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From: osprey!tobin@uunet.uu.net (Mike Tobin)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: US Fighter Designations
Message-ID: <1990Aug9.015912.8503@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 9 Aug 90 01:59:12 GMT
References: <1990Aug5.042539.28495@cbnews.att.com>
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From: osprey!tobin@uunet.uu.net (Mike Tobin)
In article <1990Aug5.042539.28495@cbnews.att.com> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>
>>F102: Delta Dagger? (I get this and the F106 backwards sometimes) ...
>>***     Yep. You got it straight. NASA is currently using one to study
>>***     lightning. They fly it into a storm and dare lightning to strike...
>
>Sorry, slight misidentification here.  The NASA lightning-research fighter
>(it does other jobs too, including aerodynamics work on highly-swept wings)
>is an F-106.  I think it's specifically an F-106B, the two-man trainer
>version.  It is scheduled to be retired before too very long, as the costs

Most of the AF's F-102s and F-106s ended their days as Q ships:
QF-102/QF-106 (and QF-100 now that I think about it).  Q being the designation 
for drone (but let's not get into a family history of those :-)).  

Essentially they were radio controlled (from the ground), high speed
targets.  Practice missile rounds have no warheads so the QFs would be
used until somebody got a direct hit (it's the proximity fuse that
often gets the job done).

When the 100s were used up they went to the 102s and now to the 106s.