Boeing F-32 Is The Ugliest Fighter Jet 🤢


The F–35 Joint Strike Fighter is well-known, but its less-attractive sibling remains quite mysterious. Maybe because it couldn’t succeed, still, it existed at a particular time, and that is why we are gonna discuss it today. Let’s see the Boeing F-32 which once upon a time, was thought to be the way forward for the USAF.

The Boeing F-32, Boeing's participation in the JSF program, was an attempt to secure the largest military contract in American aviation history. But, before we see how did all turn out for the company, the history of the Boeing X-32 fighter jet is a great way to get off to a soaring start. With the dawn of a new era came the Joint Strike Fighter, or just JSF for short. It acted as a follow-up to the Advanced Tactical Fighter or ATF program, which ultimately led to the development of the F-22. Since the A 12 Adventure and the N A TF programs were canceled, the JSF concept was to develop a new multi-purpose fighter for both the Navy and the Air Force. The A-10, F-16, FA-18, AV-8 Harrier, and F-1-17 were all slated to be retired in favor of this new JSF plane. Among the typical suspects in this extremely audacious attempt to create the final fighter jet the United States would ever require, The Big Four Aircraft Manufacturers: Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, and McDonald Douglas, submitted an application. In the end, the Joint Strike Fighter program decided to accept entries from two different businesses: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. These companies were awarded the $750 million contract as they agreed to demonstrate their competing designs during the program's concept demonstration phase. Both were tasked with the responsibility of building and flight testing two aircraft between the years 1997 and 2001. These aircraft were mandated to demonstrate capabilities for three distinct variants: conventional takeoff and landing, short takeoff and vertical landing, and carrier takeoff and landing. As a side note, it's worth noting that in order to limit production costs and make sure the companies don't go bankrupt trying, the government actually forbade them from funding the further development of the prototypes. Keeping in view the contract, Lockheed developed the X 35, and Boeing created the X 32. And while the latter was a fast jet with an intriguing design philosophy, Boeing took the mandate very differently. The strategy that Boeing implemented in order to gain a competitive edge was to deliver much cheaper production and life-cycle costs by reducing the amount of variation that existed between the many JSF variants. As a result, the X-32 was developed with a sizable delta wing that is made of carbon fiber composite in one piece. Being devoid of any folding mechanism, the wing had a span of 9.15 meters, a leading edge sweep of 55 degrees, and the capacity to hold up to 20,000 pounds or 9,000 kg of fuel. The high sweep angle served two purposes: it allowed for a thick wing section to be employed while still giving a minimal amount of transonic aerodynamic drag, and it provided a good angle for conformal antenna equipment that was put on the wing. Both of these purposes were accomplished.

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