F-15 VS Mistborn

[Cade Strauss]

Ok as Ghostbloods is in the works, I've been thinking about it and I would love nothing more than a fight scene between a full Mistborn and an F-15. Ghostbloods is intended to be a Cold War era, both technologically and culturally, with the combination of Malwish/Elendel disputes over the BoM and the creation of the Trellium/Harmonium Bomb. In the real world, the F-15 fighter jet entered service in 1976. The Cold War lasted from 1947-1989. Therefore, if Scadrial is developed to the point of a Cold War time period, there's a good chance F-15's will have been invented and deployed. 

I would love to see a Mistborn fight a fighter jet. I know there are a lot of theories about Spook returning (Please, Brandon, please) and he would be even more perfect to combat a fighter jet. Any Mistborn could do it, but the generations he's had to train in addition to his access to inquisitor spikes would make him a perfect candidate. The problem with breathing and temperatures at high altitudes could be easily solved with feruchemical Brass and Cadmium (Heat and breath, respectively). I simply think this would be one of the coolest fight scenes Brandon could write and I'm hoping to see something like it. Thoughts?

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

48 minutes ago, Cade Strauss said:

Ok as Ghostbloods is in the works, I've been thinking about it and I would love nothing more than a fight scene between a full Mistborn and an F-15. Ghostbloods is intended to be a Cold War era, both technologically and culturally, with the combination of Malwish/Elendel disputes over the BoM and the creation of the Trellium/Harmonium Bomb. In the real world, the F-15 fighter jet entered service in 1976. The Cold War lasted from 1947-1989. Therefore, if Scadrial is developed to the point of a Cold War time period, there's a good chance F-15's will have been invented and deployed. 

I would love to see a Mistborn fight a fighter jet. I know there are a lot of theories about Spook returning (Please, Brandon, please) and he would be even more perfect to combat a fighter jet. Any Mistborn could do it, but the generations he's had to train in addition to his access to inquisitor spikes would make him a perfect candidate. The problem with breathing and temperatures at high altitudes could be easily solved with feruchemical Brass and Cadmium (Heat and breath, respectively). I simply think this would be one of the coolest fight scenes Brandon could write and I'm hoping to see something like it. Thoughts?

Now I am imagining a Spook flying up, staying close to the fighter jet and then instantaneously destroying it. (If he has feruchemical spikes, what if he has feruchemical iron)

[Petrichor He/Him]

1 hour ago, Cade Strauss said:

Ok as Ghostbloods is in the works, I've been thinking about it and I would love nothing more than a fight scene between a full Mistborn and an F-15. Ghostbloods is intended to be a Cold War era, both technologically and culturally, with the combination of Malwish/Elendel disputes over the BoM and the creation of the Trellium/Harmonium Bomb. In the real world, the F-15 fighter jet entered service in 1976. The Cold War lasted from 1947-1989. Therefore, if Scadrial is developed to the point of a Cold War time period, there's a good chance F-15's will have been invented and deployed. 

I would love to see a Mistborn fight a fighter jet. I know there are a lot of theories about Spook returning (Please, Brandon, please) and he would be even more perfect to combat a fighter jet. Any Mistborn could do it, but the generations he's had to train in addition to his access to inquisitor spikes would make him a perfect candidate. The problem with breathing and temperatures at high altitudes could be easily solved with feruchemical Brass and Cadmium (Heat and breath, respectively). I simply think this would be one of the coolest fight scenes Brandon could write and I'm hoping to see something like it. Thoughts?

If the scadrians make a plane like the f-15 do you think they would go to the level making it entirely out of or lining it with aluminium?? If we do get a full mistborn back in Era 3 Ghostbloods you would think a Duralumin boosted steel push or iron pull could take a plane out of the air with relative ease.

[DoctaDajman]

On 4/23/2025 at 4:50 PM, Petrichor said:

If the scadrians make a plane like the f-15 do you think they would go to the level making it entirely out of or lining it with aluminium?? If we do get a full mistborn back in Era 3 Ghostbloods you would think a Duralumin boosted steel push or iron pull could take a plane out of the air with relative ease.

A crasher or a deader (my favorite name for iron compounder) would be devastating to airships of any kind. Could totally pull them straight out of the air if not full aluminum. 

[Duxredux he/him]

Uh... anyone here look up the specs for an F-15? I'm reading that their normal cruising speed is around Mach 0.9 - 1.2, at high altitude this jumps to Mach 2.5, unloaded they weigh at minimum 28,000 lbs (12,700 kg), and their combat flight time is around 1.5 hours, more if they can refuel in flight.

As a reminder, the Malwish airship that Wax Pulled out of the sky using the Bands of Mourning was like a large hover carrier that flew based on weight reduction. Combined with the weight reduction of the crew, I can't even guess how little it weighed or how slow moving it was.

I asked ChatGPT to give some estimates and for someone standing on the ground with binoculars to see a low altitude strafe. Assuming you are looking the right direction when it becomes visible 3 miles (4.8 km) away, you have slightly less than 12 seconds before it is already 3 miles past you the other way. You have maybe a 1-2 second engagement window for modern handheld weaponry. Don't forget that above Mach 1 you can't hear it coming, it's going faster than the sound wave and it's loud enough when passing over to leave your Tineyes stunned. Oh, and the Vulcan cannons often mounted on these have a 6,000 rpm firing rate with a optimal firing range of ¾ a mile (1200 m), along with air to surface missiles. That's if it decides to get as close as possible rather than keeping distance. 

In a straight fight, I'd say the Mistborn would need some highly specialized equipment and supplies to even remotely have a chance to bring down a F-15. Atium would be a huge help, possible required, and even then you need to get into proper firing position within the fraction of time that you can even detect the speck in the distance. The speed and scale we're talking is just hard to grasp. I'm not saying impossible, a Bendalloy speed bubble to slow down time to prep for the fly to ensure getting the timing right to use a planar directional Duralumin-enhanced Ironpull to yank it towards the ground might do the trick, but depending on what ordinance the F-15 fired, it still might end in a draw. If the pilot had enough missiles, it might never get close enough for the Mistborn to engage. Duralumin seems necessary to get the altitude and speed to chase one, and while we've theorized ways to allow for multiple rapid uses of Duralumin, we haven't ever seen it in play.

There's a reason aircraft like this are invented and deployed despite the costs to manufacture and operate one. Flying a single F-15 for a single 1-1.5 hour mission costs more than an average U.S. school teacher's annual salary. Barring Godmetals, deploying a modern Mistborn won't come anywhere close to the same costs.

[Cade Strauss]

Let's assume it's Spook. I think that's the only way someone could pull this off.

1. He's a Mistborn with 300 years of experience in Mistborn training, hemalurgic studies, and feruchemical storing.

2. He has access to the inquisitor spikes. Let's assume he has at least doubled his Allomantic Steel, Iron, Pewter, and Duralumin by using Hemalurgic spikes in addition to his natural Mistborn abilities. 

3. Those inquisitor spikes (and new ones he could have made) would also give him at a minimum Feruchemical Iron, Steel, Gold, Brass, and Cadmium. 

The doubled Steel, Iron, and Duralumin would assist in getting him to the jet, and pewter in combination with a specialized wingsuit would keep him alive at those speeds. Breathing won't be a problem with Feruchemical Cadmium. The friction from air resistance can be easily stored through Feruchemical Brass. Feruchemical Gold fills any gaps or injuries caused by combat or flying at that speed. Duralumin and Iron reloading is accomplishable with Bendalloy bubbles/Feruchemical speed and practice. He'd also be equipped with ammunition that he can push to destroy incoming missiles and attack the jet with. I think Spook has a chance with prep and resources, which he has (he was sort of the king of the world for a century.) 

It's still going to be difficult, I just think it's a fantastic idea and I'd love to see it implemented. I think the physics would work out given the right circumstances. I like your points.

[DoctaDajman]

23 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Uh... anyone here look up the specs for an F-15? I'm reading that their normal cruising speed is around Mach 0.9 - 1.2, at high altitude this jumps to Mach 2.5, unloaded they weigh at minimum 28,000 lbs (12,700 kg), and their combat flight time is around 1.5 hours, more if they can refuel in flight.

As a reminder, the Malwish airship that Wax Pulled out of the sky using the Bands of Mourning was like a large hover carrier that flew based on weight reduction. Combined with the weight reduction of the crew, I can't even guess how little it weighed or how slow moving it was.

I asked ChatGPT to give some estimates and for someone standing on the ground with binoculars to see a low altitude strafe. Assuming you are looking the right direction when it becomes visible 3 miles (4.8 km) away, you have slightly less than 12 seconds before it is already 3 miles past you the other way. You have maybe a 1-2 second engagement window for modern handheld weaponry. Don't forget that above Mach 1 you can't hear it coming, it's going faster than the sound wave and it's loud enough when passing over to leave your Tineyes stunned. Oh, and the Vulcan cannons often mounted on these have a 6,000 rpm firing rate with a optimal firing range of ¾ a mile (1200 m), along with air to surface missiles. That's if it decides to get as close as possible rather than keeping distance. 

In a straight fight, I'd say the Mistborn would need some highly specialized equipment and supplies to even remotely have a chance to bring down a F-15. Atium would be a huge help, possible required, and even then you need to get into proper firing position within the fraction of time that you can even detect the speck in the distance. The speed and scale we're talking is just hard to grasp. I'm not saying impossible, a Bendalloy speed bubble to slow down time to prep for the fly to ensure getting the timing right to use a planar directional Duralumin-enhanced Ironpull to yank it towards the ground might do the trick, but depending on what ordinance the F-15 fired, it still might end in a draw. If the pilot had enough missiles, it might never get close enough for the Mistborn to engage. Duralumin seems necessary to get the altitude and speed to chase one, and while we've theorized ways to allow for multiple rapid uses of Duralumin, we haven't ever seen it in play.

There's a reason aircraft like this are invented and deployed despite the costs to manufacture and operate one. Flying a single F-15 for a single 1-1.5 hour mission costs more than an average U.S. school teacher's annual salary. Barring Godmetals, deploying a modern Mistborn won't come anywhere close to the same costs.

I totally hear all of this. Yeah aircraft are still going to be the meta. Metalborn with any real capacity to hurt them would need to be utilized more like the guns on another aircraft than trying to target them from the ground. 

I do think you could rig up some sort of system with iron feruchemy combined with either iron or steel to cause a lot of damage to the enemy aircraft... the trick is getting them to the aircraft. 

Would aluminum that is pure enough to resist all allomancy actually offer enough structural integrity to hold an entire plane together at those speeds?  I dont know. Noone in the books has described duralumin as being inert to investiture and that is mostly aluminum as well isnt it?  

So for a metalborn to compete against an aircraft I think it is totally possible... assuming that metalborn is also using an aircraft. If you got an iron compounder to get within range of a jet flying mach 1 I think that metalborn could absolutely get massive enough to cause irreparable damage with a single pull. How do you manage it?  Would the metalborn need to be ejected out of whatever aircraft he is being transported in in order to do it? Would a passenger in a plane going hundreds of miles per hour suddenly weighing a million pounds wreck your own aircraft? Or would inertia help carry it forward for the few seconds that person needs to start and iron pull on an adjacent aircraft?  

You also make a good point about weaponry and range. Iron and steel have never had such incredible range. You would have to be within a few aircraft lengths of the enemy to do anything anyways. Bullets and missiles will outplay that in a heart beat. 

What are some things you could do with a metalborn in aerial combat though?  

Would dragging a lurcher behind your plane on a tether destroy the ability to fly enough that it is useless?  Maybe for bombers or larger transport planes. Keep a lurcher in the back on a wench that you could throw out the plane and he could pull on anti aircraft projectiles?  It's a funny image in my mind but how would you armor him?  Probably not well at all. Easier to do the same with a triggering device and harmonium cubs. They get dropped out and pull on everything to divert projectiles from the body of the plane and then the wench pulls them back in for new usage?  You could employ an iron allomancer just to fill the cubes reel them back and then fill them again. Good use. 

So yeah I have to agree. No metalborn on their own is going to be able to compete with planes. Could they destroy one using steel and iron with duralumin or iron feruchemy. Sure. I think they have the mechanical ability to destroy a plane. Is it feasible to get them into a position and range to destroy a plane?  I dont think so. The best bet would be having the iron compounder as a passenger on a super fast super stealthy plane to catch up to and get behind the enemy without them noticing, eject the compounder when in range and let them go Ham becoming millions of pounds for a moment and giving a tug on the enemy aircraft. Absolutely that enemies plane will be out of the fight. And the compounder is going to be able to manipulate his own weight to a safe landing on the ground even without a parachute. But now you have to recover your metalborn and get him loaded on another plane to do it all again.  

I think I may have seen redbull catch a wingsuit guy in the back of a plane. So I guess that is an option but if you have all this tech why not just let the tech do what it needs to anyways.  

A far better use of an iron compounder would be to use them to sink enemy ships in my opinion. 

[Duxredux he/him]

Yeah... if you need to soup up your Mistborn this much to stand a chance, you likely had sufficient time to design an expensive but far more replaceable missile to take down a F-15.

Edit: I asked ChatGPT and designing a wingsuit to operate at Mach 2.5+ is orders of magnitude harder than designing an airplane to fly at Mach 3. The flight surfaces, shape, scale, heating, and more are all heavily against the wingsuit, with failure likely resulting in immediate death. Correcting for it would basically need a rather well known armor with strength enhancement from Roshar with several other Invested enhancements.

In other debates we've looked at A-Bendalloy and F-Steel to reload after depleting metal reserves with Duralumin, but neither seem viable without extreme training or super specialized tech when traveling through the air at a minimum of Mach 1. A-Bendalloy only works to reload when you can remain mostly stationary relative to the bubble. Putting up a bubble a couple dozen feet across when you're moving well over 1,000 feet per second looks pretty useless to me. Yes, Slider Savants theoretically can anchor the bubble to themselves, but then the bubble has to resist Mach force winds trying to pass through the boundary as it hurtles through the sky - which might pop it anyway.

Similarly, F-Steel doesn't look like it addresses the issue of getting the metal into the digestive system while under immense air ram pressure. Supersonic air resistance is a different beast compared to subsonic flight. The classic flattened teardrop if flown at super sonic speeds would tear apart due to the shockwaves and extreme drag, not just from heating from friction. Opening the wingsuit helmet and opening your mouth while traveling a supersonic speeds looks like it would be a lethal decision almost instanteously with the air ablating the eyes, nose, face, throat, and sending thousands of pounds of air pressure into your lungs and chest cavity, looks like a quick if messy way to die. Sure, Steelrunners can move fast, but somehow moving fast enough to not have the passing air damage the Mistborn would be an tremendous cost in Feruchemical Speed. Having to use Speed or Health to survive your basic maneuvering is an incredibly costly proposal, if it's even viable. I don't think most people would be strong enough to move their hand to their head while traveling at Mach 2+, and to really catch up to a fleeing F-15, you might need to have burned all your Pewter just to survive the launch.

A modern fight I could see most of the Mistborn in the books considering without specialized equipment or prior preparation is taking on an assault helicopter. Lighter, slower, lower, and still dangerous, that might be a fight we see. Particularly if Brandon sticks to: (WoBs on future Mistborn books)

Spoiler

Quote

Argent

You've dropped a few tidbits about the plot of the next Mistborn series over the years. Putting all those things together, we have a nicrosil Ferring Terriswoman hacker recruited for fieldwork in an "Allomancer SWAT team" to chase a Mistborn serial killer. Could you give us a more recent and concise pitch/blurb if the above is no longer accurate?

Brandon Sanderson

Ha. That's not far off, as all of those things still exist in the series, though the weight I'll give them is relative. With the Alloy series covering some of the police procedural aspect of storytelling, I'm inching the outlines slowly away from the SWAT idea and toward more spy thriller--but the SWAT team isn't not gone completely. (Of course, who knows what will happen in the intervening years between now and when I write it.)

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 4, 2016)

 

We'd probably see the chopper get taken down early on so the team gets a sense for the kind of threat the rogue Mistborn represents. 

 

Edited April 28, 2025 by Duxredux
Added note

[Denissimo He/him]

... Well, if it has gotten to the point that F-15s have been invented, this would DEFINITELY be beyond Era 2, meaning there are guns. 
At this point, Mistborn powers would COMPLETELY diluted, BARELY effective.

At this point, I'm guessing a Mistborn would just try to shoot the Fuselage, and bring down the plane in one hit.
No allomancy lmao.

But say it is spook. Then, I would say he Pulls himself onto the Fighter Jet...
Then just shoots the pilot in the head. No messing around with Pewter or anything, it's unecessary.
If he didn't have a gun, I would say his best bet is still taking out the pilot, as aiming for the engine at this proximity could cause damage to him, even with pewter.

[DoctaDajman]

7 hours ago, Denisimo said:

... Well, if it has gotten to the point that F-15s have been invented, this would DEFINITELY be beyond Era 2, meaning there are guns. 
At this point, Mistborn powers would COMPLETELY diluted, BARELY effective.

At this point, I'm guessing a Mistborn would just try to shoot the Fuselage, and bring down the plane in one hit.
No allomancy lmao.

But say it is spook. Then, I would say he Pulls himself onto the Fighter Jet...
Then just shoots the pilot in the head. No messing around with Pewter or anything, it's unecessary.
If he didn't have a gun, I would say his best bet is still taking out the pilot, as aiming for the engine at this proximity could cause damage to him, even with pewter.

I believe there is a WoB to address the dilution. The power level in Era 2 is the new normal and has diluted as much as it ever will. 

Spoiler

Yoonseo Chang

Looking at Allomancy, you've mentioned that over time the power dilutes and each ability becomes less powerful. (for example a Tineye in Era 2 will generally be less powerful than one in Era 1) Does the same effect happen in Feruchemy as well? How would Feruchemy become less pure or diluted (other than Ferrings appearing)?

Brandon Sanderson

I have not gone as far with Feruchemy in that regard. I would say that if you're going to get a weakening of Feruchemy, which you're asking about, is the amount of stored attribute you get for lost attribute. There is decay there, you don't get a 1:1. Feruchemy generally I would say is not much weaker than it was before, a little bit but not much. This was done partially for narrative reasons. I wanted Allomancy... I wanted to back off a little on Allomancy and tell stories with it a little bit weaker. Again, mostly narrative reasons at this point. At this point on Scadrial, it's weakened about as much as it's going to because by this point people are having children that are more powerful because of the certain mixing. I'm not saying it's going up, I'm saying they have hit an equilibrium on Scadrial for the most part, at least in the Basin.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 (June 3, 2021)