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Lockheed Martin pitches a new fighter to India: What exactly is the F-21?

February 21, 2019
Alex Hollings No Comments Military Aviation, News

India recently announced that they’re on the market for 110 new fighter jets, and they’re willing to fork over more than $15 billion to get them. Naturally this has prompted a great deal of interest from aircraft manufacturers throughout the world. One such manufacturer, America’s Lockheed Martin, has approached the table with a “brand new” fighter they’ve dubbed the F-21, a platform they claim will help bridge the gap between fourth- and fifth-generation fighter platforms for India while serving as a stepping stone leading to new defense technologies in the future.

It may come as a surprise to many that Lockheed Martin, the same company responsible for producing both of the world’s premier fifth-generation platforms—the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—would be eagerly pushing a brand new fourth-generation platform. For most Americans, though, the F-21 will probably look awfully familiar—and not just because ATAC already produces an F-21 for U.S. service.

Lockheed Martin’s F-21 appears to be the next iteration of their Block 70 F-16, first unveiled in 2015. At the time, they pitched that platform to India and others as “the most advanced fourth-generation fighter on the planet” thanks to a wide array of updates and upgrades fitted throughout the aircraft, including upgraded avionics, radar, ground avoidance systems, and pilot interface.

Proposed F-21 (left) and U.S. Air Force F-16 (right)

Among the most prominent upgrades the Block 70 F-16 boasted was the addition of APG-83 AESA radar, which has the capability to track up to 20 different targets simultaneously and provides the pilot with a far more developed level of situational awareness than can be found in many more dated fourth-generation platforms. The F-21, which would boast the same systems, would leverage the Block 70’s data fusion capabilities in a way that approximates what we’ve come to expect from fifth-generation fighters like the F-35.

In many older F-16 platforms, pilots must rely on multiple screens dedicated to different systems, and then combine the information provided to them to develop a mental picture of the battlespace they’re occupying. This is especially challenging for newer pilots, as the systems can sometimes provide contradictory information. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, on the other hand, fuses all of those (and other) feeds into a single data feed that is relayed to pilots via two large touchscreens and an augmented-reality helmet. Enemy aircraft simply appear in the pilot’s vision with diamonds around them and pertinent data displayed alongside, for instance, and ground targets shown with triangles.

The F-21 would almost certainly not offer the same degree of data fusion and helmet interface (the F-35’s helmets alone cost more than $400,000 each), but it would leverage advances in data fusion technology to make the F-16 better equipped to not only locate and identify enemy aircraft, but to provide the F-21 pilot with the awareness they need to intercept, carrying the right speed and approach angle at the merge to carry an advantage into a dogfight with other fourth-generation jets.

Lockheed Martin

Based on Lockheed’s proposal video, it appears that data fusion would be represented in a HUD (heads-up display) as well as on a large cockpit screen, marking one of several significant departures from the aforementioned Block 70 F-16. The conformal fuel tanks high on the aircraft’s fuselage may make for the most dramatic visual difference between the F-21 and the F-16s Americans have grown accustomed to seeing, though they were also present on the Block 70 F-16.

Lockheed faces some stiff competition in the battle for India’s contract, including Russia’s acrobatic Su-35 and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet (though it remains unclear whether Boeing is pitching a Block II or Block III variant).

Watch Lockheed Martin’s F-21 proposal video below:

 

About the Author

Alex Hollings Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master's degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

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