The jet that had to be everything to everyone

What makes the F-111 special

Full specifications (F-111F)

Baseline note: the figures below describe the F-111F as Tactical Air Command flew it from the mid-1970s — two Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-100 afterburning turbofans, Triple Plow II intakes, the Mark IIB avionics suite, and from the early 1980s the AN/AVQ-26 Pave Tack pod on its rotating cradle in the weapons bay. Deltas for the F-111A, F-111D and F-111E, for the strategic FB-111A, for the Australian F-111C and for the EF-111A Raven conversion are given in grey. Five cautions apply before any number here is quoted. First, there is no such thing as "the" F-111: the A, D, E and F models differ in engines, intakes and avionics to a degree that would justify separate type numbers on almost any other aircraft, and the FB-111A and F-111C are structurally different aeroplanes again, with the longer F-111B wing and heavier undercarriage. Second, the weight rows genuinely disagree — the current Wikipedia specification block, drawn from Miller and Donald, prints 47,200 lb empty and a round 100,000 lb maximum take-off, while Joe Baugher prints 46,172 lb and 98,950 lb for the same variant, and the round number is almost certainly a rounded number rather than a measured one. Third, the 66,000 ft service ceiling in wide circulation is not credible as a sustained ceiling for a 45-tonne strike aircraft; Baugher’s 56,650 ft is the figure that matches the airframe, and the higher number is best read as a zoom altitude. Fourth, the wing area and aspect ratio rows are internally inconsistent in most sources, because 525 sq ft is the reference trapezoidal area used for both aspect ratios while 657.4 sq ft is the gross area at full spread. Fifth, every "range" figure printed for this type needs a qualifier: a 3,210 nautical mile ferry range with drop tanks and a 1,330 mile combat radius are not the same quantity, and they are routinely printed as though they were.

Armament & payload

The F-111 carried four Phantoms’ worth of bombs to a target at night, alone, and hardly ever fitted its gun

The F-111’s armament story is really a story about delivery rather than about weapons. Nothing it dropped was unique to it; almost everything it dropped had been dropped by something else first. What was unique was that a single F-111 could take the bomb load of four F-4 Phantoms to a defended target in cloud, at night, at 200 ft and 480 kn, without a tanker, without an escort, without a jamming aircraft and without a wingman, and be gone before anyone on the ground knew it had come. In Vietnam that meant sorties on nights when the entire rest of the theatre was weathered in. In Desert Storm it meant sixty-six aircraft — a fraction of the coalition’s strike force — dropping close to 80 per cent of the war’s laser-guided bombs.

The physical arrangement was awkward and stayed awkward. There is an internal weapons bay, but it is a small one: two 750 lb M117s, or one nuclear weapon, or the gun, or a fuel tank, or — on the F-111F and the Australian F-111C — the Pave Tack pod, which is what it was actually used for once precision arrived. There are eight underwing pylons, four of which pivot to stay aligned with the fuselage as the wing sweeps and four of which are fixed and therefore unusable above about 26° of sweep. Nothing can hang under the fuselage between the engines except a countermeasures or datalink pod. The advertised 31,500 lb of ordnance and the advertised Mach 2.5 are two different aeroplanes.

The gun is the strangest entry in the list. An M61A1 Vulcan with a 2,084-round tank could be installed in the weapons bay behind a fairing, and it very nearly never was. Squadrons preferred the bay for Pave Tack, for a tank, or for bombs, and a two-seat interdictor built for one blind pass at night has no business strafing anything. Sidewinders were carried on shoulder rails for self-defence and were never fired in anger by an F-111. The only air-to-air victory in the family’s history was won by an unarmed EF-111A jamming aircraft that manoeuvred an Iraqi Mirage F1 into the ground in January 1991. Stores clearances differed sharply between marks and between operators: the FB-111A alone carried the AGM-69 SRAM, the Australian F-111C alone carried Harpoon and Popeye, and the F-111D’s planned AIM-7G was cancelled in 1970 and never fitted to anything.

Sourcing caveat: stores lists for the F-111 vary by mark, by wing and by decade, and the published compilations copy one another. The weapons named here follow the current Wikipedia article, Bill Gunston’s Modern Fighting Aircraft volume and Joe Baugher’s serial-by-serial histories, cross-checked against the official Desert Storm and El Dorado Canyon accounts for the loadouts. The 31,500 lb maximum ordnance figure is a paper maximum that assumes the fixed outboard pylons are loaded and the wings kept near full forward; no operational sortie is known to have flown it.

Variants

One airframe for the Air Force and the Navy was McNamara’s idea, and it half-worked

The F-111 began as TFX, the Tactical Fighter Experimental, and TFX began as an accounting argument. Robert McNamara arrived at the Pentagon in January 1961 to find the Air Force wanting a supersonic low-level strike aircraft and the Navy wanting a long-endurance fleet air defence interceptor. Both wanted two seats, two engines and a swing wing. On 14 February 1961 McNamara directed them to study one aeroplane for both jobs; in June he ordered TFX ahead over the objections of both services. It was not an unreasonable instinct. It was, however, applied to two requirements that differed in almost every particular that matters: the USAF wanted 7.33 g, Mach 2.5 at altitude, Mach 1.2 on the deck and a 70 ft aircraft, while the Navy wanted 6 g, Mach 2, high subsonic at low level, a 56 ft aircraft to fit carrier lifts and a 48 in radar dish. McNamara split the differences by fiat — a 36 in dish, weight limits of about 60,000 lb for the Air Force and 55,000 lb for the Navy — and in November 1962 chose General Dynamics over Boeing, whose design the selection board had recommended four times, on the explicit ground that the General Dynamics proposal shared more structure between the two versions. Commonality was the whole point, and commonality is what killed the naval half.

The F-111B never had a chance. The escape capsule the Navy itself had asked for, the side-by-side seating it had insisted on and the structural margins the Air Force mission demanded added up to an interceptor far too heavy to operate from a deck. Seven were built. In March 1968 Vice Admiral Thomas Connolly, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare, was asked by Senator John Stennis whether a more powerful engine would fix it, and answered: "There isn’t enough power in all Christendom to make that airplane what we want!" Both armed services committees declined to fund production in May 1968 and the programme was stopped in July. The swing wing, the TF30 engines, the AWG-9 radar and the Phoenix missile all went straight into the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which did the job properly. That is the honest verdict on TFX: it produced one outstanding aeroplane and one dead end, and the outstanding one was the half that was never compromised.

Five hundred and sixty-three F-111s of all marks were built between 1964 and 1976. The unit price behaved as such programmes do — the Australians signed at US$5.21 million per aircraft with a cap at US$5.95 million and watched their programme cost rise from US$124.5 million to US$237.75 million by April 1967 — and the delivery delays became a political scandal in Canberra, where commentators nicknamed the aircraft the "Flying Opera House" after the other famous overrun of the day. Britain ordered fifty F-111Ks in February 1967 to replace the cancelled TSR-2 and cancelled them in January 1968 when devaluation pushed the price towards £3 million each; the components already built were absorbed into the FB-111A line. Nobody else ever bought one. Two air forces flew the type: the United States, and Australia.

F-111A (1967–69 / 159)

The initial production version: TF30-P-3 engines, Triple Plow I intakes, Mark I analogue avionics with the AN/APQ-113 attack radar and AN/APQ-110 terrain-following radar. Thirty of the 159 were pre-production airframes rebuilt to production standard. Forty-two later became EF-111As, four went to Australia as attrition replacements, three went to NASA, and the thirteenth aircraft became the Transonic Aircraft Technology and Advanced Fighter Technology Integration testbed with supercritical and mission-adaptive wings.

F-111B (1965–68 / 7, cancelled)

The naval fleet air defence version, built with Grumman, 8 ft 6 in shorter in the nose to fit carrier lifts and 3 ft 6 in longer in each wingtip for loiter, carrying the AN/AWG-9 radar and AIM-54 Phoenix. Chronically overweight, cancelled by Congress in 1968. One aircraft, BuNo 152715, survives at China Lake; the rest were scrapped, and one was photographed rotting in a Mojave scrapyard as late as 2008.

F-111C (1968–73 / 24, plus 4 converted A-models)

The Australian export version and the only one ever sold abroad: an F-111A with the longer F-111B wing and the strengthened FB-111A undercarriage. Ordered on 24 October 1963 during an election campaign, accepted only on 15 March 1973 after the wing carry-through crisis. Four were converted to RF-111C reconnaissance standard in 1979–80. Upgraded in the 1990s with Pave Tack, digital flight controls and the unique TF30-P-108 engine. Retired 3 December 2010.

F-111D (1970–73 / 96)

The ambitious one, and the failure. Triple Plow II intakes, TF30-P-9 engines and the Mark II avionics suite with an early glass cockpit and some of the USAF’s first integrated digital microprocessors. The electronics never came right; the whole fleet sat at Fort Worth for years while the bugs were chased. One wing only, the 27th at Cannon. Withdrawn 1991–92.

F-111E (1969–71 / 94)

The interim model ordered because the D was late: Triple Plow II intakes on the A-model’s TF30-P-3 engines and Mark I analogue avionics, with an improved stores management system. Unglamorous and, in the words of one pilot, "all analog, just like the A model, but it worked". Mostly flown by the 20th TFW at Upper Heyford; eighteen went to Desert Storm. All retired by 1995.

F-111F (1970–76 / 106)

The last and best: TF30-P-100 engines at 25,100 lbf, a strengthened wing carry-through box, the cheaper but effective Mark IIB avionics, an adjustable nozzle for drag, and from the early 1980s Pave Tack. Called "the Cadillac of the F-111 force". It flew El Dorado Canyon and it dominated Desert Storm. Retired 1996, replaced by the F-15E Strike Eagle.

F-111K (1967–68 / 0, cancelled)

Fifty ordered for the RAF in February 1967 after the cancellation of the BAC TSR-2, based on the F-111A with FB-111A landing gear, Mark II navigation and attack system, a retractable refuelling probe and a reconnaissance pallet. Cancelled in January 1968 on cost. Two airframes were in final assembly; redesignated YF-111A, then broken up for components in July 1968 without ever flying.

FB-111A (1968–71 / 76)

The strategic bomber, bought by Strategic Air Command as a stopgap for ageing B-52s and the retiring B-58 while the Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft crawled. Longer F-111B wings, redesigned aft fuselage, extra fuel, strengthened gear, a 119,250 lb maximum weight, TF30-P-7 engines, a star tracker for astro-navigation, satellite communications and an automatic stores release. Planned at 263 aircraft in 1968 and cut to 76 in 1969. Armament: up to six AGM-69 SRAM.

F-111G (1989–93 / 34 conversions)

Surplus FB-111As reconfigured for conventional tactical use once the B-1B took over the nuclear mission. Transferred from SAC to Air Combat Command and used mainly for training; retired by the USAF in 1993. Australia bought fifteen in 1992 and flew them from 1994 to 2007 alongside its F-111Cs.

EF-111A Raven (1977–85 / 42 conversions)

F-111As rebuilt by Grumman into supersonic escort jammers to replace the EB-66, at a total programme cost of about US$1.5 billion. AN/ALQ-99E in the bay, transmitters in a ventral canoe, receivers in a fin-tip pod, all flight controls moved to the pilot’s side. Unarmed and unable to fire anti-radiation missiles, which was its central tactical limitation. First flight 10 March 1977, operational 1983, combat over Libya, Panama and Iraq, retired May 1998 — the last F-111 in American service.

Closing note on survivors: 563 F-111s were built and something over sixty airframes survive worldwide, every one of them an original aircraft — no reproduction F-111 exists, and the escape module makes a partial survivor unusually common, so a substantial minority of the "aircraft" on the display lists are cockpit capsules only. Current listings give roughly forty-six F-111A, D, E, F, FB-111A and F-111G airframes in the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, eighteen F-111Cs, four EF-111As and the single F-111B, BuNo 152715, held at China Lake. The notable ones: 63-9766, the first F-111, at the Air Force Flight Test Museum at Edwards; 67-0120, the last F-111E to leave Upper Heyford, at the American Air Museum at Duxford; 74-0177 in the National Cold War Exhibition at RAF Cosford; 66-0016, the EF-111A unofficially credited with the Mirage F1, at Cannon; and a single F-111A cockpit module, from 67-0068, in the Museum of the Moscow Aviation Institute, recovered from a machine shot down over Vietnam. Australia’s disposal was different and worth stating plainly: because the airframes contained asbestos, and because scrapping them would have cost more than the alternative, the RAAF buried twenty-three F-111Cs and F-111Gs that had not been selected for preservation at the Swanbank landfill outside Ipswich, Queensland, between 21 and 24 November 2011. Australian sources disagree on how many were spared — one contemporary press account says six, while the current display lists name seventeen surviving F-111Cs in Australia, several of them capsules rather than complete aircraft — but the burial itself is firmly attested. It is a strange end for a type that Australia flew for thirty-seven years and gave up only in December 2010, more than a decade after the United States, which built it, had finished with it altogether.

From political scandal to strike legend

From the cockpit: twelve F-111 stories

The Aardvark in pictures

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The F-111 Aardvark in motion

A dedicated F-111 Aardvark video feature is coming soon. In the meantime, explore the story, specifications and photo gallery above — and see where the Aardvark served on the operations map below.

Where the F-111 flew

The score that defines it

The F-111 was a striker, not a dogfighter — its record is written in precision bombs delivered at night, not air-to-air kills. After a catastrophic start over Vietnam it became the most effective strike aircraft of the 1991 Gulf War, and even scored a bizarre air-to-air victory without firing a shot.

Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures as of July 2026 and, for contested combat claims, should be read as best estimates.

Everything people ask about the F-111 Aardvark

Continue the tour

Every fact, checked

• National Museum of the US Air Force — F-111F fact sheetOfficial specifications, service history and Gulf War record.
• Smithsonian National Air and Space MuseumTFX programme background and the F-111B naval cancellation.
• Air & Space / Smithsonian MagazineDetailed history of the failed Navy F-111B and its legacy in the F-14.
• RAAF MuseumAustralian F-111C service, the “Pig,” the dump-and-burn and 2010 retirement.
• The Aviation Geek ClubThe EF-111A Raven’s unarmed Mirage kill and El Dorado Canyon accounts.
• We Are The MightyThe 1991 EF-111 air-to-air victory scored without firing a shot.
• Air & Space Forces MagazineDesert Storm “tank plinking” and F-111F precision-strike effectiveness.
• The National InterestTFX controversy, terrain-following radar and the Aardvark’s redemption.