The A-12 was operational, but by that time there was a fight in the DoD over the airborne strategic reconnaissance mission. The USAF wanted their own two-seat version, the R-12 (later redesignated SR-71), and there was a number of budgetary and policy meetings debating the merits of operating both the A-12 and the SR-71, or just one. In the end the USAF took over the strategic reconnaissance mission, and as it turned out the A-12 was withdrawn from use by the CIA as soon as enough SR-71s were around (namely deployed to replace BLACK SHIELD A-12s at Kadena) to fulfill the reconnaissance needs.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. This is about your inability to grasp the simple concept that Boyd’s theories were applied to tactical fighters, of which the interceptor fleet was not a part of.

I already told you that the F-12B had the money. McNamara didn’t want the aircraft, despite the wishes of the USAF, so he refused to release the funds. If the whole program had no merits, feel free to explain why the same airframe was allowed to be produced for reconnaissance.

So the B-1B is a better strategic aircraft than the Tu-160 because it is around in greater numbers? I wouldn’t buy that if it was free, personally.

Are you absolutely sure there were no plans to export Blackbirds? Go research that one.

So? Who cares? It wasn’t intended for that role, was it?

The USAF wanted it, Congress gave them the money for it, but McNamara didn’t want the aircraft. And the weapon system must have had some merit, or else it wouldn’t have been modified and ultimately ended up on F-14s.

The Russians found a use for the MiG-25. So? That has no bearing on the F-12B at all.

Boyd wanted FX to be an agile aircraft as the MiG-25 was believed to be a maneuverable air superiority fighter, and the FX was the counter to that. Notice how the F-12B doesn’t even enter into that argument, as it had received USAF go-ahead and funding from Congress after the FX program had gotten underway. I guess the USAF believed there was a need for both aircraft, probably because they were intended for different roles in different branches. How are your erroneous concepts more credible than the USAF. Were you there in 1967 when the USAF was trying to procure the F-12B and FX?

Foreign FOXBAT fleets have nothing to do with why the CIA halted A-12 operations. I already explained that bit to you.

So? So the Russians were as wrong as the West about the value of cannons on fighter aircraft.

So? It was fielded and did its job in combat. That has nothing to do with the F-12B.

No it wouldn’t. it wasn’t equipped for it. ADC was not tasked with that role. The FX was specifically intended to replace the F-4 in the air superiority role, that was going ot be the next MiG killer. Not the next purpose-built ADC interceptor.

Yes, the perceived need for the F-15 was justified, based on Western overexaggerations of the FOXBAT’s performance. Yes, Boyd called for maneuverable fighters. That still has not a thing to do with the F-12B, which was designed outside of Boyd’s concepts.

Irrelevant.

And his correct theories had nothing to do with strategic air defense.

And I already explained why the aircraft was retired. You’ll be interested to know that during the NICE GIRL fly-off evaluation between the A-12 and the SR-71 the A-12 was found to have a better photographic reconnaissance suite, but I guess all of that test data must have been faked to prove that the A-12 wasn’t a failure in the eyes of people not working in the aviation industry.

SOC

You are just giving excuses, if you have seen the formulas i have just posted you will see Basicly mathematically speaking agility is defined as the thrust minus the drag devided by the lift and the product of this, multiply it by Speed.

Now ifi you put also weight you will see that heavier the aircraft and with lesser thrust, drag and weight will affect the general angular speed and vertical turn that fighter can achieve.

The YF-12 was heavy compared to the F-15 had less power and less lift then the F-15 was a 9G fighter while the other could not even pass 3Gs.

Now you have two fighters to deal with the MiG-25 one is not agile but has good missiles of long range and Mach 3 plus speed, in the other hand you have a Mach 2.5 fighter with medium range missiles but 9G capability which fighter the USAF should finance?

Answer the F-15 fact the YF-12 was cancelled the F-15 took over the duty of killing MiGs.

the YF-12 could not evolve beyond a single niche therefore could not justify its existance if other missions would had been demanded, in the other hand the F-15 can basicly fight at long range, medium range, short range and bomb as one of the best aircraft in the world the USAF was not going to waste money in a very limited aircraft with lack of agility and no adaptability, so like dinosaurs the YF-12 got extinct.;)

I suppose that the 17 Apollo capsules and their loss rate make them a non-operational statistic anomally too, eh??? Numbers don’t tell the whole story. We built what we needed, when something better came along or the situation changed, we built something else.

Matt

You can buiold Roll Royces or build Toyotas but always the cheaper product with acceptable quality wins, high price and low production always limit the capabilities of a product.

and by the way the A-12 was retired after only 29 operational missions and five aircraft were lost in accidents😀

CIA operated the A-12 for a time before the two seat version and the air force took over the show.

Matt

Yeah they operate 13 aircraft of which 5 were lost in accidents:rolleyes: , those were not operational aircraft those were test aircraft, the MiG-25R was build in more numbers and india alone had more MiG-25R than the US A-12;) 😀

The YF-12 wasn’t adaptable?

It was also available as reconnaisance type too, you know – it was called the A-12 and SR-71!:diablo: :diablo:

None of them were ever shot down in any of the thousands of sorties they carried out… how many MiG-25Rs were shot down?:rolleyes:

The SR-71 tried to spawn different versions but it was not successful the A-12 and YF-12 never achieved operational status

Dear folks,
Su-27BM is now Su-35, not Su-35BM!

It is the Su-35 see it

http://www.strizhi.ru/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1187278065/0

http://lenta.ru/photo/2007/08/21/maks/24_Jpg.htm

check both webpages

You’re talking about aerospace research trends, carry on.

Correct, carry on.

The B-70 was to be a Mach 3 bomber for the purpose of survivability. The fact that speed and altitude weren’t going to save it from increasingly nasty SAMs was one of the primary factors that killed the aircraft as a bomber before it even flew.

The F-12B was a Mach 3 interceptor because Kelly Johnson proposed mounting the cancelled F-108’s weapons system to a modified A-12 to fulfill the USAF ADC’s requirement for an advanced interceptor. The Mach 3 “fighters” the USAF was considering in the 50s and 60s were pure interceptors outside the scope of Boyd’s concepts.

The MiG-25 gained Mach 3 capability not because they wanted to hit the mark, but because they wanted an interceptor capable of dealing with the A-12. Also, you are ignoring the fact that if you want a pure BVR missile armed interceptor, a very high speed platform isn’t a bad way to go as you’ll impart more kinetic energy onto the missile at launch and get considerably longer range, especially if you fire it at altitude against a lower-altitude target.

There’s nothing overly wrong with that statement.

That followed the standard belief at the time that guns were outdated, sure.

Not exactly. There were two factors that you are not considering here. First, USAF aircraft operated under considerablerestrictions, pretty much eliminating the chances of an actual BVR intercept to begin with. So right off the bat, the F-4 was operating at a bit of a disadvantage as it couldn’t take full advantage of its weapon system. Second, the other real problem was that early AAMs simply didn’t work all that great. Had they been more successful, modern fighters may still lack cannons.

Here we go again. Boyd’s doctrine was never intended to be applied to an aircraft like the F-12B, which was a pure interceptor designed for a very specific role as part of the Air Defense Command. Once again, this is the part that you are failing to understand. ADC and TAC operated under different doctrines for very different roles. That’s why you found TAC operating jets like the F-100 while ADC operated jets like the F-101B. Boyd’s doctrine may have favored an agile dogfighter, sure, but it had no bearing on the F-12B or F-111B as they were not intended for fighter-on-fighter combat.

Yes, TAC’s new figher needed agility and speed because they had overhyped the MiG-25 by an astronomical margin. That had no bearing on what was going on inside of ADC, where the F-12B would have operated.

By the 1970’s it was obious that the idea of a supersonic Soviet bomber coming across the Atlantic was pure fantasy, so there was no need for a high-speed interceptor. Tactical fighters and air superiority aircraft were becoming far more influenced by Boyd’s theories, and they developed accordingly. You are still completely failing to separate ADC from TAC.

The F-12B and F-111B were perfectly prepared for their intended roles. Well, ok, the F-111B wasn’t, but that was because it was an overweight aircraft and had some severe carrier suitability issues. When the USN looked to a replacement for the F-111B, they chose to go a different route with an aircraft more along the lines of the F-15, but they wanted to retain the Phoenix capability (some say that was in no small part due to the fact that, after the F-111B debacle, they had no desire to be forcefed another USAF aircraft).

Read what I posted above, the F-106 turned out to be a maneuverable aircraft and as such was modified to serve as an overseas air defense platform capable of fighter on fighter combat should the need arise. Speed and missile armament did neglect agility to a point, but the fact that agility was not a concern of pure interceptors like the F-111B or F-12B was perfectly fine as again, they weren’t intended to face off against fighters in a dogfight.

SOC

Let us imagine what would had happened if the YF-12 and F-111 would had been build and enter operational service.

If the F-111B would had entered service we would never had seen F-14 on board of US carriers at least until the early 1980s.

If the F-111B would had entered production very the US navy would had a F-111B and F-18 hi-low mix.

The F-111B would had depended exclusively on the F-18 as a dogfighter close combat peer.

If the F-12 would had entered service the F-15 perhaps would had entered service if only the YF-12 would not have a good kill ratio using AIM-54s against any enemy aircraft albeit in smaller numbers however if it would had success Skunk works would had pushed for larger numbers of F-12s reducing the numbers of F-15 purchased nevertheless very likely the F-16 would had entered service too

Now let us see what represented the YF-12, as any aircraft the F-12 had a price tag, as Mc namara demanded the aircraft was too specialized so it would had to become as the MiG-25 was for the Soviets a recc/attack/fighter aircraft, why? well having the F-12 and F-15 means they would had to share the same military budget approved by the US government and either one would had reduced numbers deployed or being cancelled or the US tax payer would had been levied even more than it was.

Now SOC let us understand why the F-12 was cancelled, simply the F-12 and the F-15 are part of the same military budget of the US, for the US politicians either the YF-12 was more adaptable or multirole as the MiG-25s was or it simply needed to be eliminated because the US tax payer demanded the best and less expensive weapons that is the reason the YF-12 competed with the F-15 and it was eliminated

Now it is a historical fact the YF-12 was eliminated and only a handful of SR-71 entered service

Technical advantage over what?

A bit of an oversimplification as you’ve omitted McNamara’s preferred aircraft, a modified F-106, but that is an acceptable synopsis from a historical standpoint.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. The F-15 was designed specifically as an air superiority aircraft to replace the F-4 in those roles for the TAC component of the USAF. It had absolutely and positively nothing whatsoever to do with the F-12 program. The F-15 was conceived as an aircraft for Tactical Air Command, and the F-12B was conceived to fill a requirement for Air Defense Command. The latter requirement ended up being filled by more F-106s after a few other concepts were examined.

And the MiG-25 was believed (wrongly) to be an air superiority fighter. Still no F-12B connection.

You are absolutely right. The F-12B was definitely not the aircraft which would have been designed to counter the MiG-25. That was the F-15. The F-12 was never intended for fighter-on-fighter combat, and as such was not subjected to any of Boyd’s theories.

What has that got to do with anything?

As a “fighter” the F-12B was purposely intended to be limited from the outset. It was designed specifically to fulfill a requirement for a new ADC interceptor. It had no relationship whatsoever with any of the TAC fighter programs such as the F-110A/F-4 or F-15.

There were TAC aircraft, which ended up being governed by a lot of Boyd’s theories, and then there were separate ADC aircraft, purpose-built outside of the concepts Boyd was commenting on as they were never, ever, ever intended for fighter-on-fighter combat.

Later on the F-106 did receive some modifications to allow the interceptor to operate in an air defense capability overseas, such as the 20mm gun and new RHAW gear, but the aircraft was designed as a pure ADC interceptor. The Sixshooter program started in 1967 because flight testing showed that the F-106 did in fact have the inherent speed and maneuverability to perform in an anti-fighter role. But again, it was never ever designed for that function, the capabilities enabling Sixshooter to proceed were a credit to the excellent design of the aircraft itself.

F-102 usage over Vietnam was a stupid example of “lets use this over there” and failed miserably because the F-102 was not designed for fighter on fighter combat. Why? Suprise, it was an ADC aircraft.

SOC

To undersdtand what i am saying you have to go a few years before 1964, in the mid 1950s the Mach 2 bench mark was achieved, the vast majority of fighters developed by the cold warriors achieved the speed of Mach 2 by the mid 1950s, once that was achieved in both sides of the iron curtain Mach 3 became the next speed barrier to ovecome.

In the late 1950s there were two main technological goals driving aerospace technology, one was Mach 3 and the other was the extensive use of guided air to air missiles

Several american projects set the benchmark of Mach 3 and the YF-12 and bombers like the B-70 are examples of that trend.

The Soviet Union did the same, and that is the way the MiG-25 was borned, the F-111 and the Super Crusader III are other examples even the MiG-23 up to a degree followed that trend.

in the very late 1950s and very early 1960s speed and guided missiles were seen as the solutions to fight any fighters and super fast supersonic bombers

The F-4 represented the same trend however it was only a Mach 2.2 fighter, the original F-4 was basicly a simple interceptor armed with missiles to achieve victories no gun fitted.

The Vietnam war proved to the US that that trend was too expensive and did not allow flexibility to their aircraft since fewer could be build and close combat was neglected.

That is when Boyd showed the YF-12 despite been a Mach 3 plus aircraft armed with long range missiles would not stand a chance against the agile mass produced MiG-25, they needed agility and speed and the F-15 got all those characteristics although it never reached the speed of the MiG-25 and YF-12

By the 1970s attempts to create Mach 3 fighters were dwinling, in fact Mach 2 was the max speed consider a fighter should have since then, even less than Mach 1.8 was good enough, the F-18 and Su-24 were basicly mach 1 plus aircraft.

By 1970s agility became paramount instead of speed, Boyd prove that both the F-12 and F-111B were ill prepared and the F-15 and F-14 were designed to replace that longing for speed of the 1960s fighters

ROFL! (You having fun yet SOC? :diablo: )

I guess he does, and funny seems you want to get into the fun do not you.:diablo:

By the way i have proven Boyd`s theories were applied in the F-15, the MiG-25 was thought an agile Boyd`s type agile Mach 3 fighter build by the Soviets and the YF-12 ended up as a surveillance those are historical facts.

Both the YF-12 and the F-111B were cancelled and in their place the F-14 and F-15 programs replaced them in order to tackle the MiG-25 and MiG-23.

One aircraft ended as a bomber and the other as a survaeilance aircraft, after all more than 1200 MiG-25 were built proving the MiG-25 fighter concept was more practical than the YF-12.