YF-23 Black Widow: introducing the Air Force's fun-to-fly Stealth Fighter

Stealth wasn’t the only metric where the YF-23 outperformed the YF-22, of what is now known as the F-22 Raptor. The YF-22 also proved to have a better range than the YF-22.Amongst aviation enthusiasts, one Northrop Grumman airframe has earned a legend-like status as much for the jet’s performance as for the fact that only two prototypes were ever made before the program was disbanded. The airframe was the YF-23, which lost the Advanced Tactical Fighter ATF bid to Lockheed’s YF-22.

As the Cold War climaxed through the 1980s, Reagan’s government participated in an arms race with the Soviet Union, who, unbeknownst to the Americans, was on the verge of exhaustion and collapse. The US, proceeding as if the Soviet threat was still entirely robust and virile, committed to further advancing existing aerospace technology.