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3 unusual facts about Lightweight Fighter program


Lightweight Fighter program

To reflect this new, more serious intent to procure a new aircraft, along with its reorientation toward a fighter-bomber design, the LWF program was rolled into a new Air Combat Fighter (ACF) competition in an announcement by U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger in April 1974.

Although the Air Force’s F-X proponents remained hostile to the concept because they perceived it as a threat to the F-15 program, the ADP concept (revamped and renamed as the "F-XX") gained civilian political support under the reform-minded Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard, who favored the idea of competitive prototyping.

On 13 January 1975, Secretary of the Air Force John L. McLucas announced that the YF-16 had been selected as the winner of the ACF competition.



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