"laser armed versions"
I love the way that's casually thrown out. Dude, it's a jet fighter with friggin' lasers on its wings!
Hrm. Tactical lasers a la THEL? Ever hear of this?
Very cool. USAF zot!
"Lock S-Foils in attack position."
Is this the dream of every woman for her man "fighter?"
I sense a disturbance in The Force ....
Great. Now the USAF will have the same underpowered, underarmed, no-legs version as the USMC. They should take a close look at the Harrier before signing on to this one.
President Kerry will put a stop to all of this.
Just so you all know, when it comes to these aggressive weight reduction campaigns, the proof is "in the pudding" as the saying goes. When faced with a bloated design, program managers scramble to pull the weight back into design margins. Typically, they stand up and ask all the engineers to "sharpen their pencils" and put together a list of potential solutions to hit their new target.
Many of these changes are already known about and require some form of concession or trade-off with the customer. Others are suddenly viable because cost targets are seemingly lowered to absorb impacts. Finally, many of the proposed changes are just SWAGs that many fine design engineers are challenged by and jump through hoops to try and achieve.
The bottom line is the old saying "you can't put 4 pound
of sh*t into a 3 pound bag" still applies. Trade-offs from the specification (as the design matures) proving what was possible over what was fiction is the name of the game.
BTTT
They're keeping the A-10s with upgrades. Good move, the AF needs something that goes low, slow and can survive battle damage.
Has Kerry voted for this yet so he can vote against it.......
bump
I smell wildly out of scope here.
* Reducing the distance between interior structural elements in the wing so the aircraft's exterior skin can be thinner.
Reducing structural integrity, increasing wing-flex under G, increasing FOD, bird and flak vulnerability
* Reducing the size of the weapons bays by 14 in. as well as the size of the vertical tails.
Decreasing roll authority at high-alpha, decreasing weapons payload
* Rounding the shape, the loft line, of the fuselage behind the cockpit to hold more fuel. That was one of several changes that decreased drag. and increased radar signature
* Redesigning the electrical system to decrease the battery size and the amount of wiring. resulting in more load on generator under hot start conditions, decreasing redundancy in harnesses, increasing overall vulnerability
* Redesigning the wing-mate joint. can only mean reducing available mass, which means reducing joint strength.
* Rerouting some thrust from the roll post outlets to the main engine thrust. resulting in small thrust increase at the expense of high temperature increase, resulting in higher IR signature and vulnerability to IR weapons.
None of this matters, the sucker is dead by April.
Just like B-52's, huh?
I worked on those in the late 70's. In those days they were DF (deuterium-fluorine) and the fluorine scared me to death. Nasty stuff. Maybe they've made strides in excimer or other technologies...still, the ABL (Airborne Laser) is in a 747 or something of similar size. Can you imagine putting one in a fighter?
Unless there's been a breakthrough (I'm out of the laser world and no longer hold the requisite clearance) I don't see how with (what I imagine is) current technology.
--Boris
Articles like this make me feel old. I went through AF Undergratuate Pilot Training (UPT) in 1978. At that time, the A-10, F-15, and F-16 were all new aircraft. Now.........they're old; beyond their "normal", serviceable life, it seems.
Maybe I need a rocking chair............