China’s Stealth Fighter Could Get a Lot Better

War is Boring ^ | Nov 14, 2014 | David Axe

[GBA]

Thanks for the info. Good to see how little things change as the beast gets bigger.

You're right about the Chinese, of course, especially with regard to programming the hardware they can now build.

However, consider what they can now build and apply the methodology behind their success to software. What sized window of advantage are you looking at, rhetorically speaking.

I keep my fingers crossed for US, but this is no way to run a country. More like how great countries decline and fall...and others take their place.

[GBA]

No discussion of evolution would be complete without the YF-23:

Hey China. Replicate that!

It may have lost to the F-22, but to me that's not second place. That's a work of art almost as beautiful as the B-1B. (F-14 replacement, anyone?)

F-23 FTW!

[tanknetter]

Hey China. Replicate that!

Funny enough, there are more than a few similarities between the YF-23 and the Soviet Russian Sukhoi T-50. Not enough to call it a straight copy, but more of an evolutionary cousin.

I've always liked the idea that the YF-23, which was apparently faster (top speed still classified) and stealthier than the YF-22, ended up going into production also and is in operational service as a black-world stealth strike/interdiction/recce successor to the F-111:



(note: there are lots of different artists concepts of what an F/A-12 or FB-23 would look like. I like the above because grafting the Su-34 Fullback's platypus nose just looks ... cool.)

[GBA]

I've always liked the idea that the YF-23 ended up going into production also and is in operational service as a black-world stealth strike/interdiction/recce successor to the F-111

I like that. I like that a lot. As with the YF-17, the YF-23 is too good to let go to waste. I'd like to think something came from it and your idea works well for me.

It reminds me of a story I read back in the early to mid 1970s along similar lines. IIRC, it was "fiction" about a covert group of ex-military who had a badass war surplus P-61 and were using it for their own private border defense, shooting up bad guys, shooting down drug runners, etc., back in the good ol' days. I wish I could remember the magazine that ran it. Fun read as a kid and I wonder if it still would be. Your idea reminded me of it.

"I like the above because grafting the Su-34 Fullback's platypus nose just looks ... cool."

Really? Hmmmm...to me the Su-27 series are attractive machines, but that one is maybe the fugly sister? Nowhere near the British 1950s-60s standard of fugly, but very near the "only a mother could love" end of that bell curve.

Not bad from this angle, I guess. Kinda reminds me of some women in my life and I wouldn't want it mad at me either.

[tanknetter]

The platypus nose looks cool, just not grafted to the Su-27s body. Grafted to the YF-23 otoh ...

If you remember that story, drop me a Freepmail pls. There’s a similar one, book actually, from about the same time called “Gray Eagles” about a bunch of Luftwaffe vets who set up a Bf 109 Staffel in the US Desert Southwest and go to war against the Confederate Air Force ...

[GBA]

Staring at the picture, I see what you mean. Actually, the trouble I have is with the nose graphed on to the Su-34 Fullback's big butt.

I didn't want to say that when comparing the airplane to women I know, since I wanted to avoid the cat-like sneak attack smack to the back of the head that sort of "big nose with a butt like a Kardashian" comparison to women comment is usually good for.

Speaking of aircraft evolution, I'd like to run this past you. I remember Soviet women of the day being easily compared to tractors and how the early jet MiGs were a similar "ugly like a tractor", especially when compared to the sleek, svelte designs like the F-86 and the P-51 before it. Those North American airplanes were gorgeous, the kind a young man could fall for, same as he did the pin up girls painted on their noses. Not at all like the fugly like a tractor Soviets.

But how things have changed since freedom rang and the wall fell and then, thanks to algore, the internet connected everyone with everything. In those early internet days, the first things that came from that part of the world were internet brides and ultra hot internet porn women from former Soviet states.

I bring that up, because today's Russian women, especially in sports, do not make me of a tractor. They make me wish I'd looked into the internet bride option!

And now, with those thoughts in mind, look at the Su-27 series. Gorgeous! Curvy, sleek and sexy dangerous. Just like their women. I'm not going to say this evolution from the tractor fugly Soviet is because algore gave them internet porn, just pointing out that there is definitely a connection.

Thanks for the tip about “Gray Eagles”. Sounds good. Not sure, but the story/few part series(?) I'm thinking of was more like a two or a few man vigilante thing, not so much The Batman, but more like The Punisher. Probably not as good as the memory, but I'd like to read it again. I'll pass it on if I find it.

[tanknetter]

HA!

Keep in mind that the early jet MiGs (and other contemp Sov fighters) were modified from captured German designs by captured German aeronautical engineers. The MiG-15 is a close copy of a Messerschmitt design, which was then evolved into the MiG-17, 19, 21 and 23/27 series.

Just like how the Tu-95/142 has, coincidentally, the same fuselage cross section as a B-29 Superfortress. Or rather the Tu-4 “Bull” that was a reverse engineered Superfort clone.