A Fighter With Flexibility

This article focuses on the US Defense Department planners who have opted to develop a single, affordable strike fighter flexible enough to match or surpass the capabilities of its varied predecessors. Efforts to build one plane for more than one armed service are risky—witness the failed attempt by General Dynamics and Grumman in the 1960s to develop the swing-wing F-111fighter/bomber for both the Air Force and the Navy. The prevailing belief today is that advanced integrated systems design and extensive simulation will help engineers avoid the pit-falls associated with combining the services’ diverse goals. To succeed, the department’s Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program will entail a degree of cooperation and frugality not seen previously among the American armed forces. At stake for the aerospace/defense industry is perhaps the largest US military procurement program ever. Although the aircraft from the JSF competition will be developed using some •of the most advanced engineering design techniques currently available, they will also have to satisfy today’s political and fiscal constraints.