In January 1988, the U.S. Navy awarded General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas a fixed-price contract to build the A-12 Avenger II, a carrier-based stealth attack aircraft meant to replace the A-6 Intruder. It was a flying wing shaped like a perfect isoceles triangle — pilots called it "the Flying Dorito." Three years later, on January 7, 1991, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney cancelled it for default in what remains the largest weapons program termination in Pentagon history. The Navy has never replaced the strike capability it lost.

The design. A pure flying wing, 70.25 ft wingspan folding to 36.3 ft for carrier stowage, two General Electric F412-GE-D5F2 non-afterburning turbofans buried in the airframe, internal weapons bay carrying 5,160 lb of ordnance including two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, and a projected combat radius of 800 nautical miles — nearly double the F/A-18C. Top speed Mach 0.9. Radar cross-section targets were classified but reportedly comparable to the F-117. Two crew, side-by-side. It would have been the first tactical stealth aircraft designed from day one to operate off a pitching deck.

Why it collapsed. Three failures compounded:

• Weight. The composite airframe kept coming in heavy. By late 1990 the aircraft was 30% overweight — roughly 8,000 lb above its 80,000 lb catapult limit. Nobody told the Navy for months.
• Composites. The contractors had never built a composite structure of this size. Delamination, tooling failures, and cure defects piled up. The fixed-price contract meant the contractors ate every overrun.
• Concealment. A December 1990 audit by Chet Paul Christie revealed the program was 18 months behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and the contractors had actively hidden it. Cheney gave the program 5 days to justify itself. It couldn't.

General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas sued the government for wrongful termination. The case dragged on for 23 years. In 2014 it was finally settled with Boeing (which had absorbed McDonnell Douglas) and General Dynamics paying the government $400 million in aircraft and services. The Navy got nothing that flew.

Why it could work now. Every technical problem that killed the A-12 has been solved:

• Composite manufacturing. Automated fiber placement (AFP) machines now lay up B-21 and 787 structures within 1% of design weight. The B-21 Raider — a larger flying wing — is flying today at Palmdale.
• Digital thread. Model-based systems engineering catches interface weight growth before metal is cut. The 30% overweight problem is now discoverable in CAD.
• Naval stealth is proven. The F-35C operates from carriers with a low-observable coating that survives salt spray, catapult shock, and arrested landings. In 1990 nobody knew if RAM would survive a wire trap.
• The mission gap is real. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet has a combat radius of ~390 nautical miles. The Navy's carriers now have to sail inside Chinese DF-26 range to hit targets an A-12 could have reached from 800 miles offshore. The gap the A-12 was designed to fill has become a strategic emergency.

The Navy's F/A-XX program, expected to fly in the 2030s, is essentially a second attempt at the A-12's mission. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are competing. Both proposals reportedly feature a tailless flying-wing planform with an internal bay and an ~800 nm radius. The Dorito is coming back — 40 years late and after a $5 billion tuition payment.