How are American (or Western) fighter jets named?

Question

I would think that the f-14 came out - then the f-16 - the f 18 - f 22 and so forth.

Is this how it works? In sequential order?

Thank you.

Answer 1

By the way, P on the WWII and early Korean war aircraft stood for pursuit.

Pursuit was the role that aircraft filled when accompanying bombers. They were the ones that 'pursued' enemy fighters attacking the formation.

The role of those aircraft changed when the focus of air-to-air shifted from protecting large bomber formations in WWII to the air superiority role in Korea

Examples of the change were the famous P-51 Mustang which became the F-51, and the P-80 Shooting Star which became the F-80 during the Korean Conflict

Answer 2

The "F" stands for fighter....So we have the F-16, and then the "B" in B-17 stands for bomber and so on..

Answer 3

yes, it's in sequential order. some numbers are skipped due to prototype aircraft. for example, the F-16 competed with the YF-17 (which was later used as the base for the F-18)

Answer 4

As the other guys already said.

You can also check out http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/s...

to know each designation :)

Answer 5

it is just like.........a then b then c then d then e..........

Answer 6

During the WW2, American fighters were designated with "P" (such as P-51, P-47, P-80). During the Truman's term, in 1947, P was replaced with "F" which stands for Fighter.  

Initially, in the beginning, it was not US Airforce designating numbers, but it was aircraft companies. Companies such as Lockheed or McDonnell Douglas had there project number of the plane, then the US Airforce simply put "F" infront of it when the aircraft enters the service.

First F series fighters were started from 100. It is called Century Series because they had designation such as F-100, F-101, and so on.  It was because North American Corp. had their model designated model YP-100 and when it entered the service, it became F-100.  Subsequently, all aircraft that entered services subsequently from Lockheed and MD, kind of followed suit and named their aircraft 101, 102, 103 and so on.  And Century Series was born.

In 1954, McDonnell Douglas began a new project that was intended for Navy.  US Navy had designation starting from F-1, F-2, and 3 and so on. When McDonnell Douglas F-4, US Airforce picked it up first. So F-7 and F-8 is what followed for US Navy.

So in 1970's, both Navy and US Airforce decided to consolidate the aircraft development by the companies and the "Teen Series" was born.  The first "Teen Series" was F-14 that entered service in early 70's.  F10 was a testbed, and 11, 12 did not meet the military requirement until F-15 and F-16 showed up.  F-17 changed to today's F/A-18, and F19 was stealth concept aircraft that became F-117.

On side note, US Airforce still kept the Century Series designations thus they still had F-111 and F-117.  

Attack aircraft has designation A...and that is whole another story that dates back to MacArthur's time.  There are lot of sidestories to aircraft's names in the US Airforce and Navy that is very interesting.  

Hope that helps.  

Answer 7

They are named in sequential order by the number of accepted prototypes and actual production aircraft throughout all of the military (since the unified naming system began). If you do a web search you can learn about the inbetween numbers for the prototypes. Some of the more interesting ones are the F-20, YF-32 and the YF-23. This system is sometimes not followed (F-117 for example), however in general the sequential numbering system is followed.