The US Air Force Was Crazy Not to Build More of These

Yes we should have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this program. If we had done so we wouldn't have lost those five or six Wars we lost against peer competitors in the last 25 years. Oh wait we didn't fight any wars like that. If we it's guilt these we would have just wasted hundreds of billions of dollars. I guess we could just set fire to the money it would accomplish the same thing

you ever seen the animated movies called Macross Plus ? story is two pilots , two planes ... one winner .

So our government people of responsibility went with not the lowest bidder and not the best aircraft but with the best kickbacks? Is that what all this means??

The Air Force makes nothing but bad decisions. They're short on pilots, to begin with, and as far as decisions on aircraft, between the Joint Chiefs and politics, it's an absolute joke at this point.

Narrator voices about YF-23 its muscular structure as the moment one thinks the YF-23 airframe resembles surfaces reflecting the thickness of paper. Oh, the irony!

Given the current geo-political tensions in the Middle East and Asia, the USA should be prioritizing the YF23 and the Virginia Class submarines. Any delay could be defeat.

The YF-23 lost fair and square. The only reason people still love it is because of its good looks. Given Northrop's challenges with the maintainability of stealth features on the B-2, it would have been a very difficult plane to maintain. Given the Air Force's recent position on not going forward with current NGAD proposals and relying on multiple, more affordable Collaborative Combat Aircraft, it's not likely stealth nor speed of a fighter is at the top of their priority list.

Politics strikes again

They're absolutely failing with the F-16 too it is a Time and Time proven again airframe they didn't even bother looking at the F-16 XL which in my opinion would destroy the f-35

The Soviets made great planes, but this plane is on another level As well as the F2 2 , it just goes to show. You can make two great planes and picking either one is like splitting hairs, but this plane is an absolute legend…

nice content, crappy background noise

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

the perfect strike fighter.

I wish they had chosen both aircraft. The YF-22 as a dogfighter and the YF-23 for an interceptor.

Imagine if some other countries could decide to take the YF23 offer from Northrop, "if US doesn't want it, we do".

Probably brown paper bags left on desk after meeting with military and beauracrats to garner acceptance had a lot to do with choice.

USAF IS NEVER. ... .. . bad .... I think that we were not even close to live the future.... So we went cheap. .... To damn cheap

if it was YF-23, it could have been mass produced unlike YF-22 that was stoked by how many F-35's nowadays... IMHO

My brother was one of the designers of this plane. They should have made this along with the22

Which is 1. more affordable, 2 which is easier to maintain in service?
More affordable means we could buy more of them,and easier to maintain means we get more service from them.
Sadly,F-22A is capped at about 180 planes,and NO more can be built,all the tooling was intentionally destroyed due to politics. We need 1000s of these planes.

First YF22 crashed on its first flight!!

the REAL winner of the atf program!

McDonnell Douglas built the "TomCat" don't forget, good pedigree there.

The decision to leave this plane behind was probably made by a communist diversity hire.

Is this the same model with update Aviatonic’s Japan is getting ready to produce for their own needs?

1 of the things that never makes any sense with theses programs is you give the builders a brief an they both turn up with with planes that can do it all better then expected .1 may do 1 thing better an the other something else better ...but both are peak . top of there game machines how as a military's head do you not see what's under your nose an develop both i mean do you want the worlds greatest air defense/ offensive aircraft or not seems like they just want to make sure next budget they get more funds ... when you develop bombs you pushed it to the limits now we have nukes ..we will never use . but they are the best boom you can get...nobody said oh na just do the little 1 they truly wanted the best ..i don't get why you would say na we don't need the best planes just like 1 really good 1 .................

The YF23 was NOT stealthier than the F22, they both have the radar crossection between a bubble bee and a golfball. The YF23 may have had other superiorities, but not in stealth visibility. I question the accuracy of 1.6 mach in supercruise. I'm sure that if Lockeed had made this video, they would have discussed the superior manuvering due to thrust vectoring. I thought this was a comparison, because many things discussed, are present on the F22 as well, like concealed engine compressor blades, both have that. The 22 also has heat dissapating tiles at the exhaust system. YF23 has ram scoopes? BS!!! The YF23 did not have ramjet engines. It didn't have superior handling characteristics. Sometimes Northrup is as honest as trump. Your video is not an accurate comparison. Try again.

Politics is what killed this aircraft.

As an American taxpayer and USAF veteran it still pisses me off that Lockheed Martin got the contract. They have continually been over budget and behind schedule. Even today in 2024 they still have problems with the F-35 and hundreds of them are finished and in storage because they can’t be drought up to standards. Plus the early F-35’s will have to have expensive modifications to them. The F-23 would have been a better fighter for the money. We get screwed again by the Pentagon.

The Airforce should have gone with both options.

I built them lol!! The number of skills we lost after this project was shelved….. the guy who was most important on the project now works part time at Dicks….

Its obvious why Northrup pulled out of the 6th generation competition and said go pound sand. Northrop makes the best fighters in the world. If you can't pay.... see ya later.

YF-23-My favorite plane of all time!

They liked the way the 22 looked over the 23. The only reason I can think of to choose the 22. Absurd. And I love the 22!

At the moment the United States 🇺🇸 has the most technologically advanced military, especially the USAF, but in my opinion the aircraft need to be invincible, if the USA, NATO or any other allied nation starts a global conventional war these fantastic aircraft need to have an extremely low attrition rate, replacing them is not going to be as easy as it once was, the time required to produce just one of these aircraft is not measured in days,weeks or possibly months, and when you consider the cost element as well as the production rate it could easily diminish the superiority of the United States military,😮 and all the other countries that have procured their aircraft might not be able to obtain spare parts or even whole aircraft, it is one drawback that everyone hopes will not happen, but given the wars in Ukraine and potentially the Middle East as a whole does make this scenario very much more probable that possible.

Plane is clean 🔥✌️

I totally agree! That plane is and still is better than the f 22 the only reason they didn't get it is because of favoritism!

The F23 failed because of a BS close quarters agility. A ridiculous assumption as the 22 and 23 would have killed their prey long before the enemy knew they were there.
Lockheed has a HUGE kickback program AND all contracts allow for massive price hikes on software upgrades and parts.
The 23 was a masterpiece of advanced thinking.

The US always perceives Russian superiority to get new aircraft. They (Soviets) have been faking it since the end of the 2nd World War based on their actual inferiority.

Lockheed Martin obviously had more bribe capabilities

It is interesting how it can loose the competition and still people think it is clearly better than the F22.

The F22 has done exceptionally well on all parameters except for price of construction and price of maintenance, and even though it was a close competition, I see no reason to expect that the yF23 had done significantly better.

Also the F22 has trust vectoring, the yF23 does not, so on close combat manuverability, its not even a close competition.

Northrop 30 years ahead but someone said NO.Who was it.

I literally laugh out loud at the opinions regarding the XF-22 vs YF-23. Oh that's right, we're living in the days of the conspiracy theorists now. The XF-22 didn't just have a better sales pitch, ultimately it had better performance specs and that's why it was chosen. Keep in mind both prototypes exceed the performance specs the military was looking for.
The main specs:
1) The 22 has a higher top speed at 1600 mph to the 23's 1450.
2) The 22 is more maneuverable especially at higher speeds.
3)The 23 had a range of 2800 miles vs 2000 for the 22, I think it's been extended now.
4) The ceiling for the 23 was about 65,000 ft. compared to 50,000 ft. which is higher now.
5) The 23 had a smaller radar cross section than the 22. But, we're talking about trying to locate something on radar the size of a cubic inch for the 22 vs a cubic centimeter for the 23.
6) The biggest reason the F-22 was chosen is production costs. All the engineers agreed it was supposed to be easier to build than the 23.

If you remember, the costs almost doubled from the time congress first voted on them until the time the fleet was cut down to only 185 or so. The 23 would easily have had more budget overruns due to it being more complex to build in the first place. In a somewhat similar way, that's how the F-111 Aardvark was morphed into the F-14 Tomcat so they could recoup development and production costs of the F-111.

Both the 22 and 23 are now 30+ year old tech. Much of the engineering came from the X-15 and the SR-71. Instead of looking/thinking backwards the government is looking forward, the F-35 is already 15-20 year old tech but it's still ahead of the Russian S-35, the Japanese J-35 and the Chinese J-20. How about the next video is about the J-20 vs the F-35?

The YF‐23 should of gotten the contract, hands down and I'm not knocking the F-22,excellent aircraft.

it is always s choice by man agements normal some one will always be a fool

Blame Obama for cancelling it.

USAF doesn't build planes.

I’m so sick of the YF-23 fanboys saying that the YF-23 was superior to the F-22.

This is nonsense. People saying all of these things are ignoring some FACTS!

Fact#1
The YF23 and YF22 were prototypes that were used for demonstration and validation. The ATF competition did not have a competitive fly off. The purpose was to demonstrate that the technologies would actually work in a real aircraft. The dem/val was only one part of the competition. That said, the F-22 team flew their aircraft beyond the requirements set by the air force.

Fact#2
The YF22 and YF23 prototypes were just that-prototypes. They were not production aircraft. Therefore it is IMPOSSIBLE to compare these aircraft to the actual, fully developed, production F-22.

The F-22 design changed dramatically from the YF-22 prototype. And the YF-23 would have as well.

People keep saying that the YF-23 was faster. It was faster, in supercruise, than the YF-22. BUT THE F-22 is faster, in supercruise, than both. And again, the F-22 is a fully developed production aircraft.

People keep saying that that the YF-23 was stealthier. This is a ludicrous statement.

Neither the YF-23 nor the YF-22 were fully developed stealth aircraft. All they had were stealthy shapes and composite skin.

Neither prototype had a gold coated cockpit, RAM coatings and gap filler or internal radar absorbing structures. Neither of them underwent exhaustive signature verification.

Moreover, every change that was made during development of the F-22, after the ATF competition, (there were a lot) had to be taken into account, while making it as stealthy as possible and maintaining the other specs. This would have been true of the F-23 as well.

Therefore it is IMPOSSIBLE to say how a hypothetical production F-23 would have compared to the production F-22.