The "Fighter Mafia" that fought against the establishment to create the F16
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The fighter mafia consisted of:
John Boyd
Pierre Sprey
Harry Hillaker -
Makes you think about what a few people can do
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Not necessarily my personal opinion, and I don’t know if any of that is true, but I’ve also heared some nasty things about them. About Boyd’s personality, I’ve heared him being called arrogant or that he pushed people around to get what he got, and became furious when he couldn’t.
What is my opinion though is that I don’t know how well the early Vipers, armed with just Sidewinders from that time, would have fared off if the Cold War had gone hot. And Sprey’s criticism on the F-35 as “useless for close air support” isn’t justifiable. In a conflict against a capable enemy with modern weapons, going in low and hot, gun and eyeballs only, would be suicidal.
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That is how Boyd was portrayed in “Boyd” by Coram and other papers….and that that probably kept him down in terms of Pentagon progression and keeping useful allies. Cant doubt his EM work he did with Christie for the F-15 and F-16 that he won an award for…takes all kinds I guess.
Any LWF Mafia influence was out when the USAF took on the F-16 and redesigned it. The lack of Sparrow was entirely a decision within the USAF…it would have had it from Block 1 if the USAF had a requirement for it according to several who were part of the F-16s development in the 1970s.
As for Sprey after he left the Pentagon… putting out mostly BS to support whatever agenda he was supporting has been his main job from his time at Northrop (Reformers era) to more recent times.
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John Boyd was brilliant but belligerent, according to “Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War”, by Coram (2004). If he’d had more people skills, Boyd could have made a lot more US aircraft more cost effective.
Concerning early missile effectiveness, the same book mentions that during the 1967 Six Day War the Israeli Air Force shot down 60 aircraft while losing only 10. Every Israeli kill was a guns kill. The Israelis were dependent on the US for fighter aircraft and knew the Air Force was infatuated with missiles. But at that time the missiles didn’t work.
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Concerning early missile effectiveness, the same book mentions that during the 1967 Six Day War the Israeli Air Force shot down 60 aircraft while losing only 10. Every Israeli kill was a guns kill. The Israelis were dependent on the US for fighter aircraft and knew the Air Force was infatuated with missiles. But at that time the missiles didn’t work.
The missiles were very poor in both Vietnam and the Arab Israeli wars which was where the influence was coming from…and that is basically right outside of a half kill for a Shafrir 1 (Python1) which had terrible performance.
You probaly mean French aircraft because in 1967 the Mirage 3, Super Mystere and Vautour etc, they became more dependent on the US after several embargoes from the French after the 6 Day event.
Boyd had experience of 1950s and early 1960s fighter radars that were total crap (e.g. F-104). When the F-16 was first delivered in 1978 they had digital solid state radars and the AIM-9L was on the cards…both levels of technical progress they clearly didn’t count on. Even the AIM-7F had good results in Israeli use in 1982.
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Makes you think about what a few people can do
…as we used to say among us jumpers - “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers”