Comments by "Gort" (@gort8203) on "" video.

No, this is just more YouTube mythology. The XL was originally designed to explore improved supersonic L/D and allow for super cruise. The airplane did not achieve its super cruise goals. It would probably have been somewhat more maneuverable at supersonic speed, but at subsonic speed it had more induced drag and therefore lower sustained turn rate than the original F-16, which after all had been intentionally optimized for maximum sustained turn performance. The XL was later entered in the ETF program, but this was not its original purpose. The super cruise goal was forgotten when carrying bombs. It would have been a good strike aircraft, but the F-15E was less expensive, less risky, and more capable in some ways. The XL was not produced for sound reasons.
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Not crazy, logical. It was a very different airframe, would have been expensive, and was not needed. The correct choice was made.
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The F-16 doesn't really have any more of a 'negative lift ' tail than the XL. That is the whole point of relaxed static stability and the aft center of gravity. The idea was a wing with higher lift to drag ratio at supersonic speed to allow super cruise on the same thrust. It didn't really pan out. On top of that It would have been inferior during subsonic maneuvering. We didn't get any because we need this airplane.
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Only an opportunity to spend more money for less capability than the F-15E.
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I wasn't made then, there were only two prototypes that failed to sell the concept. No reason to build it now.
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"The XL design had too many more advantages over the original one to be dismissed like this." No it didn't. It had some advantages, and some disadvantages, such as subsonic sustained turn performance and higher cost
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@ImpendingJoker Nobody was talking about refitting existing F-16s into XLs, they would have been all new airplanes if produced. They would have been more expensive than the F-15E, had more development risk, and offered no performance advantage over the F-15E. A new fighter-bomber was needed quickly, but the XL was not needed.
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@soulsphere9242 It continues to amaze me how people latch on to myth and misinformation and then refuse to accept actual facts when presented with them. It seems to be related to social media and the internet becoming the predominate form of information exchange for the masses. It's ironic that internet was projected to make us smarter because all the information in the world would be easily accessible, but it seems misinformation is what multiplies and spreads like disease.
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@carlpboyer Ater transfer to NASA "the F-16XL-2 had its engine replaced with the more powerful General Electric F110-129.[12][37] It achieved limited supercruise, a design goal of the F-16XL that was never attained in ETF testing, when it reached Mach 1.1 at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) on full military power." A paltry Mach 1.1 is not meaningful supercruise considering the conventional F-16 could already sustain a very high transonic Mach number in mil power. The cranked arrow wing experiment did not deliver much of a difference.
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@carlpboyer 20,000 ft is indeed a fairly low altitude for Mach speeds, and the reason it was fastest there that was that even the more powerful engine did not have sufficient un-augmented thrust to break Mach at higher altitudes. Calling Mach 1.1 supercruise is kind of pitiful and it did not meet the expectations of the original program. As I said, this is not much faster what a regular F-16 could do and is therefore insignificant in terms of air combat tactics.
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@carlpboyer Was what specifically called out? In any case I don't have the testing data, I just referring to numbers available online in places like Wikipedia.
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@RedTail1-1 I don't get my info from Wikipedia. I don't have to make an argument because I know what the facts are, and I don't care if you don't want to accept them. Just go away because I'm not interested in debating another video gamer who thinks he understands military aircraft.
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