Stealth airpower increasingly rewards the side that can “see first, shoot first, kill first, and finally evade unscathed.” It is precisely this rationale that still make the Northup YF-23 “Black Widow II” a popular discussion about the Advanced Tactical Fighter contest. The plane was not an unsuccessful concept, but a sharp-edged thesis on how air superiority would be exercised when radar, heat, and emissions control were the factors of the new air superiority.
The YF-23 was designed in two prototypes- Black Widow II and Gray Ghost as a low-observability medium-range aircraft, which employed a planform geometry of diamond shape, with a V-tail, reducing the count of radar reversion points. Carrying of internal weapons was a matter of course, however, more insightful was the handling of the exhaust: the construction blocked exhaust flow heat against infrared signature, at the expense of compromises that would be punished in a knife fight at close range. The wing per se was designed to cruise efficiently, not to high-alpha theatrics, and was tailored to long-range patrol and penetration missions in which survival after the initial miss was detected was more significant than victory in a turning match.
The YF-23 has features on paper and in flight test which are so custom-built to the wide theaters. A single reference source positions the demonstrator with the 2,796 miles maximum range and ceiling of 65,000 feet, as well as more robust stealth features than its competitor. It also turned in a great performance in supercruise, and this concept of operations that speed was one way to keep exposure down and remain a hard target. The Air Force was not choosing a shape however. It was selecting a doctrine.
The YF-22 demonstrated another form of confidence during the demonstrations: aggressive maneuvering, high-G handling, and more visceral demonstration of what fighter culture had so long valued. The two-dimensional thrust vectoring of the Lockheed design provided the controllability and post-stall authority which made the combat within the visual range to seem solvable, although enhanced beyond-visual-range combat became increasingly decisive. Simultaneously, the YF-22 was seen as a more secure program bet- more production-ready, more easily developed, and supported by an industrial team that appeared to have been crafted to bear a decades-long franchise.
But the greater curve of air fighting swung toward the premise of YF-23. The contemporary stealth doctrine is beginning to view survival as a systems problem: minimize emissions, trigger sensors, remain within the decision loop of the opponent and rely on networking to prevent putting the shooter in the open. The NDU Press discussion of future doctrine identifies the same force structure as that of “information dominance, stealth, integrated systems, and autonomous technology,” with the transition of E-3 to E-7 Wedgetail, and the emergence of “manned-unmanned teaming” as a matter of course operational posture, not an experiment.
That course is modifying the meaning of “best fighter.” The extreme agility is not eliminated but conditional, the most useful in those cases when the previous levels of stealth, electronic warfare, and data management cannot do their job. In that regard, the YF-23 “stealth-first” airplane, designed to strike early, decouple, and get away clean, is more of an alternate history curiosity than an early precursor of the modern penetration argument, as embodied in the present day B-21 Raider. The sting, however, is not that the Air Force made a wrong choice at the moment. The reason is that the YF-23 was geared toward a future that came–only after the competition was past.
