "to show the world exactly what the F-23A would [have], or at least could have, been."