title: Republika Srpska

text: In September 2006, Republika Srpska officials signed a 'special ties agreement' with Serbia aimed at promoting economic and institutional cooperation between Serbia and Republika Srpska. The accord was signed by Serbia's President Boris Tadić and Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica, former Republika Srpska President Dragan Čavić, and Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.


title: Republika Srpska

text: In February 2009, Republika Srpska opened a representative office in Brussels. While European Union representatives were not present at the ceremony, top Republika Srpska officials attended the event, saying it would advance their economic, political and cultural relations with the EU. This notion has been strongly condemned by Bosniak leaders, saying that this is further proof of Republika Srpska distancing itself from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The president of Republika Srpska, Rajko Kuzmanović, told reporters that this move did not jeopardise Republika Srpska's place within Bosnia and Herzegovina. He added that Republika Srpska merely used its constitutional right 'to open up a representation office in the centre of developments of European relevance'. Republika Srpska maintains official offices in Belgrade, Moscow, Stuttgart, Jerusalem, Thessaloniki, Washington D.C., Brussels, and Vienna.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The Academy of Sciences and Arts of Republika Srpska is the most important scientific, cultural, working and representative institution of Republika Srpska. The task of this academic institution is to develop, promote and encourage scientific and artistic activity. The academy is an institution of special national interest for the Republika Srpska.


title: Republika Srpska

text: An important carrier of the development of dramatic art in Banja Luka and in the whole region is the National Theater of the Republic of Srpska, which has eighty full-time employees and, within the ensemble of actors themselves, twenty-six dramatic artists. One of the most important and certainly the most visited cultural events in the city is the Theater Fest, which is held every year in this theater, with the participation of numerous ensembles of domestic and foreign actors.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The National and University Library of Republika Srpska is the central library of the University of Banja Luka, the main library of all public universities in Republika Srpska and the umbrella and central national library of Republika Srpska.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage is the official administrative institution of the Republika Srpska and an organization within the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republika Srpska. The Institute registers, protects and maintains a central register of cultural, historical and natural monuments throughout the territory of the Republika Srpska.


title: Republika Srpska

text: In 1993, the Association of Serbian Writers was founded in Jahorina, under the chairmanship of professor and politician Nikola Koljevic. Since 2003, the president of the association has been Zoran Kostic, who moved its headquarters from Serbian Sarajevo to Banja Luka. The president of the Sarajevo-Romanija-Drina branch is Nedeljko Zelenovic.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The founding assembly of the Association of Historians of the Republic of Srpska "Milorad Ekmecic" was held in Banja Luka in December 2015 . Draga Mastilović, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of East Sarajevo, was elected president . The objectives of the Association are the improvement of scientific research activities in the field of historical science in the Republic of Srpska and dissemination of these results, improvement of history teaching and professional development of teaching staff.


title: Republika Srpska

text: Sport in Republika Srpska is managed by the entity's Ministry of Youth, Family, and Sport. The most popular sports in the entity include basketball, football, and volleyball.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The most popular football club, and generally the largest sports organization, is FK Borac Banja Luka. FK Borac has, especially with regard to the former Yugoslavia, experienced considerable success: it won the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Cup in 2010, the Yugoslav Cup in 1988, and the Central European Cup in 1992, its last year. Other popular football clubs include FK Rudar Prijedor, FK Radnik Bijeljina, and FK Leotar, though these clubs face a considerable loss of talent to larger clubs of Serbia, Croatia, and the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo.


title: Republika Srpska

text: The oldest basketball club in Bosnia and Herzegovina, KK Borac, was founded in Banja Luka in 1947. The most successful sportspeoples born on the territory of present-day Republika Srpska are football players Tomislav Knez, Velimir Sombolac (1960 Olympics Champions) and Mehmed Baždarević (1976 Olympics Bronze medalist); handball players Đorđe Lavrnić, Milorad Karalić, Nebojša Popović (1972 Olympics Champions) and Zlatan Arnautović (1984 Olympics Champion); basketball players Ratko Radovanović (1980 Olympics Champion) and Slađana Golić (1988 Olympics Silver medalist); boxers Anton Josipović (1984 Olympics Champion), Slobodan Kačar (1980 Olympics Champion) and Tadija Kačar (1976 Olympics Silver medalist), table tennis player Jasna Fazlić (1988 Olympics Bronze medalist).


title: Republika Srpska

text: After the breakup of Yugoslavia, an especially large amount of successful athletes from Republika Srpska have chosen to represent Serbia (or former Serbia and Montenegro, FR Yugoslavia), such as basketball players Vladimir Radmanović (2002 World Champion), Saša Čađo (2015 European Champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist) and Ognjen Kuzmić (2015 NBA Champion, 2018 EuroLeague champion and 2017 EuroBasket silver medalist); volleyball players Tijana Bošković (2018 World Champion and 2016 Olympic silver medalist) and Saša Starović (2011 European Champion); football players Savo Milošević (2000 European Championship top scorer), Neven Subotić (two-time Bundesliga Champion), Mijat Gaćinović, Miladin Stevanović and Srđan Babić (2015 U-20 World Champions), Ognjen Ožegović (2013 U-19 European Champions) and Luka Jović. Other famous athletes are swimmer Velimir Stjepanović (2014 European Champions), taekwondo practitioner Zoran Prerad (1998 European Champion), judoka Nemanja Majdov (2017 World Champion) and alpine skier Jelena Lolović (2005 Universiade Champion).


title: Republika Srpska

text: According to the Law on Holidays of Republika Srpska, public holidays are divided into three categories: entity holidays, religious holidays, and holidays which are marked but do not include time off of work. The entity holidays include New Year's Day (1 January), Entity Day (9 January), International Workers' Day (1 May), Victory over Fascism Day (9 May), and Day of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (21 November).


title: Republika Srpska

text: Religious holidays include Christmas and Easter according to both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars for, respectively, Serbian Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics, as well as Kurban Bajram and Bajram for Muslims. Holidays which are marked but do not include time off work include School Day (the Feast of Saint Sava, 27 January), Day of the Army of Republika Srpska (12 May), Interior Ministry Day (4 April), and Day of the First Serbian Uprising (14 February).


title: Republika Srpska

text: The most important of the entity holidays is the Day of Republika Srpska, which commemorates the establishment of Republika Srpska on 9 January 1992. It coincides with Saint Stephen's Day according to the Julian calendar. The Orthodox Serbs also refer to the holiday as the "slava" of Republika Srpska, regarding Saint Stephen as the patron saint of the entity although it is designated as a secular holiday. Republika Srpska does not recognise the Independence Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1 March).


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a 2016 American action-thriller film directed by Edward Zwick, written by Zwick, Richard Wenk, and Marshall Herskovitz, and based on the 2013 novel "Never Go Back" by Lee Child. A sequel to the 2012 film "Jack Reacher", the film stars Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders, with the supporting cast featuring Patrick Heusinger, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Holt McCallany, and Robert Knepper. The plot follows Reacher going on the run with an Army major who has been framed for espionage, as the two reveal a dark conspiracy.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Principal photography began on October 20, 2015, in New Orleans, and the film was released on October 21, 2016, in IMAX and conventional formats. It grossed $162 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Cruise's performance and the film's action sequences, but criticized the plot.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: After helping the 110th US Army CID Military Police arrest a corrupt Oklahoma County Sheriff Raymond Wood, local deputy and bust a human trafficking ring operating on US Army land, drifter and ex-US Army Military Police Investigator and Major, Jack Reacher, returns to his old military headquarters in Washington, DC, to meet Major Susan Turner, holding his former command, with whom he has been working by phone during his travels. He learns from Colonel Sam Morgan that Turner has been accused of espionage and arrested.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Turner's lawyer, Colonel Moorcroft, reveals that some evidence shows that Turner is involved in the murders of two US Army Military Police soldiers in Afghanistan, but Reacher believes she is being framed. Moorcroft also reveals an old acquaintance of Reacher's, Candice Dutton, has filed a paternity suit against him, claiming he is the biological father of her 15-year-old daughter, Samantha. Reacher tries to reach out to Samantha, but she rebuffs him.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Moorcroft is later killed by an ex-SOCOM operator-turned mercenary known as the Hunter, framing Reacher for the murder. Reacher is arrested by the Military Police and transported to the prison where Turner is being detained. When two hitmen arrive, Reacher neutralizes them, then escapes with Turner. They go to Morgan's house, having deduced he is involved in the conspiracy, and extract information. The Hunter, revealed to be working with Morgan, later kills Morgan and again frames Reacher.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Reacher and Turner uncover surveillance pictures of Samantha and surmise she is in danger, arriving at her home to find her foster parents killed and Samantha hiding. The three travel to Turner's old private school for protection, but discover that Samantha has her mobile phone with her, which the enemy has likely tracked. They make a quick exit, during which Samantha steals credit cards from one of the students.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: The trio goes to New Orleans in search of Daniel Prudhomme, the only eyewitness to the murders for which Turner has been framed. En route, Reacher admits to Samantha he might be her father while Samantha reveals that she's the one who filed the paternity suit in order to gain financial support from him for her mother. Reacher and Turner find Prudhomme in a derelict warehouse filled with drug addicts, and learn that Prudhomme is connected to Parasource, a rogue private military organization that is trying to cover up the murders. Reacher contacts Turner's friend, Captain Anthony Espin, to move Prudhomme into custody, but they are ambushed by Parasource operatives and Prudhomme is killed, while Reacher rescues a wounded Espin. Parasource's CEO, General James Harkness, sends the Hunter to capture Samantha after she uses one of the stolen credit cards to purchase food.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Reacher, Turner, Espin and a team of Military Police officers, acting on information from Prudhomme, intercept a shipment of weapons due to enter the country, where they confront Harkness and his men, and accuse them of corruption. Espin finds antitank weapons, though, as declared in the flight manifest. Before Turner can be rearrested, Reacher opens up one of the weapons and dumps out bags of pure opium. They learn that Harkness framed Turner, who had been investigating his activities, for the murders of the two Military Police soldiers who had discovered that Harkness was selling weapons to insurgents, then smuggling opium into the United States. Espin and his MPs arrest Harkness.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: The Hunter and his men chase Samantha through the streets of New Orleans to lure Reacher into a confrontation. Turner kills one of the assassins, while Reacher takes out another one. The Hunter captures Samantha on a rooftop, but when Reacher arrives, she manages to escape. Reacher tackles the Hunter and they have a vicious fight, ending with Reacher breaking the Hunter's arm, leg, and neck, before dumping his body off the rooftop.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Following Harkness' arrest, Turner is reinstated to her command. Reacher promises to keep in touch, then goes to meet Samantha at a diner. He tells Samantha he will recognize her mother, if he knows her, as he remembers every woman he has slept with. Samantha reveals that the waitress that had been serving him is, in fact, her mother, and that Reacher cannot be her father, as neither had recognized the other. Reacher and Samantha then reluctantly part.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: As Reacher is walking along a road, he is surprised when a phone Samantha had slipped into his pocket rings. He finds a text message from her reading, "Miss me yet?". Reacher smiles as he sticks out his thumb to hitch a ride.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: In addition, Lee Child, author of the "Jack Reacher" novel series, makes a brief appearance as a TSA agent.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: While "Jack Reacher" was intended to be a tent-pole for a film series, a sequel was initially reported to be unlikely due to its lackluster run at the North American box office. In February 2013, a sequel became more likely after the film surpassed a gross of $200 million worldwide. On December 9, 2013, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media announced they were moving forward with the development of a second film, reportedly based on the 2013 Jack Reacher novel "Never Go Back". On May 14, 2014, Tom Cruise was reported to be reprising his role as Jack Reacher.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: On May 19, 2015, "Deadline" reported that Edward Zwick would reteam with Cruise, and direct the film. Zwick wrote the script along with Marshall Herskovitz and Richard Wenk. Zwick and Cruise had previously worked together on "The Last Samurai". On August 14, 2015, Cobie Smulders was added to the cast to play the female lead. On September 15, Danika Yarosh signed on to star in the film, on September 17, Aldis Hodge was added to the cast, and on September 22, Patrick Heusinger was cast in the villain role. On October 20, Holt McCallany joined the film, as did Austin Hebert. On November 12, 2015, Robert Catrini joined, and on January 20, 2016, Robert Knepper was cast as General Harkness, a retired general, and CEO of a private military firm.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Principal photography on the film began on October 20, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. On November 23, 2015, filming took place in Baton Rouge, and in January 2016, filming also took place in St. Francisville. Filming wrapped on January 30, 2016.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: On June 14, 2016, "Entertainment Weekly" premiered a preview of the first trailer, with Cobie Smulders introducing the footage. The official "Jack Reacher" Twitter account announced that a full trailer would be released on June 22, 2016. A browser game, titled "Jack Reacher: Never Stop Punching", was also released to promote the film.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" was released on digital HD on January 17, 2017, and on Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and DVD on January 31, 2017.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" grossed $58.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $103.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $162.1 million, against a production budget of $96 million.


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: In the United States and Canada, the film opened alongside "", "Keeping Up with the Joneses", "Boo! A Madea Halloween", and "I'm Not Ashamed", and was projected to gross around $20 million from 3,780 theaters in its opening weekend, with the studio expecting a debut of about $17 million. It earned $1.3 million in midnight showings at 1,850 theaters, slightly above "Oblivion"s $1.1 million and under "Edge of Tomorrow"s $1.8 million. For the weekend, the film opened to $23 million, finishing in second place, behind "Boo! A Madea Halloween". In its second weekend, the film dropped by 58.2%, grossing $9.6 million, and finishing third at the box office, behind "A Madea Halloween" ($16.7 million) and newcomer "Inferno" ($15 million).


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Outside North America, the film was released in 42 countries in conjunction with its United States and Canada debut, representing about 75% of the film's total marketplace internationally. In 30 of those markets, the film posted a bigger opening than the first "Reacher" film, and posted the top movie openings of the week in the United Kingdom and Ireland ($3.3 million), France ($2.8 million), Australia ($2 million), Russia ($2 million), Indonesia ($1.9 million), Taiwan ($1.6 million), and the United Arab Emirates ($1.3 million).


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: On "Rotten Tomatoes", the film has an approval rating of 37%, based on 234 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Monotonously formulaic, "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" is one action-thriller sequel whose title also serves as a warning." On "Metacritic", the film has a weighted average score 47 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by "CinemaScore" gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while the first film received an "A−".


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote: "The star gives author Lee Childs’ action-lit ex-military hero an agility, rage, and quick wit in this satisfying sequel". Travers notes that Cruise is very different from the character in the books and that critics need to get over it, and says, "Cruise finds the core of Reacher in his eyes, with a haunted gaze that says this lone wolf is still on a mission and still a long way from home. That's the Reacher Lee Child created in his books. And Cruise does him proud."


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" called it "a notable drop-off from the first Reacher feature" and said "by-the-numbers plotting, seen-it-all-before action moves, banal locations, and a largely anonymous cast alongside the star give this a low-rent feel."


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" wrote: "Zwick barely manages to tickle our adrenaline, waiting till the climactic showdown amid a New Orleans Halloween parade to deliver a sequence that could legitimately register as memorable."


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: Following the mixed critical reception to "Never Go Back", plans for a third installment were delayed, while a reboot in the form of an Amazon Prime exclusive television series was announced. In July 2020, Christopher McQuarrie stated that Cruise and he had been working on developments for additional movies featuring the titular character. Plans for the third film included darker themes, with intentions for the future movies in the series to be R-rated. The filmmaker further acknowledged the possibility for a return to the series at a later date, stating that the "franchise has moved on...we haven't."


title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

text: On February 4, 2022, an 8 episode series of "Reacher" was released on Amazon Prime, starring Alan Ritchson in the lead role. The series adapts Child's first novel, "Killing Floor".


title: Lily Rabe

text: Lily Rabe (born June 29, 1982) is an American actress. She is best known for her multiple roles on the FX anthology horror series "American Horror Story" (2011–2021). For her performance as Portia in the Broadway production of "The Merchant of Venice", she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.


title: Lily Rabe

text: Her film credits include "What Just Happened" (2008), "All Good Things" (2010), "Pawn Sacrifice" (2014), "Miss Stevens" (2016), "Golden Exits" (2017), "Vice" (2018), "Fractured" (2019) and "The Tender Bar" (2021). On television, Rabe also appeared in the series "The Whispers" (2015), "The Undoing" (2020), "The Underground Railroad" (2021) and "The First Lady" (2022).


title: Lily Rabe

text: Rabe was born on New York City's Upper West Side, the daughter of playwright David Rabe and actress Jill Clayburgh. She has a younger brother, Michael, an actor and playwright; and an older paternal half-brother, Jason, a musician. Her father is Roman Catholic, her maternal grandfather was Jewish, and her maternal grandmother was Protestant. Rabe was raised in Bedford, New York, but moved to Lakeville, Connecticut when she was in seventh grade, where she attended the Hotchkiss School.


title: Lily Rabe

text: Rabe studied dance for ten years. She was teaching ballet at a summer arts program in Connecticut when she was approached by the program's acting instructor, who asked her to perform a monologue in the final production. She read a monologue from the play "Crimes of the Heart" by Beth Henley. She said, "It was that moment, performing that monologue, that made me think, 'Maybe this is what I wanna do'." She then went on to study acting at Northwestern University, graduating in 2004.


title: Lily Rabe

text: In 2001, Rabe made her screen debut opposite her mother Jill Clayburgh in the film "Never Again". She made her professional stage debut, again opposite her mother, at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts. She starred in two one-act plays, "Speaking Well of the Dead" by Israel Horovitz and "The Crazy Girl" by Frank Pugliese, roles that enabled her to get an Equity Card. In July 2003, she returned to the Gloucester Stage Company to appear in "Proof" by David Auburn. That year, she also appeared in the film "Mona Lisa Smile". After graduating, she moved back to New York. From September 29 through October 2, 2004, she appeared in "White Jesus" by Deirdre O'Connor, one of a series of one-act plays presented as "The Democracy Project" from the Naked Angels Theater Company.


title: Lily Rabe

text: On January 21, 2005, she took part in a workshop production of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" at the Roundabout Theatre Company, directed by Joe Mantello. She made her Broadway debut as Annelle Dupuy-Desoto in the 2005 revival of "Steel Magnolias" by Robert Harling, directed by Jason Moore for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She had been cast in the play "Sisters of the Garden," but had to drop out after being cast in "Steel Magnolias". From September through to October 2005, she appeared in the American premiere of "Colder Than Here" by English playwright Laura Wade at the MCC Theater, prompting "New York Magazine"'s Jeremy McCarter to call her performance "one of the best breakthroughs" of 2005. From September to December 2006, she played Ellie Dunn in Roundabout Theatre Company's production of "Heartbreak House" by George Bernard Shaw. In 2007, she appeared in the film "No Reservations".


title: Lily Rabe

text: In August 2007, Rabe appeared in "Crimes of the Heart" at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the directorial debut of actress Kathleen Turner. In 2008, the production moved Off-Broadway to the Laura Pels Theatre, where it was staged by the Roundabout Theatre Company and ran from February 14 to April 13. During a rehearsal, a piece of the set fell on Rabe, leaving her with a fractured rib and causing her to miss a week of preview performances; the opening night was changed from February 7 to February 14.


title: Lily Rabe

text: In August 2008, Rabe was cast as a plainclothes cop in the pilot of the HBO 1970s drama "Last of the Ninth," written by David Milch and directed by Carl Franklin. In December 2008, it was reported that HBO had decided not to pick it up as a series. That year, Rabe appeared in the films "What Just Happened" and "The Toe Tactic", as well as two episodes of "Medium". From January to March 2009, she appeared in the Broadway premiere of Richard Greenberg's 1990 play "The American Plan" at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. In 2010, she made her debut appearance at Shakespeare in the Park in a production of "The Merchant of Venice", directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, that ran from June 30 to August 1. Rabe was cast as Portia, which she described as "one of the great female roles." She also co-starred in the 2010 film "All Good Things".


title: Lily Rabe

text: Rabe next starred in "The Merchant of Venice", opposite Al Pacino as Shylock, in a performance described as a "smashing break-out". The production transferred to Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater, where it ran from October 19 to February 20, 2011. For her performance, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In March 2011, she was cast in the FOX drama pilot "Exit Strategy". In July, it was confirmed that FOX had passed on the pilot. Rabe appeared again at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in a production of "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, where she played Nora Helmer.


title: Lily Rabe

text: In August 2011, Rabe got her first regular role on a television series, as Nora Montgomery on the FX horror series "American Horror Story". She was later cast in the second season as the nun Sister Mary Eunice McKee (which she reprised in the fourth season). For the second season, she was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie/Miniseries. She was also cast in the third season as a resurgent witch, Misty Day, a role written for her by co-creator Ryan Murphy. In the fifth season, she was a special guest star in the "Devil's Night" episode, playing Aileen Wuornos. In the sixth season, she had a main role as Shelby Miller. Rabe is one of only three actors to appear in the show's first six seasons. In 2019, for the ninth installment of the show, titled "," Rabe returned in the recurring role of Lavinia Richter, a distraught mother who haunts Camp Redwood, an idyllic summer retreat with a history of massacre.


title: Lily Rabe

text: Rabe appeared at the Golden Theatre in the Broadway play "Seminar" by Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Sam Gold, the cast included Alan Rickman, Jerry O'Connell, Hamish Linklater and Hettienne Park. It opened on November 20, 2011 and closed May 6, 2012. In May 2012, it was announced that Rabe would play actress Mary Pickford in "The First", a film based on the book "" by Eileen Whitfield. She finished work in the Public Theater's production of "As You Like It", part of the 50th Season of Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre. She played Rosalind in the production that opened on June 11, 2012 and closed on June 30, 2012. In October 2012, it was announced that Rabe would appear in "We're Just Married", a film written by her father and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. Rabe was also a producer on the film. In May 2013, she made her Los Angeles stage debut in "Miss Julie" by August Strindberg, adapted and directed by Neil LaBute. In September 2013, she was cast as Commander Lyme in "" and "", the final two installments of "The Hunger Games film series", based on the novels by Suzanne Collins. She was later replaced in the films by Gwendoline Christie due to a scheduling conflict.


title: Lily Rabe

text: On February 14, it was announced that Rabe would appear in "Much Ado About Nothing" as part of the 2014 Shakespeare in the Park season. The production began on June 3 and ran to July 6. In 2014, she appeared in "Pawn Sacrifice", a film biopic about chess player Bobby Fischer, playing Fischer's sister Joan Targ. On February 24, it was announced that Rabe would appear with Thomas Jane and Jessica Alba in horror film "The Veil". It was released on January 19, 2016 through video on demand, prior to home-media release on February 2, 2016. That day, it was announced that Rabe would star in "The Visitors", a drama pilot for ABC. The pilot was later changed to "The Whispers" and was officially picked up by ABC in May 2014. The series premiered on June 1, 2015 and was subsequently cancelled on October 19, 2015 after one season. In May 2016, Rabe was cast in "Golden Exits" directed by Alex Ross Perry.


title: Lily Rabe

text: In August 2021, Rabe starred in the of "American Horror Story," as Doris Gardner in the first half of the season, and as Amelia Earhart in the second. It was her first time as part of the main cast since "".


title: Lily Rabe

text: In December 2016, it was reported that Rabe was expecting her first child with boyfriend Hamish Linklater. She gave birth to a girl in March 2017. In June 2020, they had their second daughter. In September 2021, Rabe announced her third pregnancy with Linklater.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield permits bombers and attack aircraft to engage in tactical and strategic bombing of enemy targets.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The key performance features of a fighter include not only its firepower but also its high speed and maneuverability relative to the target aircraft. The success or failure of a combatant's efforts to gain air superiority hinges on several factors including the skill of its pilots, the tactical soundness of its doctrine for deploying its fighters, and the numbers and performance of those fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Many modern fighter aircraft also have secondary capabilities such as ground attack and some types, such as fighter-bombers, are designed from the outset for dual roles. Other fighter designs are highly specialized while still filling the main air superiority role, and these include the interceptor, heavy fighter, and night fighter.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: A fighter aircraft is primarily designed for air-to-air combat. A given type may be designed for specific combat conditions, and in some cases for additional roles such as air-to-ground fighting. Historically the British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force referred to them as "scouts" until the early 1920s, while the U.S. Army called them "pursuit" aircraft until the late 1940s. The UK changed to calling them fighters in the 1920s, while the US Army did so in the 1940s. A short-range fighter designed to defend against incoming enemy aircraft is known as an interceptor.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Of these, the Fighter-bomber, reconnaissance fighter and strike fighter classes are dual-role, possessing qualities of the fighter alongside some other battlefield role. Some fighter designs may be developed in variants performing other roles entirely, such as ground attack or unarmed reconnaissance. This may be for political or national security reasons, for advertising purposes, or other reasons.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The Sopwith Camel and other "fighting scouts" of World War I performed a great deal of ground-attack work. In World War II, the USAAF and RAF often favored fighters over dedicated light bombers or dive bombers, and types such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and Hawker Hurricane that were no longer competitive as aerial combat fighters were relegated to ground attack. Several aircraft, such as the F-111 and F-117, have received fighter designations though they had no fighter capability due to political or other reasons. The F-111B variant was originally intended for a fighter role with the U.S. Navy, but it was canceled. This blurring follows the use of fighters from their earliest days for "attack" or "strike" operations against ground targets by means of strafing or dropping small bombs and incendiaries. Versatile multi role fighter-bombers such as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet are a less expensive option than having a range of specialized aircraft types.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Some of the most expensive fighters such as the US Grumman F-14 Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and Russian Sukhoi Su-27 were employed as all-weather interceptors as well as air superiority fighter aircraft, while commonly developing air-to-ground roles late in their careers. An interceptor is generally an aircraft intended to target (or intercept) bombers and so often trades maneuverability for climb rate.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: As a part of military nomenclature, a letter 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 often now used to indicate a fighter (e.g. Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II or Supermarine Spitfire F.22), though "P" used to be used in the US for pursuit (e.g. Curtiss P-40 Warhawk), a translation of the French "C" (Dewoitine D.520 C.1) for "Chasseur" while in Russia "I" was used for "Istrebitel", or exterminator (Polikarpov I-16).


title: Fighter aircraft

text: As fighter types have proliferated, the air superiority fighter emerged as a specific role at the pinnacle of speed, maneuverability, and air-to-air weapon systems – able to hold its own against all other fighters and establish its dominance in the skies above the battlefield.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The interceptor is a fighter designed specifically to intercept and engage approaching enemy aircraft. There are two general classes of interceptor: relatively lightweight aircraft in the point-defence role, built for fast reaction, high performance and with a short range, and heavier aircraft with more comprehensive avionics and designed to fly at night or in all weathers and to operate over longer ranges. Originating during World War I, by 1929 this class of fighters had become known as the interceptor.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The equipment necessary for daytime flight is inadequate when flying at night or in poor visibility. The night fighter was developed during World War I with additional equipment to aid the pilot in flying straight, navigating and finding the target. From modified variants of the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c in 1915, the night fighter has evolved into the highly capable all-weather fighter.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The strategic fighter is a fast, heavily armed and long-range type, able to act as an escort fighter protecting bombers, to carry out offensive sorties of its own as a penetration fighter and maintain standing patrols at significant distance from its home base.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Bombers are vulnerable due to their low speed, large size and poor maneuvrability. The escort fighter was developed during World War II to come between the bombers and enemy attackers as a protective shield. The primary requirement was for long range, with several heavy fighters given the role. However they too proved unwieldy and vulnerable, so as the war progressed techniques such as drop tanks were developed to extend the range of more nimble conventional fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The penetration fighter is typically also fitted for the ground-attack role, and so is able to defend itself while conducting attack sorties.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Since World War I, achieving and maintaining air superiority has been considered essential for victory in conventional warfare.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighters continued to be developed throughout World War I, to deny enemy aircraft and dirigibles the ability to gather information by reconnaissance over the battlefield. Early fighters were very small and lightly armed by later standards, and most were biplanes built with a wooden frame covered with fabric, and a maximum airspeed of about . As control of the airspace over armies became increasingly important, all of the major powers developed fighters to support their military operations. Between the wars, wood was largely replaced in part or whole by metal tubing, and finally aluminum stressed skin structures (monocoque) began to predominate.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By World War II, most fighters were all-metal monoplanes armed with batteries of machine guns or cannons and some were capable of speeds approaching . Most fighters up to this point had one engine, but a number of twin-engine fighters were built; however they were found to be outmatched against single-engine fighters and were relegated to other tasks, such as night fighters equipped with primitive radar sets.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By the end of the war, turbojet engines were replacing piston engines as the means of propulsion, further increasing aircraft speed. Since the weight of the turbojet engine was far less than a piston engine, having two engines was no longer a handicap and one or two were used, depending on requirements. This in turn required the development of ejection seats so the pilot could escape, and G-suits to counter the much greater forces being applied to the pilot during maneuvers.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In the 1950s, radar was fitted to day fighters, since due to ever increasing air-to-air weapon ranges, pilots could no longer see far enough ahead to prepare for the opposition. Subsequently, radar capabilities grew enormously and are now the primary method of target acquisition. Wings were made thinner and swept back to reduce transonic drag, which required new manufacturing methods to obtain sufficient strength. Skins were no longer sheet metal riveted to a structure, but milled from large slabs of alloy. The sound barrier was broken, and after a few false starts due to required changes in controls, speeds quickly reached Mach 2, past which aircraft cannot maneuver sufficiently to avoid attack.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Air-to-air missiles largely replaced guns and rockets in the early 1960s since both were believed unusable at the speeds being attained, however the Vietnam War showed that guns still had a role to play, and most fighters built since then are fitted with cannon (typically between in caliber) in addition to missiles. Most modern combat aircraft can carry at least a pair of air-to-air missiles.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In the 1970s, turbofans replaced turbojets, improving fuel economy enough that the last piston engine support aircraft could be replaced with jets, making multi-role combat aircraft possible. Honeycomb structures began to replace milled structures, and the first composite components began to appear on components subjected to little stress.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: With the steady improvements in computers, defensive systems have become increasingly efficient. To counter this, stealth technologies have been pursued by the United States, Russia, India and China. The first step was to find ways to reduce the aircraft's reflectivity to radar waves by burying the engines, eliminating sharp corners and diverting any reflections away from the radar sets of opposing forces. Various materials were found to absorb the energy from radar waves, and were incorporated into special finishes that have since found widespread application. Composite structures have become widespread, including major structural components, and have helped to counterbalance the steady increases in aircraft weight—most modern fighters are larger and heavier than World War II medium bombers.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Because of the importance of air superiority, since the early days 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.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The global combat aircraft market was worth $45.75 billion in 2017 and is projected by Frost & Sullivan at $47.2 billion in 2026: 35% modernization programs and 65% aircraft purchases, dominated by the Lockheed Martin F-35 with 3,000 deliveries over 20 years.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The word "fighter" was first used to describe a two-seat aircraft carrying a machine gun (mounted on a pedestal) and its operator as well as the pilot. Although the term was coined in the United Kingdom, the first examples were the French Voisin pushers beginning in 1910, and a Voisin III would be the first to shoot down another aircraft, on 5 October 1914.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: However at the outbreak of World War I, front-line aircraft were mostly unarmed and used almost exclusively for reconnaissance. On 15 August 1914, Miodrag Tomić encountered an enemy airplane while on a reconnaissance flight over Austria-Hungary which fired at his aircraft with a revolver, so Tomić fired back. It was believed to be the first exchange of fire between aircraft. Within weeks, all Serbian and Austro-Hungarian aircraft were armed.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Another type of military aircraft formed the basis for an effective "fighter" in the modern sense of the word. It was based on small fast aircraft developed before the war for air racing such with the Gordon Bennett Cup and Schneider Trophy. The military scout airplane was not expected to carry serious armament, but rather to rely on speed to "scout" a location, and return quickly to report, making it a flying horse. British scout aircraft, in this sense, included the Sopwith Tabloid and Bristol Scout. The French and the Germans didn't have an equivalent as they used two seaters for reconnaissance, such as the Morane-Saulnier L, but would later modify pre-war racing aircraft into armed single seaters. It was quickly found that these were of little use since the pilot couldn't record what he saw while also flying, while military leaders usually ignored what the pilots reported.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Attempts were made with handheld weapons such as pistols and rifles and even light machine guns, but these were ineffective and cumbersome.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The next advance came with the fixed forward-firing machine gun, so that the pilot pointed the entire aircraft at the target and fired the gun, instead of relying on a second gunner. Roland Garros (aviator) bolted metal deflector plates to the propeller so that it would not shoot itself out of the sky and a number of Morane-Saulnier Ns were modified. The technique proved effective, however the deflected bullets were still highly dangerous.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Soon after the commencement of the war, pilots armed themselves with pistols, carbines, grenades, and an assortment of improvised weapons. Many of these proved ineffective as the pilot had to fly his airplane while attempting to aim a handheld weapon and make a difficult deflection shot. The first step in finding a real solution was to mount the weapon on the aircraft, but the propeller remained a problem since the best direction to shoot is straight ahead. Numerous solutions were tried. A second crew member behind the pilot could aim and fire a swivel-mounted machine gun at enemy airplanes; however, this limited the area of coverage chiefly to the rear hemisphere, and effective coordination of the pilot's maneuvering with the gunner's aiming was difficult. This option was chiefly employed as a defensive measure on two-seater reconnaissance aircraft from 1915 on. Both the SPAD S.A and the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.9 added a second crewman ahead of the engine in a pod but this was both hazardous to the second crewman and limited performance. The Sopwith L.R.T.Tr. similarly added a pod on the top wing with no better luck.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: An alternative was to build a "pusher" scout such as the Airco DH.2, with the propeller mounted behind the pilot. The main drawback was that the high drag of a pusher type's tail structure made it slower than a similar "tractor" aircraft.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: A better solution for a single seat scout was to mount the machine gun (rifles and pistols having been dispensed with) to fire forwards but outside the propeller arc. Wing guns were tried but the unreliable weapons available required frequent clearing of jammed rounds and misfires and remained impractical until after the war. Mounting the machine gun over the top wing worked well and was used long after the ideal solution was found. The Nieuport 11 of 1916 used this system with considerable success, however, this placement made aiming and reloading difficult but would continue to be used throughout the war as the weapons used were lighter and had a higher rate of fire than synchronized weapons. The British Foster mounting and several French mountings were specifically designed for this kind of application, fitted with either the Hotchkiss or Lewis Machine gun, which due to their design were unsuitable for synchronizing.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The need to arm a tractor scout with a forward-firing gun whose bullets passed through the propeller arc was evident even before the outbreak of war and inventors in both France and Germany devised mechanisms that could time the firing of the individual rounds to avoid hitting the propeller blades. Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer, had patented such a device in Germany in 1913, but his original work was not followed up. French aircraft designer Raymond Saulnier patented a practical device in April 1914, but trials were unsuccessful because of the propensity of the machine gun employed to hang fire due to unreliable ammunition.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In December 1914, French aviator Roland Garros asked Saulnier to install his synchronization gear on Garros' Morane-Saulnier Type L parasol monoplane. Unfortunately the gas-operated Hotchkiss machine gun he was provided had an erratic rate of fire and it was impossible to synchronize it with the propeller. As an interim measure, the propeller blades were fitted with metal wedges to protect them from ricochets. Garros' modified monoplane first flew in March 1915 and he began combat operations soon after. Garros scored three victories in three weeks before he himself was downed on 18 April and his airplane, along with its synchronization gear and propeller was captured by the Germans.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Meanwhile, the synchronization gear (called the "Stangensteuerung" in German, for "pushrod control system") devised by the engineers of Anthony Fokker's firm was the first system to enter service. It would usher in what the British called the "Fokker scourge" and a period of air superiority for the German forces, making the Fokker "Eindecker" monoplane a feared name over the Western Front, despite its being an adaptation of an obsolete pre-war French Morane-Saulnier racing airplane, with poor flight characteristics and a by now mediocre performance. The first "Eindecker" victory came on 1 July 1915, when "Leutnant" Kurt Wintgens, of "Feldflieger Abteilung 6" on the Western Front, downed a Morane-Saulnier Type L. His was one of five Fokker M.5K/MG prototypes for the "Eindecker", and was armed with a synchronized aviation version of the Parabellum MG14 machine gun.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The success of the "Eindecker" kicked off a competitive cycle of improvement among the combatants, both sides striving to build ever more capable single-seat fighters. The Albatros D.I and Sopwith Pup of 1916 set the classic pattern followed by fighters for about twenty years. Most were biplanes and only rarely monoplanes or triplanes. The strong box structure of the biplane provided a rigid wing that allowed the accurate control essential for dogfighting. They had a single operator, who flew the aircraft and also controlled its armament. They were armed with one or two Maxim or Vickers machine guns, which were easier to synchronize than other types, firing through the propeller arc. Gun breeches were in front of the pilot, with obvious implications in case of accidents, but jams could be cleared in flight, while aiming was simplified.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The use of metal aircraft structures was pioneered before World War I by Breguet but would find its biggest proponent in Anthony Fokker, who used chrome-molybdenum steel tubing for the fuselage structure of all his fighter designs, while the innovative German engineer Hugo Junkers developed two all-metal, single-seat fighter monoplane designs with cantilever wings: the strictly experimental Junkers J 2 private-venture aircraft, made with steel, and some forty examples of the Junkers D.I, made with corrugated duralumin, all based on his experience in creating the pioneering Junkers J 1 all-metal airframe technology demonstration aircraft of late 1915.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: While Fokker would pursue steel tube fuselages with wooden wings until the late 1930s, and Junkers would focus on corrugated sheet metal, Dornier was the first to build a fighter (The Dornier-Zeppelin D.I) made with pre-stressed sheet aluminum and having cantilevered wings, a form that would replace all others in the 1930s.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: As collective combat experience grew, the more successful pilots such as Oswald Boelcke, Max Immelmann, and Edward Mannock developed innovative tactical formations and maneuvers to enhance their air units' combat effectiveness.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Allied and – before 1918 – German pilots of World War I were not equipped with parachutes, so in-flight fires or structural failures were often fatal. Parachutes were well-developed by 1918 having previously been used by balloonists, and were adopted by the German flying services during the course of that year. The well known and feared Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron", was wearing one when he was killed, but the allied command continued to oppose their use on various grounds.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In April 1917, during a brief period of German aerial supremacy a British pilot's average life expectancy was calculated to average 93 flying hours, or about three weeks of active service. More than 50,000 airmen from both sides died during the war.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter development stagnated between the wars, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, where budgets were small. In France, Italy and Russia, where large budgets continued to allow major development, both monoplanes and all metal structures were common. By the end of the 1920s, however, those countries overspent themselves and were overtaken in the 1930s by those powers that hadn't been spending heavily, namely the British, the Americans and the Germans.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Given limited budgets, air forces were conservative in aircraft design, and biplanes remained popular with pilots for their agility, and remained in service long after they ceased to be competitive. Designs such as the Gloster Gladiator, Fiat CR.42 Falco, and Polikarpov I-15 were common even in the late 1930s, and many were still in service as late as 1942. Up until the mid-1930s, the majority of fighters in the US, the UK, Italy and Russia remained fabric-covered biplanes.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter armament eventually began to be mounted inside the wings, outside the arc of the propeller, though most designs retained two synchronized machine guns directly ahead of the pilot, where they were more accurate (that being the strongest part of the structure, reducing the vibration to which the guns were subjected). Shooting with this traditional arrangement was also easier because the guns shot directly ahead in the direction of the aircraft's flight, up to the limit of the guns range; unlike wing-mounted guns which to be effective required to be harmonised, that is, preset to shoot at an angle by ground crews so that their bullets would converge on a target area a set distance ahead of the fighter. Rifle-caliber calibre guns remained the norm, with larger weapons either being too heavy and cumbersome or deemed unnecessary against such lightly built aircraft. It was not considered unreasonable to use World War I-style armament to counter enemy fighters as there was insufficient air-to-air combat during most of the period to disprove this notion.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The rotary engine, popular during World War I, quickly disappeared, its development having reached the point where rotational forces prevented more fuel and air from being delivered to the cylinders, which limited horsepower. They were replaced chiefly by the stationary radial engine though major advances led to inline engines gaining ground with several exceptional engines—including the V-12 Curtiss D-12. Aircraft engines increased in power several-fold over the period, going from a typical in the Fokker D.VII of 1918 to in the Curtiss P-36 of 1936. The debate between the sleek in-line engines versus the more reliable radial models continued, with naval air forces preferring the radial engines, and land-based forces often choosing inlines. Radial designs did not require a separate (and vulnerable) radiator, but had increased drag. Inline engines often had a better power-to-weight ratio.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Some air forces experimented with "heavy fighters" (called "destroyers" by the Germans). These were larger, usually twin-engined aircraft, sometimes adaptations of light or medium bomber types. Such designs typically had greater internal fuel capacity (thus longer range) and heavier armament than their single-engine counterparts. In combat, they proved vulnerable to more agile single-engine fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The primary driver of fighter innovation, right up to the period of rapid re-armament in the late 1930s, were not military budgets, but civilian aircraft racing. Aircraft designed for these races introduced innovations like streamlining and more powerful engines that would find their way into the fighters of World War II. The most significant of these was the Schneider Trophy races, where competition grew so fierce, only national governments could afford to enter.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: At the very end of the inter-war period in Europe came the Spanish Civil War. This was just the opportunity the German "Luftwaffe", Italian "Regia Aeronautica", and the Soviet Union's Red Air Force needed to test their latest aircraft. Each party sent numerous aircraft types to support their sides in the conflict. In the dogfights over Spain, the latest Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters did well, as did the Soviet Polikarpov I-16. The later German design was earlier in its design cycle, and had more room for development and the lessons learned led to greatly improved models in World War II. The Russians failed to keep up and despite newer models coming into service, I-16s remaining the most common Soviet front-line fighter into 1942 despite being outclassed by the improved Bf 109s in World War II. For their part, the Italians developed several monoplanes such as the Fiat G.50 Freccia, but being short on funds, were forced to continue operating obsolete Fiat CR.42 Falco biplanes.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: From the early 1930s the Japanese were at war against both the Chinese Nationalists and the Russians in China, and used the experience to improve both training and aircraft, replacing biplanes with modern cantilever monoplanes and creating a cadre of exceptional pilots.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In the United Kingdom, at the behest of Neville Chamberlain, (more famous for his 'peace in our time' speech) the entire British aviation industry was retooled, allowing it to change quickly from fabric covered metal framed biplanes to cantilever stressed skin monoplanes in time for the war with Germany, a process that France attempted to emulate, but too late to counter the German invasion.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The period of improving the same biplane design over and over was now coming to an end, and the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire started to supplant the Gloster Gladiator and Hawker Fury biplanes but many biplanes remained in front-line service well past the start of World War II. While not a combatant in Spain, they too absorbed many of the lessons in time to use them.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The Spanish Civil War also provided an opportunity for updating fighter tactics. One of the innovations was the development of the "finger-four" formation by the German pilot Werner Mölders. Each fighter squadron (German: "Staffel") was divided into several flights ("Schwärme") of four aircraft. Each "Schwarm" was divided into two "Rotten", which was a pair of aircraft. Each "Rotte" was composed of a leader and a wingman. This flexible formation allowed the pilots to maintain greater situational awareness, and the two "Rotten" could split up at any time and attack on their own. The finger-four would be widely adopted as the fundamental tactical formation during World War Two, including by the British and later the Americans.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: World War II featured fighter combat on a larger scale than any other conflict to date. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel noted the effect of airpower: "Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage..." Throughout the war, fighters performed their conventional role in establishing air superiority through combat with other fighters and through bomber interception, and also often performed roles such as tactical air support and reconnaissance.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter design varied widely among combatants. The Japanese and Italians favored lightly armed and armored but highly maneuverable designs such as the Japanese Nakajima Ki-27, Nakajima Ki-43 and Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Italian Fiat G.50 Freccia and Macchi MC.200. In contrast, designers in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States believed that the increased speed of fighter aircraft would create "g"-forces unbearable to pilots who attempted maneuvering dogfights typical of the First World War, and their fighters were instead optimized for speed and firepower. In practice, while light, highly maneuverable aircraft did possess some advantages in fighter-versus-fighter combat, those could usually be overcome by sound tactical doctrine, and the design approach of the Italians and Japanese made their fighters ill-suited as interceptors or attack aircraft.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: During the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France, Luftwaffe fighters—primarily the Messerschmitt Bf 109—held air superiority, and the Luftwaffe played a major role in German victories in these campaigns. During the Battle of Britain, however, British Hurricanes and Spitfires proved roughly equal to Luftwaffe fighters. Additionally Britain's radar-based Dowding system directing fighters onto German attacks and the advantages of fighting above Britain's home territory allowed the RAF to deny Germany air superiority, saving the UK from possible German invasion and dealing the Axis a major defeat early in the Second World War.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: On the Eastern Front, Soviet fighter forces were overwhelmed during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa. This was a result of the tactical surprise at the outset of the campaign, the leadership vacuum within the Soviet military left by the Great Purge, and the general inferiority of Soviet designs at the time, such as the obsolescent Polikarpov I-15 biplane and the I-16. More modern Soviet designs, including the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3, LaGG-3 and Yakolev Yak-1, had not yet arrived in numbers and in any case were still inferior to the Messerschmitt Bf 109. As a result, during the early months of these campaigns, Axis air forces destroyed large numbers of Red Air Force aircraft on the ground and in one-sided dogfights.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In the later stages on the Eastern Front, Soviet training and leadership improved, as did their equipment. By 1942 Soviet designs such as the Yakovlev Yak-9 and Lavochkin La-5 had performance comparable to the German Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190. Also, significant numbers of British, and later U.S., fighter aircraft were supplied to aid the Soviet war effort as part of Lend-Lease, with the Bell P-39 Airacobra proving particularly effective in the lower-altitude combat typical of the Eastern Front. The Soviets were also helped indirectly by the American and British bombing campaigns, which forced the Luftwaffe to shift many of its fighters away from the Eastern Front in defense against these raids. The Soviets increasingly were able to challenge the Luftwaffe, and while the Luftwaffe maintained a qualitative edge over the Red Air Force for much of the war, the increasing numbers and efficacy of the Soviet Air Force were critical to the Red Army's efforts at turning back and eventually annihilating the Wehrmacht.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Meanwhile, air combat on the Western Front had a much different character. Much of this combat focused on the strategic bombing campaigns of the RAF and the USAAF against German industry intended to wear down the Luftwaffe. Axis fighter aircraft focused on defending against Allied bombers while Allied fighters' main role was as bomber escorts. The RAF raided German cities at night, and both sides developed radar-equipped night fighters for these battles. The Americans, in contrast, flew daylight bombing raids into Germany delivering the Combined Bomber Offensive. Unescorted Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, however, proved unable to fend off German interceptors (primarily Bf 109s and Fw 190s). With the later arrival of long range fighters, particularly the North American P-51 Mustang, American fighters were able to escort far into Germany on daylight raids and by ranging ahead attrited the Luftwaffe to establish control of the skies over Western Europe.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By the time of Operation Overlord in June 1944, the Allies had gained near complete air superiority over the Western Front. This cleared the way both for intensified strategic bombing of German cities and industries, and for the tactical bombing of battlefield targets. With the Luftwaffe largely cleared from the skies, Allied fighters increasingly served as ground attack aircraft.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Allied fighters, by gaining air superiority over the European battlefield, played a crucial role in the eventual defeat of the Axis, which "Reichmarshal" Hermann Göring, commander of the German "Luftwaffe" summed up when he said: "When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up."


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Major air combat during the war in the Pacific began with the entry of the Western Allies following Japan's attack against Pearl Harbor. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service primarily operated the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, and the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service flew the Nakajima Ki-27 and the Nakajima Ki-43, initially enjoying great success, as these fighters generally had better range, maneuverability, speed and climb rates than their Allied counterparts. Additionally, Japanese pilots were well trained and many were combat veterans from Japan's campaigns in China. They quickly gained air superiority over the Allies, who at this stage of the war were often disorganized, under-trained and poorly equipped, and Japanese air power contributed significantly to their successes in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and Burma.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By mid-1942, the Allies began to regroup and while some Allied aircraft such as the Brewster Buffalo and the P-39 Airacobra were hopelessly outclassed by fighters like Japan's Mitsubishi A6M Zero, others such as the Army's Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and the Navy's Grumman F4F Wildcat possessed attributes such as superior firepower, ruggedness and dive speed, and the Allies soon developed tactics (such as the Thach Weave) to take advantage of these strengths. These changes soon paid dividends, as the Allied ability to deny Japan air superiority was critical to their victories at Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and New Guinea. In China, the Flying Tigers also used the same tactics with some success, although they were unable to stem the tide of Japanese advances there.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By 1943, the Allies began to gain the upper hand in the Pacific Campaign's air campaigns. Several factors contributed to this shift. First, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and second-generation Allied fighters such as the Grumman F6 Hellcat and later the Vought F4 Corsair, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and the North American P-51 Mustang, began arriving in numbers. These fighters outperformed Japanese fighters in all respects except maneuverability.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Other problems with Japan's fighter aircraft also became apparent as the war progressed, such as their lack of armor and light armament, which had been typical of all pre-war fighters worldwide, but the problem was particularly difficult to rectify on the Japanese designs. This made them inadequate as either bomber-interceptors or ground-attack aircraft, roles Allied fighters were still able to fill. Most importantly, Japan's training program failed to provide enough well-trained pilots to replace losses. In contrast, the Allies improved both the quantity and quality of pilots graduating from their training programs.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: By mid-1944, Allied fighters had gained air superiority throughout the theater, which would not be contested again during the war. The extent of Allied quantitative and qualitative superiority by this point in the war was demonstrated during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, a lopsided Allied victory in which Japanese fliers were shot down in such numbers and with such ease that American fighter pilots likened it to a great 'turkey shoot'.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Late in the war, Japan began to produce new fighters such as the Nakajima Ki-84 and the Kawanishi N1K to replace the Zero, but only in small numbers, and by then Japan lacked the trained pilots or sufficient fuel to mount an effective challenge to Allied attacks. During the closing stages of the war, Japan's fighter arm could not seriously challenge raids over Japan by American Boeing B-29 Superfortresses, and was largely reduced to Kamikaze attacks.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter technology advanced rapidly during the Second World War. Piston-engines, which powered the vast majority of World War II fighters, grew more powerful: at the beginning of the war fighters typically had engines producing between and , while by the end of the war many could produce over . For example, the Spitfire, one of the few fighters in continuous production throughout the war, was in 1939 powered by a Merlin II, while variants produced in 1945 were equipped with the Rolls-Royce Griffon 61. Nevertheless, these fighters could only achieve modest increases in top speed due to problems of compressibility created as aircraft and their propellers approached the sound barrier, and it was apparent that propeller-driven aircraft were approaching the limits of their performance. German jet and rocket-powered fighters entered combat in 1944, too late to impact the war's outcome. The same year the Allies' only operational jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor, also entered service.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: World War II fighters also increasingly featured monocoque construction, which improved their aerodynamic efficiency while adding structural strength. Laminar flow wings, which improved high speed performance, also came into use on fighters such as the P-51 Mustang, while the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the Messerschmitt Me 163 featured swept wings that dramatically reduced drag at high subsonic speeds.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Armament also advanced during the war. The rifle-caliber machine guns that were common on prewar fighters could not easily down the more rugged warplanes of the era. Air forces began to replace or supplement them with cannons, which fired explosive shells that could blast a hole in an enemy aircraft – rather than relying on kinetic energy from a solid bullet striking a critical component of the aircraft, such as a fuel line or control cable, or the pilot. Cannons could bring down even heavy bombers with just a few hits, but their slower rate of fire made it difficult to hit fast-moving fighters in a dogfight. Eventually, most fighters mounted cannons, sometimes in combination with machine guns.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The British epitomized this shift. Their standard early war fighters mounted eight caliber machine guns, but by mid-war they often featured a combination of machine guns and cannons, and late in the war often only cannons. The Americans, in contrast, had problems producing a cannon design, so instead placed multiple heavy machine guns on their fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighters were also increasingly fitted with bomb racks and air-to-surface ordnance such as bombs or rockets beneath their wings, and pressed into close air support roles as fighter-bombers. Although they carried less ordnance than light and medium bombers, and generally had a shorter range, they were cheaper to produce and maintain and their maneuverability made it easier for them to hit moving targets such as motorized vehicles. Moreover, if they encountered enemy fighters, their ordnance (which reduced lift and increased drag and therefore decreased performance) could be jettisoned and they could engage enemy fighters, which eliminated the need for fighter escorts that bombers required.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Heavily armed fighters such as Germany's Focke-Wulf Fw 190, Britain's Hawker Typhoon and Hawker Tempest, and America's Curtiss P-40, F4 Corsair, P-47 Thunderbolt and P-38 Lightning all excelled as fighter-bombers, and since the Second World War ground attack has become an important secondary capability of many fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: World War II also saw the first use of airborne radar on fighters. The primary purpose of these radars was to help night fighters locate enemy bombers and fighters. Because of the bulkiness of these radar sets, they could not be carried on conventional single-engined fighters and instead were typically retrofitted to larger heavy fighters or light bombers such as Germany's Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers Ju 88, Britain's de Havilland Mosquito and Bristol Beaufighter, and America's Douglas A-20, which then served as night fighters. The Northrop P-61 Black Widow, a purpose-built night fighter, was the only fighter of the war that incorporated radar into its original design. Britain and America cooperated closely in the development of airborne radar, and Germany's radar technology generally lagged slightly behind Anglo-American efforts, while other combatants developed few radar-equipped fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Several prototype fighter programs begun early in 1945 continued on after the war and led to advanced piston-engine fighters that entered production and operational service in 1946. A typical example is the Lavochkin La-9 'Fritz', which was an evolution of the successful wartime Lavochkin La-7 'Fin'. Working through a series of prototypes, the La-120, La-126 and La-130, the Lavochkin design bureau sought to replace the La-7's wooden airframe with a metal one, as well as fit a laminar-flow wing to improve maneuver performance, and increased armament. The La-9 entered service in August 1946 and was produced until 1948; it also served as the basis for the development of a long-range escort fighter, the La-11 'Fang', of which nearly 1200 were produced 1947–1951. Over the course of the Korean War, however, it became obvious that the day of the piston-engined fighter was coming to a close and that the future would lie with the jet fighter.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: This period also witnessed experimentation with jet-assisted piston engine aircraft. La-9 derivatives included examples fitted with two underwing auxiliary pulsejet engines (the La-9RD) and a similarly mounted pair of auxiliary ramjet engines (the La-138); however, neither of these entered service. One that did enter service – with the U.S. Navy in March 1945 – was the Ryan FR-1 Fireball; production was halted with the war's end on VJ-Day, with only 66 having been delivered, and the type was withdrawn from service in 1947. The USAAF had ordered its first 13 mixed turboprop-turbojet-powered pre-production prototypes of the Consolidated Vultee XP-81 fighter, but this program was also canceled by VJ Day, with 80% of the engineering work completed.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The first rocket-powered aircraft was the Lippisch Ente, which made a successful maiden flight in March 1928. The only pure rocket aircraft ever mass-produced was the Messerschmitt Me 163B "Komet" in 1944, one of several German World War II projects aimed at developing high speed, point-defense aircraft. Later variants of the Me 262 (C-1a and C-2b) were also fitted with "mixed-power" jet/rocket powerplants, while earlier models were fitted with rocket boosters, but were not mass-produced with these modifications.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The USSR experimented with a rocket-powered interceptor in the years immediately following World War II, the Mikoyan-Gurevich I-270. Only two were built.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: In the 1950s, the British developed mixed-power jet designs employing both rocket and jet engines to cover the performance gap that existed in turbojet designs. The rocket was the main engine for delivering the speed and height required for high-speed interception of high-level bombers and the turbojet gave increased fuel economy in other parts of flight, most notably to ensure the aircraft was able to make a powered landing rather than risking an unpredictable gliding return.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The Saunders-Roe SR.53 was a successful design, and was planned for production when economics forced the British to curtail most aircraft programs in the late 1950s. Furthermore, rapid advancements in jet engine technology rendered mixed-power aircraft designs like Saunders-Roe's SR.53 (and the following SR.177) obsolete. The American Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor –the first U.S. fighter to exceed Mach 1 in level flight– met a similar fate for the same reason, and no hybrid rocket-and-jet-engine fighter design has ever been placed into service.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The only operational implementation of mixed propulsion was Rocket-Assisted Take Off (RATO), a system rarely used in fighters, such as with the zero-length launch, RATO-based takeoff scheme from special launch platforms, tested out by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and made obsolete with advancements in surface-to-air missile technology.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: It has become common in the aviation community to classify jet fighters by "generations" for historical purposes. No official definitions of these generations exist; rather, they represent the notion of stages in the development of fighter-design approaches, performance capabilities, and technological evolution. Different authors have packed jet fighters into different generations. For example, Richard P. Hallion of the Secretary of the Air Force's Action Group classified the F-16 as a sixth-generation jet fighter.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The timeframes associated with each generation remain inexact and are only indicative of the period during which their design philosophies and technology employment enjoyed a prevailing influence on fighter design and development. These timeframes also encompass the peak period of service entry for such aircraft.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The first generation of jet fighters comprised the initial, subsonic jet-fighter designs introduced late in World War II (1939–1945) and in the early post-war period. They differed little from their piston-engined counterparts in appearance, and many employed unswept wings. Guns and cannon remained the principal armament. The need to obtain a decisive advantage in maximum speed pushed the development of turbojet-powered aircraft forward. Top speeds for fighters rose steadily throughout World War II as more powerful piston engines developed, and they approached transonic flight-speeds where the efficiency of propellers drops off, making further speed increases nearly impossible.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The first jets developed during World War II and saw combat in the last two years of the war. Messerschmitt developed the first operational jet fighter, the Me 262A, primarily serving with the Luftwaffe's JG 7, the world's first jet-fighter wing. It was considerably faster than contemporary piston-driven aircraft, and in the hands of a competent pilot, proved quite difficult for Allied pilots to defeat. The Luftwaffe never deployed the design in numbers sufficient to stop the Allied air campaign, and a combination of fuel shortages, pilot losses, and technical difficulties with the engines kept the number of sorties low. Nevertheless, the Me 262 indicated the obsolescence of piston-driven aircraft. Spurred by reports of the German jets, Britain's Gloster Meteor entered production soon after, and the two entered service around the same time in 1944. Meteors commonly served to intercept the V-1 flying bomb, as they were faster than available piston-engined fighters at the low altitudes used by the flying bombs. Nearer the end of World War II, the first military jet-powered light-fighter design, the Luftwaffe intended the Heinkel He 162A "Spatz" (sparrow) to serve as a simple jet fighter for German home defense, with a few examples seeing squadron service with JG 1 by April 1945. By the end of the war almost all work on piston-powered fighters had ended. A few designs combining piston- and jet-engines for propulsion – such as the Ryan FR Fireball – saw brief use, but by the end of the 1940s virtually all new fighters were jet-powered.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Despite their advantages, the early jet-fighters were far from perfect. The operational lifespan of turbines were very short and engines were temperamental, while power could be adjusted only slowly and acceleration was poor (even if top speed was higher) compared to the final generation of piston fighters. Many squadrons of piston-engined fighters remained in service until the early to mid-1950s, even in the air forces of the major powers (though the types retained were the best of the World War II designs). Innovations including ejection seats, air brakes and all-moving tailplanes became widespread in this period.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The Americans began using jet fighters operationally after World War II, the wartime Bell P-59 having proven a failure. The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star (soon re-designated F-80) was less elegant than the swept-wing Me 262, but had a cruise speed () as high as the maximum speed attainable by many piston-engined fighters. The British designed several new jets, including the distinctive single-engined twin boom de Havilland Vampire which Britain sold to the air forces of many nations.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The British transferred the technology of the Rolls-Royce Nene jet-engine to the Soviets, who soon put it to use in their advanced Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter, which used fully swept wings that allowed flying closer to the speed of sound than straight-winged designs such as the F-80. The MiG-15s' top speed of proved quite a shock to the American F-80 pilots who encountered them in the Korean War, along with their armament of two cannons and a single cannon. Nevertheless, in the first jet-versus-jet dogfight, which occurred during the Korean War on 8 November 1950, an F-80 shot down two North Korean MiG-15s


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The Americans responded by rushing their own swept-wing fighter – the North American F-86 Sabre – into battle against the MiGs, which had similar transsonic performance. The two aircraft had different strengths and weaknesses, but were similar enough that victory could go either way. While the Sabres focused primarily on downing MiGs and scored favorably against those flown by the poorly-trained North Koreans, the MiGs in turn decimated US bomber formations and forced the withdrawal of numerous American types from operational service.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The world's navies also transitioned to jets during this period, despite the need for catapult-launching of the new aircraft. The U.S. Navy adopted the Grumman F9F Panther as their primary jet fighter in the Korean War period, and it was one of the first jet fighters to employ an afterburner. The de Havilland Sea Vampire became the Royal Navy's first jet fighter. Radar was used on specialized night-fighters such as the Douglas F3D Skyknight, which also downed MiGs over Korea, and later fitted to the McDonnell F2H Banshee and swept-wing Vought F7U Cutlass and McDonnell F3H Demon as all-weather / night fighters. Early versions of Infra-red (IR) air-to-air missiles (AAMs) such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder and radar-guided missiles such as the AIM-7 Sparrow whose descendants remain in use , were first introduced on swept-wing subsonic Demon and Cutlass naval fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Technological breakthroughs, lessons learned from the aerial battles of the Korean War, and a focus on conducting operations in a nuclear warfare environment shaped the development of second-generation fighters. Technological advances in aerodynamics, propulsion and aerospace building-materials (primarily aluminum alloys) permitted designers to experiment with aeronautical innovations such as swept wings, delta wings, and area-ruled fuselages. Widespread use of afterburning turbojet engines made these the first production aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the ability to sustain supersonic speeds in level flight became a common capability amongst fighters of this generation.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fighter designs also took advantage of new electronics technologies that made effective radars small enough to carry aboard smaller aircraft. Onboard radars permitted detection of enemy aircraft beyond visual range, thereby improving the handoff of targets by longer-ranged ground-based warning- and tracking-radars. Similarly, advances in guided-missile development allowed air-to-air missiles to begin supplementing the gun as the primary offensive weapon for the first time in fighter history. During this period, passive-homing infrared-guided (IR) missiles became commonplace, but early IR missile sensors had poor sensitivity and a very narrow field of view (typically no more than 30°), which limited their effective use to only close-range, tail-chase engagements. Radar-guided (RF) missiles were introduced as well, but early examples proved unreliable. These semi-active radar homing (SARH) missiles could track and intercept an enemy aircraft "painted" by the launching aircraft's onboard radar. Medium- and long-range RF air-to-air missiles promised to open up a new dimension of "beyond-visual-range" (BVR) combat, and much effort concentrated on further development of this technology.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The prospect of a potential third world war featuring large mechanized armies and nuclear-weapon strikes led to a degree of specialization along two design approaches: interceptors, such as the English Electric Lightning and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21F; and fighter-bombers, such as the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the Sukhoi Su-7B. Dogfighting, "per se", became de-emphasized in both cases. The interceptor was an outgrowth of the vision that guided missiles would completely replace guns and combat would take place at beyond-visual ranges. As a result, strategists designed interceptors with a large missile-payload and a powerful radar, sacrificing agility in favor of high speed, altitude ceiling and rate of climb. With a primary air-defense role, emphasis was placed on the ability to intercept strategic bombers flying at high altitudes. Specialized point-defense interceptors often had limited range and few, if any, ground-attack capabilities. Fighter-bombers could swing between air-superiority and ground-attack roles, and were often designed for a high-speed, low-altitude dash to deliver their ordnance. Television- and IR-guided air-to-surface missiles were introduced to augment traditional gravity bombs, and some were also equipped to deliver a nuclear bomb.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The third generation witnessed continued maturation of second-generation innovations, but it is most marked by renewed emphases on maneuverability and on traditional ground-attack capabilities. Over the course of the 1960s, increasing combat experience with guided missiles demonstrated that combat would devolve into close-in dogfights. Analog avionics began to appear, replacing older "steam-gauge" cockpit instrumentation. Enhancements to the aerodynamic performance of third-generation fighters included flight control surfaces such as canards, powered slats, and blown flaps. A number of technologies would be tried for vertical/short takeoff and landing, but thrust vectoring would be successful on the Harrier.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Growth in air-combat capability focused on the introduction of improved air-to-air missiles, radar systems, and other avionics. While guns remained standard equipment (early models of F-4 being a notable exception), air-to-air missiles became the primary weapons for air-superiority fighters, which employed more sophisticated radars and medium-range RF AAMs to achieve greater "stand-off" ranges, however, kill probabilities proved unexpectedly low for RF missiles due to poor reliability and improved electronic countermeasures (ECM) for spoofing radar seekers. Infrared-homing AAMs saw their fields of view expand to 45°, which strengthened their tactical usability. Nevertheless, the low dogfight loss-exchange ratios experienced by American fighters in the skies over Vietnam led the U.S. Navy to establish its famous "TOPGUN" fighter-weapons school, which provided a graduate-level curriculum to train fleet fighter-pilots in advanced Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) and Dissimilar air combat training (DACT) tactics and techniques.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: This era also saw an expansion in ground-attack capabilities, principally in guided missiles, and witnessed the introduction of the first truly effective avionics for enhanced ground attack, including terrain-avoidance systems. Air-to-surface missiles (ASM) equipped with electro-optical (E-O) contrast seekers – such as the initial model of the widely used AGM-65 Maverick – became standard weapons, and laser-guided bombs (LGBs) became widespread in an effort to improve precision-attack capabilities. Guidance for such precision-guided munitions (PGM) was provided by externally-mounted targeting pods, which were introduced in the mid-1960s.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The third generation also led to the development of new automatic-fire weapons, primarily chain-guns that use an electric motor to drive the mechanism of a cannon. This allowed a plane to carry a single multi-barrel weapon (such as the Vulcan), and provided greater accuracy and rates of fire. Powerplant reliability increased, and jet engines became "smokeless" to make it harder to sight aircraft at long distances.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Dedicated ground-attack aircraft (like the Grumman A-6 Intruder, SEPECAT Jaguar and LTV A-7 Corsair II) offered longer range, more sophisticated night-attack systems or lower cost than supersonic fighters. With variable-geometry wings, the supersonic F-111 introduced the Pratt & Whitney TF30, the first turbofan equipped with afterburner. The ambitious project sought to create a versatile common fighter for many roles and services. It would serve well as an all-weather bomber, but lacked the performance to defeat other fighters. The McDonnell F-4 Phantom was designed to capitalize on radar and missile technology as an all-weather interceptor, but emerged as a versatile strike-bomber nimble enough to prevail in air combat, adopted by the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Despite numerous shortcomings that would be not be fully addressed until newer fighters, the Phantom claimed 280 aerial kills (more than any other U.S. fighter) over Vietnam. With range and payload capabilities that rivaled that of World War II bombers such as B-24 Liberator, the Phantom would become a highly successful multirole aircraft.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Fourth-generation fighters continued the trend towards multirole configurations, and were equipped with increasingly sophisticated avionics- and weapon-systems. Fighter designs were significantly influenced by the Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory developed by Colonel John Boyd and mathematician Thomas Christie, based upon Boyd's combat experience in the Korean War and as a fighter-tactics instructor during the 1960s. E-M theory emphasized the value of aircraft-specific energy maintenance as an advantage in fighter combat. Boyd perceived maneuverability as the primary means of getting "inside" an adversary's decision-making cycle, a process Boyd called the "OODA loop" (for "Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action"). This approach emphasized aircraft designs capable of performing "fast transients" – quick changes in speed, altitude, and direction – as opposed to relying chiefly on high speed alone.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: E-M characteristics were first applied to the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, but Boyd and his supporters believed these performance parameters called for a small, lightweight aircraft with a larger, higher-lift wing. The small size would minimize drag and increase the thrust-to-weight ratio, while the larger wing would minimize wing loading; while the reduced wing loading tends to lower top speed and can cut range, it increases payload capacity and the range reduction can be compensated for by increased fuel in the larger wing. The efforts of Boyd's "Fighter mafia" would result in the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon (now Lockheed Martin's).


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The F-16's maneuverability was further enhanced by its slight aerodynamic instability. This technique, called "relaxed static stability" (RSS), was made possible by introduction of the "fly-by-wire" (FBW) flight-control system (FLCS), which in turn was enabled by advances in computers and in system-integration techniques. Analog avionics, required to enable FBW operations, became a fundamental requirement, but began to be replaced by digital flight-control systems in the latter half of the 1980s. Likewise, Full Authority Digital Engine Controls (FADEC) to electronically manage powerplant performance was introduced with the Pratt & Whitney F100 turbofan. The F-16's sole reliance on electronics and wires to relay flight commands, instead of the usual cables and mechanical linkage controls, earned it the sobriquet of "the electric jet". Electronic FLCS and FADEC quickly became essential components of all subsequent fighter designs.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Other innovative technologies introduced in fourth-generation fighters included pulse-Doppler fire-control radars (providing a "look-down/shoot-down" capability), head-up displays (HUD), "hands on throttle-and-stick" (HOTAS) controls, and multi-function displays (MFD), all essential equipment . Aircraft designers began to incorporate composite materials in the form of bonded-aluminum honeycomb structural elements and graphite epoxy laminate skins to reduce weight. Infrared search-and-track (IRST) sensors became widespread for air-to-ground weapons delivery, and appeared for air-to-air combat as well. "All-aspect" IR AAM became standard air superiority weapons, which permitted engagement of enemy aircraft from any angle (although the field of view remained relatively limited). The first long-range active-radar-homing RF AAM entered service with the AIM-54 Phoenix, which solely equipped the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, one of the few variable-sweep-wing fighter designs to enter production. Even with the tremendous advancement of air-to-air missiles in this era, internal guns were standard equipment.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Another revolution came in the form of a stronger reliance on ease of maintenance, which led to standardization of parts, reductions in the numbers of access panels and lubrication points, and overall parts reduction in more complicated equipment like the engines. Some early jet fighters required 50 man-hours of work by a ground crew for every hour the aircraft was in the air; later models substantially reduced this to allow faster turn-around times and more sorties in a day. Some modern military aircraft only require 10-man-hours of work per hour of flight time, and others are even more efficient.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Aerodynamic innovations included variable-camber wings and exploitation of the vortex lift effect to achieve higher angles of attack through the addition of leading-edge extension devices such as strakes.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Unlike interceptors of the previous eras, most fourth-generation air-superiority fighters were designed to be agile dogfighters (although the Mikoyan MiG-31 and Panavia Tornado ADV are notable exceptions). The continually rising cost of fighters, however, continued to emphasize the value of multirole fighters. The need for both types of fighters led to the "high/low mix" concept, which envisioned a high-capability and high-cost core of dedicated air-superiority fighters (like the F-15 and Su-27) supplemented by a larger contingent of lower-cost multi-role fighters (such as the F-16 and MiG-29).


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Most fourth-generation fighters, such as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, HAL Tejas, JF-17 and Dassault Mirage 2000, are true multirole warplanes, designed as such from the start. This was facilitated by multimode avionics that could switch seamlessly between air and ground modes. The earlier approaches of adding on strike capabilities or designing separate models specialized for different roles generally became "passé" (with the Panavia Tornado being an exception in this regard). Attack roles were generally assigned to dedicated ground-attack aircraft such as the Sukhoi Su-25 and the A-10 Thunderbolt II.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: A typical US Air Force fighter wing of the period might contain a mix of one air superiority squadron (F-15C), one strike fighter squadron (F-15E), and two multirole fighter squadrons (F-16C).


title: Fighter aircraft

text: Perhaps the most novel technology introduced for combat aircraft was "stealth", which involves the use of special "low-observable" (L-O) materials and design techniques to reduce the susceptibility of an aircraft to detection by the enemy's sensor systems, particularly radars. The first stealth aircraft introduced were the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft (introduced in 1983) and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bomber (first flew in 1989). Although no stealthy fighters per se appeared among the fourth generation, some radar-absorbent coatings and other L-O treatments developed for these programs are reported to have been subsequently applied to fourth-generation fighters.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The end of the Cold War in 1992 led many governments to significantly decrease military spending as a "peace dividend". Air force inventories were cut. Research and development programs working on "fifth-generation" fighters took serious hits. Many programs were canceled during the first half of the 1990s, and those that survived were "stretched out". While the practice of slowing the pace of development reduces annual investment expenses, it comes at the penalty of increased overall program and unit costs over the long-term. In this instance, however, it also permitted designers to make use of the tremendous achievements being made in the fields of computers, avionics and other flight electronics, which had become possible largely due to the advances made in microchip and semiconductor technologies in the 1980s and 1990s. This opportunity enabled designers to develop fourth-generation designs – or redesigns – with significantly enhanced capabilities. These improved designs have become known as "Generation 4.5" fighters, recognizing their intermediate nature between the 4th and 5th generations, and their contribution in furthering development of individual fifth-generation technologies.


title: Fighter aircraft

text: The primary characteristics of this sub-generation are the application of advanced digital avionics and aerospace materials, modest signature reduction (primarily RF "stealth"), and highly integrated systems and weapons. These fighters have been designed to operate in a "network-centric" battlefield environment and are principally multirole aircraft. Key weapons technologies introduced include beyond-visual-range (BVR) AAMs; Global Positioning System (GPS)–guided weapons, solid-state phased-array radars; helmet-mounted sights; and improved secure, jamming-resistant datalinks. Thrust vectoring to further improve transient maneuvering capabilities has also been adopted by many 4.5th generation fighters, and uprated powerplants have enabled some designs to achieve a degree of "supercruise" ability. Stealth characteristics are focused primarily on frontal-aspect radar cross section (RCS) signature-reduction techniques including radar-absorbent materials (RAM), L-O coatings and limited shaping techniques.