The Convair XF-92A (46-682), which made its first flight on 8 June 1948, was not the aircraft originally assigned the F-92 designation but a hybrid, hastily-built machine designed solely to test the delta-wing planform.

The US Air Force had obtained wartime German data on the delta wing from its leading proponent, Dr Alexander Lippisch. The XF-92 designation originally went to a Convair design with delta wing and V-shaped butterfly tail powered by no fewer than six 2,000-lb (8.89-kN) thrust liquid-fuel rocket engines plus a 1,560 lb (6.93-kN) thrust Westinghouse J30-WE-1 turbojet as backup. This would have been a very fast point-defense interceptor with exceedingly limited range and duration. To flight-test its wing planform, Convair built its model 7002, hastily assembled partly from components of other aircraft. This was a remarkably simple airplane with latticed canopy cover, nose air inlet, and through-flow arrangement for its 5,200-lb (23.12-kN) thrust Allison J33-A-23 turbojet. Its delta wing was swept 60 degrees. When the fully-fledged rocket-powered XF-92 design was cancelled because of its obviously limited military application, the model 7002 was redesignated XF-92A. Since it had been intended only as a flying mock-up for the cancelled machine, the XF-92A was never a candidate for a production order, although it performed valuable, if unintended, service as a testbed for the company's F-102 interceptor.

The XF-92A originally flew without afterburning. During continuing tests at Edwards AFB (as the Muroc Dry Lake base was renamed) it was re-engined and its fuselage lengthened to provide reheat for the new 7,500-lb (33.36-kN) afterburning thrust Allison J33-A-29. At the same time, the natural-metal XF-92A was painted gloss white.

Always a research aircraft rather than a fighter, the XF-92A was turned over to NACA for tests before its flight career ended in 1953. By that time, work was well advanced on the operational delta-wing craft to follow, the F-102.