I didn't plan this to be my first post of 2023 but oh well

Description

The XiF-118E was the name of a unique aircraft within the 634th Vehicle Plant's inventory, it was entirely made out of a certain glass-like crystal, powered by some sort of energy reactor at the rear, the aircraft did not have a cockpit, at least not one made for humans, instead it had some sort of socket for what seems to be a central processing unit, the aircraft features no landing gear, which was replaced instead with "pikes", and the wings had a "layered" wing sweep function, it also had one dimensional thrust vectoring. There was also a weapon found alongside the aircraft, specifically a missile, it was also made using the same crystal material and includes an infrared seeker as well as transmitters for receiving inputs from the aircraft.

This aircraft was recovered and restored with materials from another crystal aircraft and was made flyable again, the missiles were also restored, however It's only capable of tracking one target at a time, as it's not possible to recreate the original radar of the aircraft and the seeker head of the missile, so instead the AN/APG-65 of the F-18A was installed on the aircraft and the missile seeker was that of the R-60M.

Okay enough horseplay, this was that plane the Gripen fought against on the 12th episode of Girly Air Force, it was essentially an F-18E Super Hornet that got infected by the Zai alien thingy while on an airport, the aircraft posses supermanueverability, some form of armor, and is armed with eight IR-guided missiles as well as a gun, the aircraft also had some traits the original F-18E did not have, such as thrust vectoring (although only one dimensional; up or down) as well as wing sweep, the aircraft ended up being defeated after your average boss battle style dogfight involving the power of friendship or something and was never seen again, shattered into millions of pieces.

The SimplePlanes version here is basically the same thing, save for the difference in skin textures, the plane has two layers, one inside as the "crystal" and one outside, it has the same features I mentioned before, wing sweep, thrust vectoring, supermanueverability, weapons, you name it, credits to hiroyuki_taiga on Twitter for reference on the design.

And yes, the "uninfected" version exists was well.

Controls :

AG1 : Supermanueverability
VTOL up : wing sweep