Quote:
Originally Posted by wellis
Could the YF-23 fit American doctrine well regarding its BETA fighting doctrine? It seems like it can do anti-BETA and anti-TSF fighting equally well. I wonder if things, like the performance of American forces during the Japanese coup, would've changed if the F-23 had been the TSF accepted and deployed to Japan during the coup?
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It wouldn't really have affected anything much.
The ATSF flyoffs between the YF-23 and YF-22 demonstrated a number of things: firstly, when it came to shooting and stealth, both TSFs had a similar level of performance, which exceeded that of the F-15. Secondly, the YF-23 was a hangar queen compared to the YF-22; it had longer maintenance downtime, and was more difficult and cost more to maintain, compared to the YF-22. (Note that for IRL Project ATF, similar issues befell the YF-23 prototypes; part of the reason the YF-22 was selected by USAF was because Lockheed completed more test and demonstration sorties while Northrop's boys were fixing up the YF-23.)
As for fitting into US combat doctrine, the YF-23 represented a radical shift in doctrine; American doctrine, ever since the F-4 was deployed, focused on dakka as the primary weapon against BETA, with melee being a secondary priority - the reasonable thinking was that you do not want to play to the strengths of your enemy. At the same time, however, the YF-23 team realised that sooner or later you run out of ammo, and having better melee abilities would be very useful in that regard. It's telling that according to TSFiA, the YF-23 was consistently able to defeat the YF-22 in close combat.
Integrating the YF-22 into existing US forces would have been less of a doctrine issue than the YF-23, as it slots neatly into existing US doctrine (do more of what you do, only better, with stealth!); deploying the YF-23 would have forced the US to come up with a new doctrine, which is not a small thing to do.
To be honest, though, there would have been little difference in results, whether Walken's battalion had been equipped with F-22s or F-23s.
Edit: lol, ninja'ed by everyone. ;D
Edit 2: What I
could see, perhaps, is something similar to the aftermath of Macross Plus, which had the Advanced Variable Fighter Project - a flyoff between variable fighters, one that was a bit more down to earth (Raptor-inspired) and what was practically a YF-23 expy (the YF-21). YF-21 lost the competition to be the UN Spacy's main variable fighter, which the YF-19 won (mind you, getting the sole prototype blown up probably didn't help General Galaxy's case), but it did win a contract to become a special operations fighter (albeit simplified and toned down into the VF-22 version, which was more practical to operate, while still having a similar level of combat performance to the prototype). The VF-19 and variants became mainline fighters, while the VF-22 was assigned to special forces.
That said, Alternative US is admittedly
not rich enough to buy two new 3rd Gen TSFs. The YF-23 would be an awesome Orbital Diver machine and hive fighter, as Alastor Toth Mobius posted above, but the F-22A is the best compromise between a cutting edge next-gen TSF and something affordable that won't sideline too many squadrons for too long as they adjust to doctrine shift and spend time at Replacement Training Units (or Fleet Replacement Squadrons for the Navy).