More really bad weapons, let's talk (more) really bad aircraft (production only). The F-4K. The British (like us) have occasionally a case of "not built here" myopia so with their F4 purchase they insisted on the higher-performing Rolls-Royce Spey engines rather than the ol' smoky J79s. Better engines! Higher performing!
...except the Spey engines had to be modified to such an extent to fit in the Phantom that any design advantages were lost, and as a result they were only as good as (some say inferior) to the Phantom's...
Or how about the Gutless Cutlass? The F7-U was a terrible aircraft that served for a tiny, tiny amount of time - despite 300+ being built. Let's see...horrible roll characteristics, such anemic engines that it's takeoff AOA required a huge front wheel strut that was apparently made from balsa wood: rough landings (you know, the kind every landing on a carrier deck is) would smash the oleos into their own telescoping length...on the Cutlass this would and did typically break the entire assy.
Still, it was the first guided-missile armed Navy plane, and responsible for several kills (...of its own pilots...)
The A-5 Vigilante. Okay, this one is a 50/50. The RA5 Viggie was a decent dedicated recon platform. Problem was when everything on a carrier comes at a premium (fuel, replacement parts, berthing for pilots, space to park the A/C either on deck or beneath) the idea of a dedicated recon-only bird becomes problematic. But once converted to Recon duty the Viggie wasn't that bad. Where it sucked was its original role as a dash nuclear strike fighter (hence the "A") - shockwaves would form behind the aircraft when it would drop its ordinance in a high-altitude vertical drop-and-dash laydown attack that would (and in tests, did!) bring the bomb along behind the plane. That's right - the test articles would just sort of bob along behind the airplane for a distressingly long amount of time. On occasion, some bobbed into the actual aircraft, damaging it.
While in the event of a nuclear war there'd be all kinds of horrible things to worry about, finding out the nuke you just dropped out of your aircraft was floating along behind you would really take the starch out of your shorts...
The F5! Now...let's be fair, in terms of "MiG-21, only better" the F5 actually is a decent aircraft. But poor Northrop can never, ever catch a break, ever when it comes to building military a/c. A descendent of the T38 Talon, and cousin of the F18 family, the F5(a/b/c/d/e/g) was an anemic, day-only, Mk. 1 eyeballs only aircraft. A Honda Civic DX when the USAF was in to buying Cadillac El Dorados. Northrop shopped it around and found some customers - Iran, Pakistan, Kenya, S. Vietnam (which meant that shortly thereafter, North Vietnam became a operator, although not for long as they quickly ran out of parts)...Then came the F20 (in reality, the "F5-II"). They put it up against the F16. The USAF wasn't buying. And because the USAF wasn't buying...nobody was buying.
But hey lest anyone think I'm picking solely on the US side, and to go back to the skies, how about the Yak-38? Whoa Nellie, that was a shitty aircraft. In the Soviet's defense it...well, no, there is no defense for putting that thing in the air. Seriously, that's what happens when you don't have a free press and governmental oversight of projects. Couldn't fly in hot air. Couldn't carry more than a couple hundred pounds of bombs. So unstable it had to have an automatic ejection system for the crews when it got past a certain AOA since there was no way in hell a pilot could regain control once that happened...what a horrible waste of everything that bird was.
The MiG-25. V. Belenko's defection taught us that all is not gold that glitters. The Foxbat turned out to be a paper (well, stainless steel) tiger. It did have some innovations, like an all-digital integrated hands-off weapon system - but this was because Soviet aviation treated aircraft like flying SAM platforms rather than like, y'know, aircraft with pilots. Designed to intercept and destroy the (X)B70 Valkyrie, it found itself without a job once the Valk was cancelled. However the Soviets never let that stand in the way of producing something anyhow! The engines had the lifespan of a mayfly. The whole bird had a turning radius of about Rhode Island at speed. Still, it gave us the F15 and that is a truly awesome weapons system!
I've been scouring my resources but I cannot find the entry for the Soviet cold-war era bomber that literally barely had the range to hit targets in Western Europe. It was pathetic, I wanna say it was the M50 but that never got produced. There was a whole "Wings of the Red Star" episode about it...
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