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From: raymond%europa@uunet.UU.NET (Raymond Man)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: McDonnell-Douglas/Northrop F/A-18
Message-ID: <1990Jul30.015802.8659@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 30 Jul 90 01:58:02 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AME Dept., Univ. of Arizona at Tucson
Lines: 38
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: raymond%europa@uunet.UU.NET (Raymond Man)

In <1990Jul27.015630.22235@cbnews.att.com> Duane P Mantick quoting
Adrian Hurt in <1990Jul24.024951.21186@cbnews.att.com>

>>17: Northrop F-17; competitor to F-16 which failed.  Later resurrected as:
>>18: McDonnell-Douglas F-18 Hornet
>        Hmmmm.....I don't think McD/D would agree with that....  :-)

I don't think MD has a leg to stand on to disagree. While MD probably
put in more design, research and development time in working out the
detail of the F/A-18, the whole plane is just an YF-17 scaled up
10% to meet Navy requirement. The fact is the Navy did not like
doing business with Northrop which they considered having no
naval plane experience and the cooperation with MD was a force
majeure. Then why did the Navy chosed the YF-17 in the first place?
Well the Congress in their infinite wisdom to save money, directed
the Navy to choose a plane from the contenders in the YF-16 vs YF-17
fly off, their intention was to have the Navy using the same plane
as the UASF. But the Navy of course dislike using an USAF plane(when
was the last time that happened? The FB-111 fiasco came pretty close.)
all the more when the winner, YF-16 was single engined, giving the Navy
a good excuse (actually F-8U, A-4, A-1 Skyradier**, A-7 are all SE) to
choose the loser of the fly off.

**In a previous post, I wrote the A-3 was the first of A planes. Obviously
I am correcting myself here. But heck, someone will very soon point this
out anyway.

As for why YF-17 lost, Ray Braybrook said something I shall quote
in the next post.

 
Just call me `Man'. 
"And why take ye thought for "    --   Matt. 6:28
raymond@jupiter.ame.arizona.edu