The Ugliest Fighter Jet Ever Made - The Boeing F-32

You know the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter but you might not know its ugly ducking cousin that was once almost the future of the US Air Force. Meet the production model Boeing F-32. Boeing's entry into the JSF program was a bold move to win the largest military contract in both the United States and aviation history in general ever conceived. Was this aircraft actually better than its counterpart or was the aesthetics that proved to be the nail in the coffin for one of the most controversial programs of the 90s and early 2000s? Let's take off vertically with the story of the Boeing X-32 fighter jet. This week on my other channel I have a video about the Nazi sun gun, a super weapon that the Nazis designed to evaporate New York. Check it out after this video. Link down below. Welcome to the 90s. The iron curtain has fallen and life is good. Well at least in the west. Yesterday you said you'd call Sears. I'll call today. You call now. I'll call now. Now's the time to save on Sears installed central air conditioning. However a new age brings new threats and the US needs to be ready to counter them whatever they end up being. The JSF or joint strike fighter program was created to complement the ATF program which led to the birth of the F-22 air dominance fighter. The JSF idea was to create a new multi-role fighter for both the navy and the air force because of the demise of the A-12 Avenger and the NATF programs which you can watch both of those videos right here on the channel depending of course how far in the future you are. This new JSF aircraft was to replace the A-10, F-16, F-A-18, the AV-8 Harrier and the F-117. A truly ambitious project to build the last fighter jet the United States would ever need. Our usual suspects Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop and Mcdonald Douglas applied for the program but it was Boeing and Lockheed who received a 750 million dollars each to develop the two demonstrators. We'll have to cover the other programs another day so if you want to see that then consider subscribing. Each was asked to create two aircraft a classic fighter for the air force and the other was to be a short takeoff and vertical landing capable jet for the navy and the marines. Interesting side note the government actually prohibited the companies to further fund the prototypes development to limit the production costs and ensure that they don't go bankrupt themselves chasing after this contract. Lockheed would actually come up with the X-35 and Boeing made well this thing called the X-32. The game was on. This jet was fast and before its time. Do you know what else is fast from the future but here now? Squarespace websites. If you want your website to go faster than light speed and bring your company into the jet age, Squarespace is really the best website builder out there period. Their websites are already optimized for mobile phones, have the ability to run powerful email campaigns and they have a fantastic e-commerce tech built right into their framework so if you need an online store it's just a couple of clicks. To launch your own site go to www.squarespace.com slash found and get 10% off your first site and domain. Every click that you do today helps so if you want that warm and fuzzy feeling click that link to check out perhaps your future website. Thanks again to Squarespace. The design philosophy behind the X-32 was very interesting. Boeing took seriously the requirement to cut the production costs for future aircraft and made a couple of design choices to make it cheaper that would ultimately come back to haunt them. The first was its delta wing. To cut the manufacturing costs and simplify the design they opted for a large delta wing without the folding mechanism and instead the X-32B's wingspan was just a bit larger than the Hornets with wings folded. The second choice was to go for a thrust vectoring nozzle instead of the lift fan like the X-35 for its short takeoff and vertical landing variant and followed the same principle design as the Harrier jump jet. The lift fan along with the foldable nozzle which the X-35 and F-35 uses today was much more complicated but proved to be a superior solution which we'll talk about in a second. It's interesting to mention how it was the Russians who tried this successfully with the Yak-141 not long before which is a future video so no spoilers. But there was one other so-called ugly design feature of the X-32 that was the most controversial. Well there's a sound explanation for that wide open grin. As we previously mentioned the X-32 didn't use a lift fan so to operate in hover mode it was designed with a large front intake that had to suck in a lot of air and because who was president at the time it was given the nickname Monica which because this is a family friendly channel I won't dive into. Anyway this opening grin would keep the compressor blades exposed and this was an issue for the stealth performance of the aircraft. A possible solution to this problem would have been radar wave blockers inside the intake just what the Russians did on their Su-57 but at the time they didn't have that technology developed. Another reason for that ugly big air intake was the engine unlike the X-35 as well as pretty much every other fighter was mounted slightly forward so the center of gravity was moved as well and the bulky and weird design was the only solution to keep the aircraft stable during hovering and flight. But this jet was smiling about something because there was an upside with having such a large and bulky design. The weapons bay. It could fit up to six AMRAAM missiles or a combination of AMRAAMs and Sidewinders. Basically although very weird the design made sense because it would be much cheaper and simpler to maintain than the X-35 and could have a ton more firepower. With the price right and the design flaws figured out how could it possibly lose? The problem turns out was in the name of the program Joint Strike Fighter. As the name suggests it was a program where both the navy and the air force were looking for new aircrafts so both set their own requirements and parameters for the new aircraft. Eight months into the development of these jets the navy actually updated their requirements and this is where that part about the X-32 design choices coming back to haunt the engineers comes into play. The delta wing with a rather small wingspan couldn't fulfill the needs of the navy and Boeing proposed a new tail design as well as adding horizontal stabilizers for the X-32B, the VTOL variant. But there wasn't enough time to implement these changes and they had to fly out both demonstrators and present them to officials. And that leads us to our video here today with the 3D model that shows the different production models with further design changes that would have been implemented if Boeing had enough time. Is it just me or is it actually looking much better than the test version? Let me know down in the comments what you think. In 1999 both the X-32A and B were presented to the public and the first flight of the X-32A happened in the year 2000. Both prototypes with the X-35 were powered by Pratt & Whitney YF-119 engines, the same engine used to power the YF-22 and 23. These navy design changes pushed back the first flight of the VTOL variant, the XB-32B, where it had its first flight in 2001. Although the flight performance was fine with even the chase F-18 Hornet failing to keep up with the jet, the issue was actually with overheating when hovering and landing due to the intake sucking in hot air from in front instead of cold air from above the aircraft, like the X-35 and its lift van could. In the end, the X-35 proved to be a superior aircraft at the time and today we all know how the F-35 story went and how complicated and ill-fated its development was with extreme budget overruns and problems with some of the original partners of the project. So we can only really speculate if the X-32 would have at least fulfilled the cost parameters since its design was based all around it. In the end, even though both aircraft exceeded the expectations of the program, it was that heat issue with the VTOL system of the X-32 that made it lose the race against the X-35. Although according to some, it was a perfectly fine fighter. There are also stories that the X-32 was just not looking like a serious fighter jet, rather like a flying bathtub and we can all agree that the F-35 is one sexy looking jet nowadays. So perhaps the powers that be were simply embarrassed by what the plane looked like, but perhaps that would have been its secret weapon. Imagine enemy fighter pilots seeing it in combat and either bursting out laughing or having to look away whilst the X-32 shoots them down easily. But I think I admit that even Tom Cruise wouldn't be able to make this plane look cool. But jokes aside, per the words of the lead test pilot Phillip Yates, updated production model design would have satisfied the rest of the requirements set by the government and it might have made a fine fighter plane for America and its allies. Lockheed's initial design on the other hand was very similar to the production variant. Its legacy, at least with Boeing, is in its technological developments that were achieved during the construction of the aircraft which were later used for that very lucrative Super Hornet deal that the Boeing scored with the Navy. And the Super Hornet definitely is a good looking aircraft. Oh and don't forget that you can get 10% off your first site and domain by going to Squarespace. The link's down below and actually by clicking it and going through and checking it out you're actually supporting the channel and so I can keep making animations just like this. So thanks again for those who have actually clicked. So that's the story of the design and development of the Boeing's X-32. I hope you enjoyed this little video and don't mind me roasting it a little bit. Until the next one.