[Arthur Wildfire! March]

I’m far from being an authority, but frankly, I think the concept is bad. A fighter needs one kind of design, a bomber needs another, and so does a tactical plane which might be able to land and take off vertically. To package it all into one plane, isn’t that asking for problems?

[Maximum Leader]

I agree that the concept of an all-in-one plane is a problem. Isn't that what turned the F-111 into a boondoggle? McNamara wanted the Navy and Air Force to cooperate on a fighter-bomber and it just turned into a plane neither service liked (the Navy dropped out before it bought any).

Pierre Sperry was one of John Boyd's "fighter mafia" colleagues and I don't take his criticism lightly (please note his column was published in Jane's Defence Weekly and was just reprinted by CDI). It was Colonel Boyd who stressed the importance for a fighter to have a high thrust to weigh ratio.

Reduced to its basics, Boyd's work hinged on thrust and drag ratios. * * * The E-M Theory, at its simplest, is a method to determine the specific energy rate of an aircraft. * * * In an equation, specific energy rate is denoted by "Ps". The state of any aircraft in any flight regime can be defined with Boyd's simple equation: Ps = [T-D/W]*V or thrust minus draft over weight multiplied by velocity. http://www.jjraymond.com/books/nonfiction/boyd.html