PUBLISHED on August 8, 2025, 1:38 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary – The Advanced Tactical Fighter competition of the early 1990s pitted the Northrop YF-23 against the Lockheed YF-22.
While historical analysis suggests the YF-23 was faster and stealthier, the YF-22 was more maneuverable and won the contract, eventually becoming the F-22 Raptor.
A digital combat simulation by “Growling Sidewinder” speculatively pits the two jets against each other.
The simulated dogfights show the aircraft to be very evenly matched, suggesting that either prototype would have been an exceptional choice for the U.S. Air Force, making the original decision one of the closest in aviation history.
YF-23 vs. F-22 Raptor: Who Would Have Won a Fight?
It was the end of the Cold War, and President Ronald Reagan was in office and soon to be replaced by then Vice President George HW Bush. The F-117 Nighthawk was in service as a stealth fighter-bomber that headlined the 1980s. The F-117 had historic flights that helped usher in (along with the B-2 Spirit) the exciting era of airplanes with radar evasion capabilities. But the U.S Air Force wasn’t satisfied. The service branch sought a fast, stealthy interceptor and multi-role airplane to replace the F-15 Eagle, a vaunted workhorse that had sustained no combat losses throughout its distinguished history.
The Air Force Instigated a Fly-off Competition
So, the Air Force created the Advanced Tactical Fighter program. This would pit prototypes called the YF-23 and YF-22 in a head-to-head matchup. The airplanes would not only have stealth technology, but they would need better avionics and flight controls to compete with and overtake the Soviet Su-27s and MiG-29s. Those warbirds were not stealthy, but the Air Force worried that the F-15 would eventually be outclassed with improvements to those platforms in future years.
Who Won the Advanced Tactical Fighter Competition?
The Advanced Tactical Fighter program revealed that the YF-23 was stealthier and faster, but the YF-22 was more maneuverable. The YF-22 executed a more robust flight plan with more sorties flown, and it showed off its agility better in testing and evaluation. The Air Force eventually went with the YF-22 that became the F-22 Raptor.
Take a Test Drive on a Video Dogfight Simulator
Just for the sake of a fun exercise, I checked out a YouTube video about the Advanced Tactical Fighter program that featured a notional look at how the YF-23 “Black Widow II” would have flown against the current F-22 Raptor in a mythical dogfight. However, this is not a conventional series of clips. It is a recreation of an animated digital combat simulator developed by “Growling Sidewinder.” You can watch it above.
What Do You See First?
The first thing you see in the simulator is a cockpit view with a head-up display and other controls. The simulator shows you flying in combat mode. The voice-over “pilot” explained and showed how the F-22 is more agile than the YF-23. Still, the F-22 has better stealth, he said, which is similar to what the testers and evaluators determined during the real competition decades ago. Our notional aviator also displayed the F-22’s superior speed.
I Can’t Take the Suspense
I have to admit that the video simulation made me dizzy.
I’m an infantry grunt, and the only airtime I spent was in a C-130 and various helicopters. I’m not made for in-air high-performance and high-G supersonic flight, even when watching an animated simulator. The maneuvers our pilot executed made my head spin.
Plus, the two airplanes almost collided at one point, which made me exclaim, “Whoa!” and alarm my office mate while writing this article.
In the dogfight in the video simulation, our F-22 pilot said he had the advantage against the YF-23. And he quickly overtook the enemy AI fighter in a high-speed maneuver that forced the Black Widow II to cross his face. The pilot switched to guns and destroyed the YF-23. It spun out of control, crashed, and burned.
Our pilot said something interesting about the original competition. He stated that the YF-22 (F-22) had more potential to become a “navalized version.” That meant aircraft carriers would have featured a stealth warbird years before the F-35C was placed into active duty with the Navy and Marine Corps.
The pilot took the F-22 for another spin in round two. Again, my head was hurting, and I felt some dizziness. I know. You’re saying that I made the right decision in not serving as a pilot or even a co-pilot in the Air Force.
But round two had a different outcome. The YF-23 shot a missile at the rear of the F-22 and hit paydirt. Our notional aviator had to eject from the F-22 as it spun to destruction and hit the ground in a ball of flames. That part looked realistic, too.
You can watch the other two rounds to see for yourself which airplane was better. The digital combat simulator gives us an idea of how the airplanes stack up. It seems to me they were evenly matched. The Air Force probably would not have gone wrong had it picked the Black Widow II and made it into the F-23 for full-time duty. The testers had a difficult choice to make, and they went with the YF-22 after the evaluation period.
Fortunately, they did not try dogfighting with real weapons. That would have been disastrous. But it is fun to see the digital combat simulator put these airplanes through their paces. We will never know how the YF-23 would have fared had it won the competition. But this could go down as one of the closest fly-offs in Air Force history, and time will tell if the F-22 Raptor was the right choice.
About the Author: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood
Brent M. Eastwood, PhD is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.
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