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Fighter aircraft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Jetfighter" and "Jet fighter" redirect here. For other uses, see Jet fighter (disambiguation).
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A P-47 Thunderbolt, P‑51 Mustang, F-4 Phantom andF‑15E Strike Eagle, representing three generations of U.S. Air Force fighters in formation at an airshow at Barksdale AFB.
A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat against other aircraft,[1] as opposed to bombers and attack aircraft, whose main mission is to attack ground targets. Thehallmarks of a fighter are its speed, maneuverability, and small size relative to other combat aircraft.
Many fighters have secondary ground-attack capabilities, and some are designed as dual-purpose fighter-bombers. Often, aircraft that do not fulfill the standard definition are called fighters. This may be for political or national security reasons, for advertising purposes or other reasons.[2]
Afighter's main purpose is to establish air superiority over a battlefield. Since World War I, achieving and maintaining air superiority has been essential for victory in conventional warfare.[3] The success or failure of a belligerent's efforts to gain air supremacy hinges on several factors including the skill of its pilots, the tactical soundness of its doctrine for deploying its fighters and thenumbers and performance of those fighters. Because of the importance of air superiority, since the dawn of aerial combat armed forces have constantly competed to develop technologically superior fighters and to deploy these fighters in greater numbers, and fielding a viable fighter fleet consumes a substantial proportion of the defense budgets of modern armed forces.[4]

Contents  [hide] 1 Terminology 2 Development overview 3 Piston engine fighters 3.1 World War I 3.2 Inter-war period (1919–38) 3.3 World War II 3.3.1 European theater 3.3.2 Pacific theater 3.3.3 Technological innovations 3.4 Post–World War II period 4 Rocket-powered fighters 5 Jet-powered fighters 5.1 First generation subsonic jet fighters (mid-1940sto mid-1950s) 5.2 Second generation jet fighters (mid-1950s to early 1960s) 5.3 Third generation jet fighters (early 1960s to circa 1970) 5.4 Fourth generation jet fighters (circa 1970 to mid-1990s) 5.4.1 4.5th generation jet fighters (1990s to the present) 5.5 Fifth generation jet fighters (2005 to the present) 5.6 Sixth generation jet fighters 6 See also7 References 8 External links |
[edit]TerminologyThe word "fighter" did not become the official English term for such aircraft until after World War I. In Great Britain's Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force these aircraft were referred to as "scouts" into the early 1920s. The U.S. Army called their fighters "pursuit" aircraft from 1916 until the late 1940s. The French chasseur andGerman Jagdflugzeuge are terms that continue to be used for fighters, and mean "hunter" and "hunting aircraft" respectively. Most languages follow this, except Russian where the fighter .is an "истребитель" (pronounced "istrebitel"), meaning "exterminator" and Hebrew where it is matose krav (literally battle plane).

F-16 Fighting Falcon is a fighter aircraft
As a part of military nomenclature, aletter is often assigned to various types of aircraft to indicate their use, along with a number to indicate the specific aircraft. The letters used to designate a fighter differ in various countries — in the English speaking world, "F" is now used to indicate a fighter (e.g. F-35 or Spitfire F.22), though when the pursuit designation was used in the US, they were "P" types (e.g. P-40). In...