#WE COULD HAVE HAD A RAPCAT

[thatsrightice]

You know that audio trending a while back going “Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Nononono, their names were supposed to be Jet, Turbo, and Rebel!” And then then one of them is like “I could have been Turbo???? I coULD HAVE BEEN TURBO??!?”

That’s me. Right now. Like literally just right now when I found out we could have had a

CARRIER-BASED

SWEPT-WING

NAVAL VARIANT OF THE

F-22 RAPTOR

J U S T L O O K A T H E R

The US CONGRESS literally went “hey, you should totally do that like we just made that Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter (NAFT) program for you in 1988 so you should def do it.” And in order to make it more appealing, they told the Air Force to evaluate the carrier-based stealth bomber as a potential replacement for their F-111, basically saying the Navy and Air Force would share development costs in theory as both branches could employ both variants or some shit because having an aircraft be multi-role is super appealing.

So thus the NATF-22 was created and very shortly thereafter crumbled up and thrown into the trash by an Admiral Richard Dunleavy as if it were nothing because it was (and I’m using a mocking tone of voice here) too expensive.

And for the record, I see no difference in how the rest of fighter jet history played out, we ended up with a multi-role fighter just as expensive. Like don’t get me wrong, I love the F-35 and it’s quirks like it’s not its fault it was brought up in a society with so much attention on it. The media outreach and coverage in todays world is unprecedented, like no aircraft has been scrutinized or so intensely studied and watched before her.

BUT WE COULD HAVE HAD A TOMCAT RAPTOR DUDE COME ONE

I imagine this program would have been Iceman’s BABY. He may not have been nearly high enough up in the chain at the time to have any knowledge of it let alone say in the matter, but you just know that when he found out what they could have had he was DEVASTATED. Full on, “WE COULD HAVE HAD A TOMCAT?!?!” moment right there. He mourned. He was inconsolable he straight up mourned his Rapcat. Or is it Tomtor?

And when the F-35 program rolled around you know he ain’t letting that happen again, with or without swept wings. He’s getting his F-35C.