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Type of aircraft
Fighter
Country The Netherlands-US
Date 1965. drawing, not build
Fokker D-24 Alliance

Fokker D.24

Fokker D.24

Proposal VTOL fighter


The D-24 Alliance was a 1965 proposal for a NATO VTOL fighter that Fokker intended to develop with Republic.

There is a model of the aircraft in the Netherlands Air Museum in Lelystad.

The D-24 would have been somewhat akin to the Republic XF-103, though slower. It would have had a range of 3,000 miles at Mach 1.5, and an internal weapons carriage of multiple long-range air-to-air missiles. It was intended to defeat the atmospheric threat — high performance, cruise-missile launching bombers. It would feature autonomous sensing, so there would have been no dependence on AWACS, nor on aerial refuelling

It was proposed that the vectored-thrust Bristol Siddeley BS.100/3 with a thrust potential of 17500kg be used by the Alliance, with plenum chamber burning in the two forward swiveling nozzles,

and it was calculated that VTO weight with 2270kg useful military load would be of the order 15,875kg while STO weight would rise to 20,400kg or more.

Anticipated performance included M=1.25 capability at 150m rising to M=2.4 at altitude, with service ceiling topping 21,335m.

The joint Fokker-Republic Project Division at Schipol was headed by Alexander Wadkowsky of Republic Aviation, but the NBMR-3 requirement proved contentious from the outset, inspiring much antagonism, both nationalistic and between competing companies, with the result that this highly ambitious and perhaps too far-sighted program drifted to its demise.

Republic Aviation submitted a broadly similar project to that of the Alliance in the USN's VAX attack aircraft contest, but failed to find favor.