Here's why the F-35 was designated F-35 instead of F-24

[Steve Pace]

I suggested Shadow and they scoffed

 

[GeorgeA]

Mouseketeer? That was a pretty Dumas idea.

Bill's here all week folks, have the veal.

 

[quellish]

I know I've shared this image before but since I couldn't trace it in the hundred-plus page F-35 topic allow me to repost it here. It is a slide taken from an undated presentation by Dr. Paul Bevilacqua from LM Skunk Works entitled JSF - Inventing the Joint Strike Fighter. This 60-page presentation recapitulates the entire X-35/F-35 development program (including the Boeing competitor) and some of its contest suggests it was produced a little after LM won the JSF competition.

Dr. Bevilacqua's presentation includes some materials from earlier programs. I believe he also did an audio or video interview describing the development of the lift fan system in more detail.

 

[Yellow Palace]

10 years ago they* were talking about the name "Fury" under the similar approach to "Musketeer". In that there were three furies. But Fury was more PC because the Furies were female. Lightning II was IMHO the USAF name suggestion. They would have kyboshed Fury for being too navy.

Wasn't the problem with Fury supposed to be that a sports car was planned with the same name and some one was worried about infringing on the trademark? Personally, if I were building a sports car I'd bribe the DoD to give their latest fighter jet the same name, but then I'm no lawyer.

 

[Stargazer]

Personally, if I were building a sports car I'd bribe the DoD to give their latest fighter jet the same name, but then I'm no lawyer.

I'm not so sure about U. S. copyright legislation, but over here copyright infringement over a brand name is only receivable if the item you sell is in the same class of products, i.e. a drink and a cookie bar could not have the same name (foodstuff), and I guess a car and a motorbike (road vehicles), but not an aircraft! I also believe one could find examples of cars having the same names as aircraft during the 1950s and 1960s without any lawyer getting their hands on it. It's only that the U.S. has become an overly lawsuit-minded country where every possible nook is explored to grab a few bucks (or many) on whatever excuse, however lame.

 

[TomS]

You're right that this is the copyright rule, but USAF seems to be a bit confused about it. They also supposedly balked at using the Mustang II name for the F-16 because there was a sports car using the same name.

 

[Jeb]

One can wonder why
Ctrl + H -> "Replace All" X-35 -> F-24 is far more troublesome than Ctrl + H -> Replace All X-35 -> F-35

Probably because they didn't have a technical writer who could take care of it.


I've done nomenclature fixes like this in pretty big docs & it always amazes the stakeholders how fast I can get it done, because they don't know how Word works.

 

[Sundog]

As Shown in Peter Merlin's new book Dreamland and has been mentioned on this forum in other places, I assume it's because the YF-24 already existed and if they had followed their nomenclature it would have been the F-25. Then everyone would be asking, "What happened to 24?" So to avoid that they just decided to change the X to F. Problem solved.

 

[Desertfox]

They should have kept to Lockheed naming tradition and called it the "Starbird" then served Korean Chicken at the naming ceremony.

 

[FighterJock]

Starbird is a much better sounding name than Lightning 2 any day of the year Desertfox, it is a pity that Lockheed never went with it instead of the USAF name Lightning 2.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

Well they (or the USAF) wanted to use the Lightning II name for the F-22 originally so I suppose some people really liked it.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I don't doubt you. By 2005, they'd had ample time to internalize the idea that this was an intentional choice. The PA people may even have believed it (they're good at that sort of self-deception).

I think the desire not to change documentation was probably at least partially true, but not becasue of old documentation. Rather, the Program Office likely started using F-35 on documents from October, when their bosses misspoke. In December, the Nomenclature Office told them they had got it wrong and needed to change to F-24. By that point, there would be quite a lot of documentation using the wrong term. Changing all the paperwork created over the previous two months would have been a (minor) hardship, so they pushed for HQ USAF to override the Nomenclature Office and assign F-35 officially.

Reprinting all the paper is not cheap.

Supposedly, that's why the F-117 had that number "officially". The Nighthawk had that number as a pilot's placeholder for "classified aircraft" and so Lockheed printed the manuals using that number. Then they wanted the USAF to pay for printing a new batch of manuals with F-19 on them and the USAF balked.

 

[GregoryUSSR]

It's not very clear with the F-35. There were F-15 and the Як-41 we sold. Based on them, the F-22 Raptor fighter appeared. Why did you make the F-35? Is it a cheaper or more powerful version of the Raptor?

 

[Scott Kenny]

It's not very clear with the F-35. There were F-15 and the Як-41 we sold. Based on them, the F-22 Raptor fighter appeared. Why did you make the F-35? Is it a cheaper or more powerful version of the Raptor?

The F-35 is a strike fighter, meant to replace F-16, F-18, and AV-8. The design specs called for carrying 2x AMRAAMs and 2x 2000lb (2x 1000lb for the Harrier replacement) bombs internally. The F-22's weapon bay is too shallow to hold most bombs, but can hold SDBs.

 

[trang]

Compounded errors. The E/F/A-18E/F/G should have been F-24.

 

[sferrin]

Not to hijack this, but any reason for FB-111, A-37 and AV-8 for being incorrect way back in the '60s? AFAIK it should have been BF-111 if that is what they wanted, AT-37, and the Harrier should have been AV-6 or something, or heck, just A-8 or VA-8. I have never seen a suitable answer anywhere.

Consider the A-9 & A-10 are newer than the A-12 (of which there are two aircraft with that designation).

 

[sferrin]

Compounded errors. The E/F/A-18E/F/G should have been F-24.

And the F-20 should have been the F-19.

 

[FighterJock]

So there would have been a F-19 after all, just not the F-19/F-117 stealth fighter that I thought it was at the time.

 

[1635yankee]

Not to hijack this, but any reason for FB-111, A-37 and AV-8 for being incorrect way back in the '60s? AFAIK it should have been BF-111 if that is what they wanted, AT-37, and the Harrier should have been AV-6 or something, or heck, just A-8 or VA-8. I have never seen a suitable answer anywhere.

The Harrier -- AV-8 -- was designated under the "V for VTOL" scheme, which includes the current V-22 Osprey. The V-6 was the Kestrel; the V-8 is the Harrier.

Consider the A-9 & A-10 are newer than the A-12 (of which there are two aircraft with that designation).

I don't think that "A-12" (aka SR-71, aka YF-12) was ever an official USAF or DoD designation. It was either CIA or Lockheed.

--------------------

As for the SR-71 tale? It seems to be an urban legend: LBJ read the release correctly, but the SR-71 to RS-71 transposition was from the stenographer's error. See https://theaviationgeekclub.com/sr-71-or-rs-71-how-the-legendary-blackbird-got-her-designation/

As for the philosophy for designations in general? It's just a way to make bureaucrats happy.

 

[sferrin]

The Harrier -- AV-8 -- was designated under the "V for VTOL" scheme, which includes the current V-22 Osprey. The V-6 was the Kestrel; the V-8 is the Harrier.


I don't think that "A-12" (aka SR-71, aka YF-12) was ever an official USAF or DoD designation. It was either CIA or Lockheed.

--------------------

As for the SR-71 tale? It seems to be an urban legend: LBJ read the release correctly, but the SR-71 to RS-71 transposition was from the stenographer's error. See https://theaviationgeekclub.com/sr-71-or-rs-71-how-the-legendary-blackbird-got-her-designation/

As for the philosophy for designations in general? It's just a way to make bureaucrats happy.

The "A-12" was an internal designation at Lockheed. It looks like they just used it for its official number too.

 

[Whisperstream]

The "A-12" was an internal designation at Lockheed. It looks like they just used it for its official number too.

The A-12 designation was internal to Lockheed, indicating the twelfth iteration of Kelly Johnson's Archangel series of designs. He had struggled with making a plane that could be both a high-speed platform and yet be less vulnerable to radar detection than conventional aircraft. His A-11 iteration made no concession to antiradar treatments; he had essentially given up in that regard. The CIA insisted, and Kelly went back to the drawing board to create the A-12. When the interceptor version AF-12/YF-12A) was to be declassified in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kelly told him to use the designation for the non antiradar A-11. Not sure why. Maybe because the YF-12A lacked the A-12's antiradar features. It all seems rather pointless. At any rate, the news media and aviation authors continued to use the A-11 designation for many years thereafter. In another bizarre twist, after the CIA's A-12 fleet was placed in storage, the airplanes were added to the USAF inventory under the designation A-11.

The DoD's Mission-Design-Series (MDS) designation system, introduced in 1962, was supposed to standardize aircraft designations. It seems that the system has been abused many times over the years for various reasons.

Northrop was trying to market the F-5G for export, but the designation made it sound like just a new model of an airplane that had been flying for more than two decades so that asked DoD for a new designation. F-19 would have been the next in line, but F-20 was a nice round number with an ultramodern ring to it.

Lockheed Martin's P-170 UAV was simply designated the RQ-170 Sentinel rather than give the secret project whatever the next RQ designation should have been. The SENIOR TREND test aircraft were called YF-117A in accordance with designations being used at the test site and so the production m model just inherited the F-117A designation. And look at the new Long Range Strike -Bomber (LRS-B) that, by all rights should have been the B-3A. Somebody decided the first new bomber of the twenty-first century should be the B-21 Raider instead. We have all probably seen the Raider's tail number, 0001. I think it's fair to say the full USAF serial number with fiscal year prefix is undoubtedly 21-0001. That would be too clever by half, as they say.

 

[BlackBat242]

Consider the A-9 & A-10 are newer than the A-12 (of which there are two aircraft with that designation).

The A-12 Oxcart was not a US military aircraft, so it didn't use up a DOD designation... it was a CIA-only aircraft.

The SR-71 Blackbird (RS-71 originally) was the military version.

The USMC Harrier should have been AV-6B/C (the prototypes used in the US-Germany-UK evaluation squadron, and which were later passed to the USMC for its own evals, were designated XV-6A).
A (secondary/modified for mission {attack}) V (primary mission/type {vertical operation}) 6 (number of type {6th attack aircraft in the new numbering system}) B (second version of this aircraft)

The AV-8B+ should have been the AV-8D.

Or better yet, there should have been:
AV-6A Harrier, AV-6B (upgraded AV-6As),
AV-8A Harrier II, AV-8B (night attack version) and AV-8C (radar-equipped version).

 

[TomS]

Hmm.

XV-6 to AV-6 for the operational aircraft seems fine. The was the original plan, apparently.

AV-8 is a problem because V-8 was already used for the Ryan XV-8 (or the Tau battlesuit). And V-7 was also used for the CV-7 (DHC.5) Buffalo. And indeed, everything up to V-11 was already used.

Problem is, this does invite confusion -- it would be easy to mistake AV-6 for A-6. By moving the Harrier into the A-for-Attack numbering sequence, even with the non-standard prefix, they eliminated most practical confusion. So, in practice, this is the actual sequence where the Harrier falls:

• A-6 Intruder
• A-7 Corsair
• AV-8 Harrier
• A-9 Northrop AX candidate
• A-10 Thunderbolt II

 

[BlackBat242]

Hmm.

XV-6 to AV-6 for the operational aircraft seems fine. The was the original plan, apparently.

AV-8 is a problem because V-8 was already used for the Ryan XV-8 (or the Tau battlesuit). And V-7 was also used for the CV-7 (DHC.5) Buffalo. And indeed, everything up to V-11 was already used.

Problem is, this does invite confusion -- it would be easy to mistake AV-6 for A-6. By moving the Harrier into the A-for-Attack numbering sequence, even with the non-standard prefix, they eliminated most practical confusion. So, in practice, this is the actual sequence where the Harrier falls:

• A-6 Intruder
• A-7 Corsair
• AV-8 Harrier
• A-9 Northrop AX candidate
• A-10 Thunderbolt II

Which was fine... until they decided that a complete rebuild that only reused the wings, landing gear, and tail surfaces and brought very improved and expanded capability should get a + after the designation, rather than a new variant letter.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Consider the A-9 & A-10 are newer than the A-12 (of which there are two aircraft with that designation).

Blackbird A-12 was not a DOD designation, it was CIA/Lockheed.

Which was fine... until they decided that a complete rebuild that only reused the wings, landing gear, and tail surfaces and brought very improved and expanded capability should get a + after the designation, rather than a new variant letter.


View attachment 711528

That was to prevent politicians from thinking it was a whole new aircraft. Same reason the Tigershark was originally designated F-5G (upgrade to the F-5 series) and not F-20 (basically using zero F-5 components).

 

[TomS]

Which was fine... until they decided that a complete rebuild that only reused the wings, landing gear, and tail surfaces and brought very improved and expanded capability should get a + after the designation, rather than a new variant letter.


View attachment 711528

Oh, for sure. Should probably have been AV-8E, with AV-8D for the Night Attack Harrier II.