F-16 Cockpit Camera View: Operation Red Flag Alaska

F-16's are cool, but originally designed as an escort for the F-15...

F-16 = Mach 1.6

F-15 = Mach 2.51

Woof!!!

The 16 is more elegant than the 15.

She looks like a ballerina.

True, but it's startling how much ordanince the F-15 can carry... And Mach 2.51! Woooo! 2.51, I mean, really, woooooooooo. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

Thanks for that FlightAware link. Tracking most kinds comms already, but didn't have a flight tracking app for aircraft. Goes good with my satellite tracker. Good stuff.

On Topic: I just wish our discussions regarding our fighter aircraft still included the F-14. With our modern capabilities, we could have made that aircraft much lighter and much less maintenance intensive. In a reasonable stretch of imagination I could see that platform easily holding the stuff that needs to fit into the F-35 but doesn't, and U.S. ending up with an F-14 on steroids. Still wouldn't get the VTOL. You others on here talking about the F-15's overall efficiencies and capabilities would be talking about the F-14 again, because it was better air-to-air than the F-15 back in the day-and it would be even more Tomcat than before.

As to stealth, the F-35's cockpit geometry and placement prevents moving or changing the cockpit, but the pilot can't see behind the craft. I know that the F-14 couldn't be anything like a stealth plane in the profile they present-as well as materials. But I submit that incorporating our modern features into the Tomcat platform would probably be simpler than what they are attempting and failing at with the F-35.