Fuck: HiMAT
Not an X-plane, but deserves to be here for how wacky it was. A supersonic unmanned testbed for a whole range of stuff for future fighter aircraft, back when the concept of 5th-gen was in its infancy and pre-ATF studies focused on maneuverability over stealth. I love it and anything like it.
Bonus points for the original mockup having a screwy rectangular 2D thrust-vectoring nozzle
Marry: F-16XL
The plane that lost to the Strike Eagle. While I like the Mudhen, and agree it was the better choice, the F-16XL could do most of what it did and look sexy while doing it. Look at her. Look at that cranked arrow delta wing. Has there ever been a sexier planform? Infinitely better looking than the vanilla viper. She can be a bomb truck, a missile truck, a NASA testbed, truly a jack of all trades. Men. Get you a F-16XL for a wife. There’s nothing on the books saying you can’t marry a jet.
Kill: X-33
Hogged all that dev-time and money and killed any and all political will for a serious, reusable replacement to the space shuttle not named Falcon 9. Will, despite looking cool as hell, earn my undying hatred. Can we please just swallow our pride and start building TSTO spaceplanes instead?
Saab 210 Lilldraken
He’s literally a lil’ Draken
Boeing X-32
heehoohaahahahaheeehehehehehehoooohohoho
Kaman K-16
Okay. Who at Kaman was high when they proposed this, and who was higher when they accepted the proposal
Rockwell XFV-12
My horrible, useless, incapable of VTOL son. Look at him.
Yak-141 “Freestyle”
Mr. President. We have a badass supersonic VTOL fighter gap with the Russians. We must buy the patents off Yakovlev and develop the F-35.
(Did you know they proposed a stealth derivative of this thing, the Yak-201, at one point?)
X-29
Forwards swept wings good. Impractical, but good.
