“Was the Air Force picking a fighter or picking a future?” The Advanced Tactical Fighter competition was meant to be a clean, engineering-led sprint to replace the F-15 and maintain U.S. air superiority well ahead of what Soviet designers and air defenses were building. The specs combined the biggest ideas of the era into one package: low observability, advanced avionics, high agility, and supersonic flight. When it came time to pick between the Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 and the Lockheed YF-22, the military chose the more conservative, familiar-looking option and in the years since, the YF-23’s sharper focus has kept it alive as a kind of alternate history that refuses to stay filed away.
Even to this day, the YF-23 looks like it was designed by engineers who wanted the radar and infrared threats to get the bulk of the damage work done before a pilot ever had to turn behind anyone. The diamond-shaped wing, the highly angled V-tail, and the smooth blending of the wing into the fuselage were all intended to reduce the radar return over a wider range of angles, while the internal weapons carriage kept that shape and helped reduce drag. Northrop also decided to embed the engines deeply within the fuselage, a move that was as much about reducing signatures as it was about aerodynamics. Perhaps the most telling detail from within the program is that engineer John Shupek’s description of his work was to ensure that “the backend of the airplane didn’t burn off,” and that he ultimately settled on “transpiration cooling” for the rear deck. This sort of thermal management is the unsung workhorse of low-observable designs: heat and fluid flow are problems of survivability, not just of stealth.
The YF-23 had a performance statement that remains relevant today: speed and efficiency are survivability assets. The reporting on the project reflected the vision with a statement that has held up well over time: “It will be the first fighter capable of flying for sustained periods at supersonic speeds.” The two prototypes, PAV-1 and PAV-2, nicknamed “Spider” and “Gray Ghost,” were known as a group as the Black Widow II, and their engine selection reflected how aggressively the program was pushing. The competition involved matching airframes with competing engines, such as the General Electric YF120 variable-cycle engine, which test pilot Jim Sandberg later described with a delicately measured dose of candor: “My” airplane, PAV-2, “supercruised quite a bit faster ‘very fast’, as the USAF censors advised us to say.”
But none of that diminished the YF-22’s advantage in which the Air Force’s operator sensibilities resided: maneuverability. The thrust-vectoring nozzles provided the YF-22 with strong high angle-of-attack control and a visual-range insurance policy in an era when elements of the force had not yet fully embraced stealth as the game-changer. Northrop’s YF-23 made a conscious decision to forego such close-in maneuverability in favor of lower weight and lower observability, wagering that stealth, altitude, and energy would see to it that the fight did not become a turning match in the first place.
It was also a reflection of how operational aircraft are procured, not merely developed. Shupek continued, The true reason we (Northrop) lost the contract was that Lockheed had no new fighter development projects at that point in time, while Northrop had the F/A-18E/F and the B-2. It is a testament to the success of the F-22 that it is an operational success, but it is also a testament to the YF-23 that it has left a blueprint for what a stealth-first air superiority fighter looks like when it is given the freedom to be uncompromising.
This is why the YF-23 is more than just a relic in a museum. Its shaping, its thermal attention, and its efficiency strategy still fit very well into what is expected of survivability, range, and signature management, which were always priorities, even when the aircraft that represented these values was no longer in service.
