The term penetration fighter has been used to describe a long-range

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

designed to penetrate enemy air defences and attack defensive

interceptors An interceptor aircraft, or simply interceptor, is a type of fighter aircraft designed specifically for the defensive interception role against an attacking enemy aircraft, particularly bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. Aircraft that are cap ...

. The concept is similar to the

escort fighter The escort fighter was a concept for a fighter aircraft designed to escort bombers to and from their targets. An escort fighter needed range long enough to reach the target, loiter over it for the duration of the raid to defend the bombers, and ...

, but differs primarily in that the aircraft would not operate in close concert with

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircr ...

s. Both types are sub-classes of the

strategic fighter A strategic fighter is a fast, well-armed and long-range fighter aircraft, capable of fulfilling roles such as that of an escort fighter protecting bombers, a penetration fighter carrying out offensive sorties of its own far into enemy territor ...

. The same general mission is also carried out by intruders, but these are generally

night fighter A night fighter (also known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor for a period of time after the Second World War) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility. Night fighters began to be used i ...

s or

light bomber A light bomber is a relatively small and fast type of military bomber aircraft that was primarily employed before the 1950s. Such aircraft would typically not carry more than one ton of ordnance. The earliest light bombers were intended to d ...

s that do not have the air combat performance of this concept. The presence of the

North American P-51 Mustang The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang is an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II and the Korean War, among other conflicts. The Mustang was designed in April 1940 by a team headed by James ...

above Germany allowed

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

bombers to fly at will over the country, and is considered one of the turning points of the air war. In the post-war period, the development of jet-powered

strategic bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, ...

s made this role difficult to fill; aircraft with performance to protect the bombers had very short range, and those with the range were propeller designs that could not keep up. The desire for a fighter that could penetrate enemy airspace along with the bombers led to several prototype designs in the early 1950s, including the

McDonnell XF-88 Voodoo The McDonnell XF-88 Voodoo was a long-range, twinjet fighter aircraft with swept wings designed for the United States Air Force. Although it never entered production, its design was adapted for the subsequent supersonic F-101 Voodoo. Design and ...

, Lockheed XF-90 and

North American YF-93 The North American YF-93 was an American fighter development of the F-86 Sabre that emerged as a radically different variant that received its own designation. Two were built and flown before the project was eventually canceled. Design and de ...

. In order to be competitive with existing interceptors, these had to be jet powered. The XF-88 was developed into the

F-101 Voodoo The McDonnell F-101 Voodoo is a supersonic jet fighter which served the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). Initially designed by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation as a long-range bomber escort (known as a ' ...

supersonic penetration fighter-bomber. The

North American XF-108 Rapier 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. The aircraft would have cruised at ...

project was for a long-range interceptor intended to launch from the continental United States and intercept Soviet bombers while still in the far

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...

. This long range meant that if they were launched from forward bases in Europe, Turkey or Alaska, the F-108 would be able to travel a fair distance over the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and help disrupt the defences for the following

North American XB-70 The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie was the prototype version of the planned B-70 nuclear-armed, deep-penetration supersonic strategic bomber for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command. Designed in the late 1950s by North Ame ...

bombers. The F-108 was ultimately cancelled in budget cuts."Fact Sheet: North American F-108A Rapier"
, National Museum of the United States Air Force

References

{{Military aircraft types (roles) Fighter aircraft

See also

References