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The F-22 will be the primary US Air Force air superiority fighter through the first quarter of the 21st century. The F-22 emerged from the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program. The Concept Definition (CD) phase of the ATF program began in November 1981. ATF Demonstration and Validation (D/V) was initiated in October 1986 with F-22 Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) starting in August 1991. First flight of the EMD F-22 occurred on 7 September, 1997. The F-22 will enter operational service in the year 2005. This paper traces the ATF's developmental history from its earliest beginnings in the 1970s through the CD phase to the formal start of D/V at the end of 1986.

Air-launched anti-ship guided missiles (ASGM) have achieved widespread notoriety since the Argentine Navy effectively employed Exocet missiles launched from Super Entendart fighters against Royal Navy warships and supporting auxiliary vessels during the Falklands conflict of the early-1980s. During the same conflict, the Royal Navy used thehelicopter-launched Sea Skua to disable a surfaced Argentine submarine and other small vessels. In subsequent years, Exocet, Sea Skua. Harpoon and other members of the growing air-launched ASGM family have been used in a number of situations culminating in their widespread employment during the Gulf War. Launched from aircraft operating under the protective blanket of coalition air superiority, air-launched ASGMs virtually annihilated the Iraqi surface fleet. Today, the air-launched ASGM has widely proliferated becoming a standard and highly potent weapon in the arsenal of nearly all nations that possess modern combat aircraft.

The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was one of the truly outstanding fighter aircraft of the Second World War. It distinguished itself over all fronts on which the Luftwaffe fought in conditions ranging from arctic wastes to the deserts of North Africa. The Fw 190 represented the epitome of conventional piston-engine fighter design on the threshold of the jet age. Conceived nearly sixty years ago, flying for the first time on the eve of the war in 1939 and acknowledged as “the best all-around fighter in the world” in the mid-war years, derivatives of the Fw 190 were still pushing the ultimate capability boundary for this class of aircraft at war's end in 1945 (reaching maximum level true airspeeds of 470 mph [about Mach 0.7] at altitudes of well over 40,000 feet). This paper assesses the design attributes and technology approaches, including innovative use of advanced electrical systems, that were used to make the Fw 190 one of the great all-around fighters in aviation history.

During the mid-1970s, the US embarked on a modest but highly focused effort to demonstrate an aircraft possessing a very low radar signature and sufficient performance to have operational utility. Known as Have Blue, the project was highly successful and led to the F-117 A. This paper discusses issues associated with reducing radar signature to very low levels (levels that are “tactically meaningful,” e.g., capable of defeating realistic threat systems). Radar phenomena and the concept of radar cross section (RCS) are briefly summarized and RCS reduction techniques as they were applied to Have Blue are described. RCS reduction considerations and techniques pioneered by Have Blue have become an integral component of the combat aircraft design process over the past two decades.