Interesting facts about fighter jets

Fighter jets are massive. Seriously, everybody imagines them being the size of cars in their heads, but even small ones could have twenty men standing on their wings easily. The F-16 in this picture is about as small as they come.

Fighter jets don’t dogfight anymore. Barring a major mess-up, fighter jets are designed to kill each-other from as far as a hundred miles away, without ever physically seeing each-other, and this has been the case for about four decades now.

Most fighter aircraft are capable of exceeding the speed of sound by more than two times, but in combat rarely ever do so even by one time, as it is incredibly fuel inefficient and cuts into their range significantly.

There are no fighter jets deployed by any nation which can only attack airplanes; every single one, including the F-22 and F-15C (perhaps the most pure air-superiority craft flying, the Israelis bombed some stuff with them), is equipped to attack ground targets as well.

Modern fighters like the F-35 and EF-2000 can fire missiles behind them and at extreme angles as long as the pilot can see the target. On the F-35 specifically, he/she can also see through the plane thanks to their helmet mounted display (HMD) and an array of cameras all around the aircraft.

In certain configurations (no external fuel tanks or bombs), most fighter jets can turn hard enough to kill the pilots flying them and sustain that turn until they run out of fuel. Some, without software limiting pilot’s actions, can rip off their own wings at certain speeds if they turn hard enough.

Modern ejection seats can allow pilots to eject upside down at altitudes as low as 100 feet and still survive.