F-16XL Fighter Had 27 Hardpoints and Could Carry Twice the Payload of a Standard F-16 But Lost the Competition to the F-15E

F-16XL Fighter Had 27 Hardpoints and Could Carry Twice the Payload of a Standard F-16 But Lost the Competition to the F-15E

General Dynamics took the lightweight F-16, gave it a cranked-arrow delta wing with 120 percent more area, raised the hardpoint count from 9 to 27 and doubled the payload. It was designed to cross Warsaw Pact airspace carrying bombs, missiles and its own fuel without tankers. The US Air Force chose McDonnell Douglas's twin-engined, two-seat F-15E Strike Eagle instead, and the F-16XL prototypes went to NASA.