Strange Aircraft

I heard a noise that one usually hears accompanying a fighter jet aircraft at high speed. But when I looked up on this clear sunny day I was unprepared for what I saw because the wings were way too short for even any fighter jet that I had ever seen before. So, I figured it must be some new plane the military is working on. It had extremely short wings with a very long fuselage and was painted dark gray but the fuselage seemed almost as long as a passenger jet plane that could carry about 75 passengers. So I didn't know what to make of it. I was wondering how a plane with such short wings could even take off the ground at under 250 to 300 mph unless it was going to rocket straight up into the sky with wings that short and stubby. But I thought that if it is designed for supersonic flight maybe that would be what it would have to do. Just to be matching a cruising speed under 400 miles per hour it likely was in slow flight with the nose up. So, I wondered just how fast you would have to land in something like that to not crash it.(probably very fast).

When I put the following into Google: "Fast grey jet plane with stubby wings" this is what I got:

fighter aircraft is general term for any aircraft that is designed to engage another aircraft in combat - pursuit aircraft are fighters designed for speed to be able intercept other aircraft such as intercepting bombers before they reach their target or "racing" to provide support - because pursuit aircraft have to be built to be faster than other aircraft, in the past they had to compromise agility and controlability for speed - modern jet fighters like the F-22 are capable of both speed and agility and therefore there is not enough difference to have a separate category of pursuit fighter
the P-38 lightning of WWII was a very fast pursuit fighter, at least 2 are known to have hit the sound barrior in a dive (though they were destroyed doing so) but they were definitely not very agile with those twin props and booms - the peak of performance in pursuit fighters was the F-104 starfighter that was little more than a very large jet engine with short stubby wings and was incredibly fast - but it was very hard to control and fly and land - but it was designed to intercept Russian bombers before they could reach the USA and it did that very well
The terms "pursuit" and "Fighter" were used by the US to describe aircraft types for the same role. The Army used the term "Pursuit", which was a term used by the British. The Navy used the term "Fighter" and the aircraft were assigned to fighter squadrons, known as VF (meaning Heavier-than-Air Fighter). Eventually, the Air Force adopted Fighter.

Full-size image 

It looked like none of these aircraft in the "full size image" above but it looked the most like: LM F-16C even though that wasn't it either.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_pursuit_and_fighter_planes#ixzz1nzz5fbt7