John Richard Boyd was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant during the second half of the 20th century. His theories have been highly influential in military, business, and litigation strategies and planning.
Paul Scott "Paco" Lockhart is an American aerospace engineer, retired United States Air Force colonel and NASA astronaut, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions.
Energy–maneuverability theory is a model of aircraft performance. It was developed by Col. John Boyd, a fighter pilot, and Thomas P. Christie, a mathematician with the United States Air Force, and is useful in describing an aircraft's performance as the total of kinetic and potential energies or aircraft specific energy. It relates the thrust, weight, aerodynamic drag, wing area, and other flight characteristics of an aircraft into a quantitative model. This allows combat capabilities of various aircraft or prospective design trade-offs to be predicted and compared.
Brigadier General Frank Kendall "Pete" Everest Jr. was a U.S. Air Force officer who is best remembered as an aeroengineer and test pilot during the 1950s.
The Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program was a United States Air Force technology evaluation program initiated in the late 1960s by a group of officers and defense analysts known as the "Fighter Mafia". It was spurred by then-Major John Boyd's 'energy-maneuverability' (E-M) theory, which indicated that excessive weight would have severely debilitating consequences on the maneuverability of an aircraft. Boyd's design called for a light-weight fighter with a high thrust-to-weight ratio, high maneuverability, and a gross weight of less than 20,000 lb (9,100 kg), half that of its counterpart, the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. It resulted in the development of the General Dynamics YF-16 and Northrop YF-17. Late in the program, in 1974, with the promise of European sales, the Air Force changed the program name to Air Combat Fighter (ACF), and committed to purchasing 650 models of the YF-16, adopted as the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The U.S. Navy adopted a modified version of the YF-17 as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.
The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an American non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) – the Systems and Analyses Center (SAC), the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), and the Center for Communications and Computing (C&C) – to assist the United States government in addressing national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise. It is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
Ralph Edward "Ed" Eberhart is a retired four-star general in the United States Air Force (USAF). He served as the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. He was in charge of NORAD during the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Lieutenant General Buster Cleveland Glosson was the deputy chief of staff for plans and operations at the headquarters of the United States Air Force (USAF) in Washington D.C. He was responsible to the secretary of the Air Force and chief of staff for the planning, operations, requirements and force structure necessary to support military operations. As the USAF operations deputy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he determined operational requirements, concepts, doctrine, strategy, training and the assets necessary to support national security objectives and military strategy.
The Fighter Mafia was a controversial group of United States Air Force officers and civilian defense analysts who, in the 1960s and 1970s, advocated for fighter design criteria in opposition to those of the design boards of the time, and the use of John Boyd and Thomas P. Christie's energy-maneuverability (E-M) theory in designing fighter aircraft. The Mafia influenced the specifications for the F-X Program and went on to independently develop specifications for the Light Weight Fighter (LWF). Mafia member Harry Hillaker designed the purely air superiority day fighter prototype YF-16, which won the LWF contest but then turned into the multi-role fighter-bomber F-16 Fighting Falcon. The group's nickname, a professional jest coined by Everest Riccioni, an Air Force member of Italian heritage, was a rejoinder to the "Bomber Mafia".
Christopher Joseph "Gus" Loria is a retired United States Marine Corps Colonel and a medically retired NASA astronaut. He was originally scheduled to fly on STS-113 as pilot; however, he was grounded from spaceflight due to a severe back injury.
Robert E. Kelley was a United States Air Force lieutenant general, the ninth Superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He retired as a lieutenant general on September 1, 1986.
Located at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center is a direct reporting unit of Headquarters, United States Air Force. It is the Air Force independent test agency responsible for testing, under operationally realistic conditions, new systems being developed for Air Force and multi-service use.
Charles Graham "Chuck" Boyd was a four-star general of the United States Air Force. Boyd was a highly decorated combat pilot who served in Vietnam and is the only Vietnam War prisoner of war (1966–1973) to reach the four-star rank (1992). His final Air Force assignment was as deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany. He retired from the Air Force in 1995 and remained active in the national security realm, including as a program director of the Council on Foreign Relations and as president of Business Executives for National Security. He was a member of the guiding coalition of the Project on National Security Reform.
General John Louis Piotrowski is a retired United States Air Force four-star general who served as Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force (VCSAF), from 1985 to 1987; and Commander in Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command/Commander in Chief, U.S. Space Command (CINCNORAD/USCINCSPACE), from 1987 to 1990.
The 53rd Test and Evaluation Group is a group of the United States Air Force. It is a part of the 53rd Wing, and is headquartered at Nellis AFB, Nevada.
Lieutenant General Clyde Dewey Moore II is a retired United States Air Force officer who served as Commander, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The organization is the single center responsible for total life cycle management covering all aircraft, engines, munitions, and electronic systems.
Charles Quinton Brown Jr. is a United States Air Force general who has served as the 21st chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since October 1, 2023. Prior to his appointment, Brown served as the 22nd chief of staff of the Air Force from 2020 to 2023. Brown entered the Air Force in 1984 and served as a fighter pilot, where he has logged over 3,000 flight hours, including 130 hours in combat. He has commanded the Pacific Air Forces, U.S. Air Forces Central Command, 31st Fighter Wing, 8th Fighter Wing, U.S. Air Force Weapons School, and 78th Fighter Squadron. He has also served as deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command.
Edward Randolph "Randy" Jayne II is an American retired government official, business executive, military officer, and combat pilot. During his career, he worked in the defense industry and served in the White House Office under three successive United States presidents. Prior to his business career, Jayne spent over ten years on active duty in the United States Air Force, including two tours as a fighter pilot in Southeast Asia. Jayne served in the Air National Guard and retiring after 34 years of service as a major general. From 2015 to 2017, he was chairman of the board of the US Air Force Academy Foundation, the fundraising organization for that institution. In 2019, Jayne was named an Outstanding Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, an honor bestowed as of that time on 41 alumni over the more than sixty years of the Academy's existence.
Pierre Michel Sprey was a record producer and defense analyst. Working with John Boyd and Thomas P. Christie at the Pentagon, he was associated with the self-dubbed 'Fighter Mafia', which advocated the use of energy–maneuverability theory in fighter jet design. Sprey claimed to be involved in the design of several military jets, including the F-16, A-10, and F-22. Notably, he was once a harsh critic of the F-22, despite later claiming to have designed it.
Howard Wesley Leaf was a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force. He served as a fighter pilot during the Korean War and Vietnam War and retired as assistant vice chief of staff at the Pentagon in 1984.
