I googled F-16 and found this Wiki F-16.
In a nutshell: The F-16 was developed because the “fighter mafia” wanted a more maneuverable airplane and Congress thought the F-15 was too much…The F-15 grew out of the idea that the F-111 was trying to do too much and wasn’t going to be a very good fighter. The F-111 grew out of the idea that the USAF and USN should save money by purchasing similar equipment (to save on development costs) so they spent a bunch of money trying to make everyone happy and ended up with a plane that didn’t, so the Navy liked the F-14 better and did not adapt the swiss-army-knife-F-111. In 1971 Congress wasn’t happy with all this and pushed for a new lightweight fighter. This eventually drove the YF-16 and YF-17 prototypes with General Dynamics’ YF-16 winning the USAF contest, and the Northrup Grumman YF-17 morphing into the F/A-18A.
Obviously, there is much more to this story.
Next time, I’ll plug in F-35 and F-22 and see what pops up….Happy Surfing.
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