![]() Well, it just so happened that at the time, the United States Air Force was grappling with a new reality of air combat: radar guided Surface-to-Air missiles. The official line on this was that Northrop wanted to avoid any similarities with the typically odd-numbered Soviet plane designations, but this hadn’t stopped them from accepting the F-17, or later F-23 designations. In the late 70s, after the F-18 Hornet was developed, the next plane should have been the F-19, but instead Northrop (the manufacturers of said airplane) requested they jump straight to F-20. However, there was one designation that was skipped over for… no apparent reason. ![]() The F-35, for instance, was the X-35 during development, but when it entered production as a proper fighter jet, kept the number. F-13 was skipped over on account of triskaidekaphobia (there's your $10 word for the day), and sometimes designations are retained when a plane switches roles. There are a few exceptions to this rule, of course. The F-15 was designed and built before the F-16 but after the F-14. The prefix letter tells you what the aircraft’s role is (C for cargo, F for fighter, R for recon, etc.), and the numbers are sequential. Starting in 1962, all aircraft used by all branches of the US military fit into the same naming system. Okay, so to start us off here, I gotta talk briefly about how the US military names their planes.
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