Talk:List of fighter aircraft

Aircraft Status
Most retired aircraft have their status listed as "production", despite their production ending several decades ago. Even on this talk page, in the instructions for adding to the page, the statuses that are recommended for use have seemingly been completely ignored, in favour of these nonsensical ones. Is there an underlying reason or is it just incompetence? PeenikePorgand (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

F-117
Any reason why the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is not included on this list? 187.56.60.118 (talk) 06:25, 6 November 2023 (UTC)


 * And also the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II 187.56.60.118 (talk) 18:56, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Re-working lead
@Geardona, thank you for the edit to this article. Can you please explain the philosophy behind your changes. I will so long explain why I feel some changes should be reverted.

Is there a reason you removed the qualifier that this list does not include abandoned concepts and fictional aircraft? I did not check the list in the same way the initial writers did, so I feel it is important to retain that limit to the scope of the list. It will also guide future editors what to not add.

However, the list DOES include Multirole combat aircraft like the F-35. As the list stands here, there is no easy way to group it by generation yet.

There are a few terms that are potentially confusing to international readers: “Air Combat” could, theoretically, include any attack done from, or towards, the air, while “Air-to-Air Combat” is much more specific and is etymologically self-explanatory.

Similarly, “Ground Attack Aircraft” is more specific than “Attack Aircraft”, even though all American military enthusiasts will understand the latter name to be only applicable to the former type of craft in the context of the US Airforce. We should write to include learners wanting to know more and not only for those who already know the jargon.

Finally: This is not a “proper” article, but a list, and I feel strongly that it should be identified as such in the introductory sentence. I suggest reworking the intro to:


 * This list of fighter aircraft is a list of military aircraft that are primarily designed for air-to-air combat. It does not include attack aircraft intended for different roles where they have some secondary air-to-air capability. These are included in separate lists of ground attack aircraft and bombers. This list does not include fictional aircraft or concepts that were abandoned before a prototype was built. In the US Airforce fighter aircraft are prefixed with "F-", followed by a number, ground attack aircraft are prefixed with “A-” and bombers with “B-”.

I do hope you find this in order. Regards Thermofan (talk) 11:30, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Thermofan That sounds alright, aside from THISISALIST that being my primary concern in reworking the list, while also maintaining the original criteria. The criteria is rather odd in both versions, when I get a bit more time later I will make an edition 2. Feel free to revert to the original or keep it in this way. attack aircraft is a type of aircraft used for ground attack, (I know super clear right?) but I don’t object to more specific definitions. Interesting about the multirole part, the prior lead seemed to indicate that they were excluded from the list. Geardona (talk to me?) 15:18, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Geardona, I see what you mean with Thisisalist. I tried hard to catch all the definitions while keeping it concise. I did not quickly find a list of trainer aircraft, some of which have been used as fighters over the years. Here we have about 1300 fighters in the list! The list of attack aircraft includes many military trainers and the list of bombers seem to include reconnaissance and transporter aircraft. Thank you for your response. Thermofan (talk) 09:42, 15 April 2024 (UTC)