Some crazy facts about fighter jets !

World’s leading distributor of MiG parts.

Because F-4 Phantom destroyed so many MiGs around the world in air to air combat, it is called World’s leading distributor of MiG parts. It had shot down 280 MiGs in different theaters of conflicts around the world.

SR-71 Blackbird

SR-71 Blackbird was so fast that during spy missions over enemy territory, if a surface to air missile was shot at it, the pilots just used to accelerate the aircraft and fly away without any evasive maneuvers. One pilot recorded speeds of over Mach 3.5 to evade a missile locked at his aircraft. Over 4,000 missiles were fired at it in its entire service history spanning over 3 decades. Not even single aircraft was hit.SR-71 Blackbird used to fly at a maximum service ceiling of 85,000 feet. It is the edge of our atmosphere & at that height, it begins transition into space. The pilots were specially trained & used to wear a special “Space suit” to keep themselves in livable conditions.The SR-71 needed a lot of titanium to build but the US simply didn’t have enough resources to build it. USSR on the other hand had abundance of titanium. But it was a cold war enemy from where the US couldn’t buy or sell directly. So what CIA did is establish a lot of fake companies across the world to purchase titanium from USSR & transport it to US to built the SR-71.US spied their number 1 cold war enemy with planes build out of their own metal.

Fly like a Raptor, look like a bumblebee.

This is a F-22 Raptor. A 19 meter long, 14 meter wide & 20 ton heavy 5th generation aircraft.Yet, when in air with all its weapons bays closed, the radar cross section of the Raptor is equivalent to that of a bumblebee. This is Insane.

The aircraft that shot itself.

This is F-11 Tiger, an aircraft used by the US Navy which during testing in 1956 shot itself. The F-11 pilot dropped its nose twenty degrees and pointed it at an empty spot of ocean. He fired a brief, four second burst from his four 20 mm cannon entered a steeper descent, and hit the afterburners. A minute later, the aircraft flew into its own stream of bullets, damaging the aircraft.

Although the rounds had a head start they slowed quickly due to drag passing through the surrounding air. The rounds decelerated, the Tiger accelerated, and the two reunited in the sky, with embarrassing consequences.

Bang for the buck ?

The program cost of F-35 Lightening II is equal to the 2019 GDP of Norway & is 7 times the cost of International Space Station. The aircraft itself has over 3,00,000 parts sourced from over 1,500 suppliers. Its avionics run on 8 million lines of codes, more than any other plane in the air.

Fighter with a toilet.

The Su-34 Fullback fighter-bomber was made with pilot comfort in mind. With its unusual large cockpit, pilots can actually leave their seats, stretch, lay down & move around. If that was not enough the Su-34 even has has a toilet where the pilots can “lighten their load”.