The “Wild Weasel” moniker applies to all three dedicated Air Force fast-jet SEAD platforms of the last 40 years: the F-105G, the F-4G and the F-16CJ.

Great article, thank you. If I might nitpick a moment, the F-16’s official name is “Fighting Falcon” or often just “Falcon;” “Viper” is the unofficial name given to the SEAD-specialized variants (just like the F-4 was the “Phantom,” but the F-4s that knocked out SAM sites in Vietnam were called “Wild Weasals.”)

It seems clear to me that with the advent of lightweight, advanced avionics and new, multi-mission capable hardware like the F/A-22, the USAF is on the verge of extending it’s overall capabilities by a staggering degree. We are rapidly reaching “escape velocity” in terms of the relative effectiveness of our Air Force vs. that of just about any other country on the planet. The advent of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology will only widen that gap even further; it’s not hard to imagine that in a few decades we could have unmanned, remotely-piloted warfighting aircraft in the sky, controlled from afar by pilots in a bunker or trailer hundreds (or thousands?) of miles from the conflict. Already we have smart bombs that make destroying a particular target about as easy as sending an email; imagine if we could have that capability without even leaving our own borders?