Pierre Sprey
| Pierre Sprey | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Pierre Sprey 1937 (age 79–80) Nice, France |
| Nationality | French/American |
| Occupation | defense analyst, record producer |
Pierre Sprey, born in 1937, is a defense analyst and record producer. As a defense analyst working together with John Boyd and Thomas P. Christie, he was a member of the self-dubbed 'Fighter Mafia', which advocated the use of energy–maneuverability theory in fighter design. Sprey took no part in the actual designing of any aircraft.
Sprey was born in Nice, France, and raised in New York. He was educated at Yale, where he studied aeronautical engineering and French literature, and also at Cornell, where he studied mathematical statistics and operations research. He subsequently worked at Grumman Aircraft as a consulting statistician on space and commercial transportation projects. From 1966 to 1970 he was a special assistant at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
During the 1960s, Pierre Sprey belonged to a group of defense analysts who called themselves the 'Fighter Mafia'. At the time he joined them, he had been a "weapons system analyst on the OASD/SA staff". He had an engineering degree but no military experience. The 'Fighter Mafia' group of defense analysts worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to advocate a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15. The group strongly believed that an ideal fighter should not include any of the sophisticated radar and missile systems or rudimentary ground-attack capability that found their way into the F-15. Their goal, based on energy–maneuverability theory, was a small, low-drag, low-weight, pure fighter with no bomb racks. This group influenced the design requirements of the highly successful F-16, though they were not happy with the design changes made to the YF-16 to make the larger, high-tech multi-role fighter currently in service. He also helped write the initial design requirements for the A-X program that led to the contract for the A-10 and optimized its safety features. The "Warthog" appears ungainly, but is "enormously difficult to shoot down", and "devastating against tanks and other armored vehicles." While Sprey was involved in defining some of the initial design requirements for the A-X and LWF programs, he is often inaccurately credited during his media interviews as being a "co-designer" of both the A-10 and F-16 aircraft. Sprey took no part in the actual designing of these aircraft.
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Wikipedia