The North American XF-108 Rapier was a proposed long-range, high-speed interceptor aircraft designed by North American Aviation intended to defend the United States from supersonic Soviet strategic bombers.

2021年7月5日 · The XF-108 was shaping up to be a truly deadly aircraft, and one of the most advanced of the era. However, it never got to fly, as it was one of the many victims of the intercontinental ballistic missile.

The North American F-108 Rapier, designed in response to a U.S. Air Force preliminary study of Oct. 11, 1955, was going to be the heaviest fighter of its era, weighing even more than the Soviet Union’s huge Tupolev Tu-128 “Fiddler.”

2021年7月26日 · Characterized by very long range and capable of delivering a nuclear payload, the Soviet bomber threat was used by the United States Air Force as justification for quite a few interceptor aircraft...

2021年4月18日 · The USAF Air Defense Command had planned to procure as many as 420 F-108 Rapiers to equip fighter-interceptor squadrons located at bases best suited to protect the US borders.

2020年7月7日 · They XF-108 would have to fly fast and high—about 60,000 feet, at a minimum speed of Mach 1.7—all while having at least a 1,000 mile range. As an interceptor, the XF-108 would have to be able...

2020年2月7日 · The XF-108A was the largest American fighter design ever conceived up to that time (e.g., double the weight of the contemporaneous McDonnell F4H/F-4 being developed for the Navy and Marine Corps).

2022年5月20日 · It was a proposed long-range, high-speed interceptor aircraft that was intended to use as the United States’ protection against the threat of supersonic Soviet strategic …

2019年4月26日 · In 1957, North American Aviation won a contract to develop the XF-108, a two-man interceptor capable of Mach 3 speed, a thousand-mile range and a maximum altitude of seventy thousand feet.

2024年8月30日 · One of the most interesting was the XF-108 Rapier. North American Aviation received the development contract in 1957 for this two-man interceptor, whose performance design called for Mach 3, a thousand-mile range, and an altitude of seventy thousand feet.