The AN/APQ-120 wasn’t operational until the mid-70’s.

The AN/AWG-9 was tested on an F-111B in 1967 so that slides in. But the MiG-25 probably didn’t need it since it was a single seater and it didn’t really lack raw power when it came to its radar.

I am very doubtful that your proposed aircraft is realistic in terms of weight. I don’t have weight data on the engine, but a much smaller A-4 already hits the 10000lbs mark with one engine. Your twintail and twin-cannon (two M61A1 with a totally 1000 rounds are about 350kg (or 770lbs)) doesn’t make it any lighter. Two cannons are by the way a bit overkill, I am dubious if the M61 is worth is weight anyways. According to all other nations designing aircraft the answer is no. They used lighter single barrel cannons.

Yeah, good catch. I meant to only have one. Basically I started with the wiki article on a fighter (I think it was the F-5) and went from there filling in the spots. And to clarify some things like wing forms and layouts I went on to add some extra spots to the list. Was having too much fun that I completely forgot to proof read.

I figure that the late 60’s and early 70’s will show the dominance of larger fighters. But with something like my proposed hypothetical fighter it would of been awfully hard to justify a lot of the chaff put in the skies over Vietnam. They tested just about every fighter and interceptor under the sun over there. I always liked the heavy fighters the most, but in that day and age I think medium sized and built around the same principles as the LWF you’d of came up with something akin to the F-17. Only since they didn’t have some of the technology to make it happen you have to scale a few things back. Moving to a proven turbojet like the J52/Sapphire with an afterburner was definitely more likely to happen than pushing out afterburning turbofans sooner.

The jobs don’t have to be done by illegals. That is the crutch of the matter. If they bank their life on hiring illegals then that speaks volumes for their morality. Quite frankly after 9-11 we don’t need the illegals anymore nor the farms that depend on them so much. We can get our fruits and vegetables cheaper from down south if that is what it takes. Allowing tight wads to break the law just so they can profit more than the honest guy is bad for society as a whole.

Original post:
The “not a pound for air to ground” theme of the F-15 would probably bring one to a twin-engine (either British Sapphire or the Wright J65-W-20) fighter equipped with a moderately sized fuel tank and no more than a pair of AIM-9E backed up by a nice rotary cannon. Low chord wing. Twin tail arrangement like on the current F-15. Add in minimal radar for its time; AN/APG-56? Provision for a big centerline fuel tank and a pair of wing tanks for ferrying. No extra weight for bomb racks. An affordable air superiority fighter for its time.

Here’s my estimations:

General characteristics
* Crew 1 in a raised cockpit and bubble canopy
* Avionics Layout: compartments both forward of and behind cockpit
* Length 40ft
* Wingspan: 40 ft
* Wing Design: high-mounted, low-chord, clipped & cranked deltas, with one-piece leading edge flaps
* Tail Design: twin vertical stabilizers mounted outside the exhausts
* Tailplane Design: all-moving slabs
* Refueling Design: fixed mount probe
* Fuselage Design: all-metal semi-monocoque fuselage
* Airbrake Design: spine- and belly-mounted
* Height: 15 ft
* Wing area: 320 ft²
* Empty weight: 16,000 lb
* Max takeoff weight: 35,000 lb
* Powerplant: 2× Pratt & Whitney J52-P8A turbojet
o Dry thrust: approx. 10,000 lbf
o Thrust with afterburner: approx. 13,000 lbf
* Engine Layout: spaced outside beavertail but inside vertical stabilizers
* Fuel Tank Layout: wing and dorsal fuel tanks
Performance
* Maximum speed: M1.6
* Combat Range: 700 miles
* Service ceiling: 50,000 ft
* Initial Rate of climb: 50,000 ft/min

Armament
* Guns: 1× 20 mm M61A1 Vulcan cannon with 500 cartridges (edit 🙂 forgot to change from wiki article I cropped it off)
* Missiles: 2x AIM-9E Sidewinder, chin mounted

Mexico should have every advantage over China. It is right next door to the US market. There are many times more Mexicans in the US than Chinese and who actually have a political presence….NAFTA…have a huge advantage over China in the WTO itself because China was forced by the US and the EU to enter the WTO with terms that are applied to advanced nations…forced by the WTO to be more open than Japan’s…India and Brazil…The reason China could survive and prosper in spite of these terms in because of infrastructure, scale of economy and a massive domestic market that no other developing nation could match…So Mexico should have never lost its position in the US market vis a vis China. It had every advantage in the world.

China’s industry has cheap oil unlike the Mexican government. China already has ridiculously cheap oil from its trading partners. State supported industries get their fuels subsidized. The Mexican oil companies get too much money from other sources to stoop so low as to supply their industry as an advantage.

Second, NAFTA has raped Mexico. Its farm economy, the backbone of the nation before NAFTA, is utterly destroyed. And what is left has squeezed out the peasant. And its youth in the labor force has largely gone away as well, moving north of the border.

That’s like saying if you are afraid of the bully then don’t leave the house.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this thread is about taking today’s knowledge back to the 60’s, not about putting today’s technology into a 60’s era plane. Some of the replies in this thread seem to have it bass ackwards.

Back to the topic-

The “not a pound for air to ground” theme of the F-15 would probably bring one to a twin-engine (either British Sapphire or the Wright J65-W-20) fighter equipped with a moderately sized fuel tank and no more than a pair of AIM-9E backed up by a nice rotary cannon. Low chord wing. Twin tail arrangement like on the current F-15. Add in minimal radar for its time; AN/APG-56? Provision for a big centerline fuel tank and a pair of wing tanks for ferrying. No extra weight for bomb racks. An affordable air superiority fighter for its time.