X-35 demonstrated the performance claims made by Lockheed analysts.

And required a total redesign to meet performance goals?

Are you suggesting Lockheed deliberately made the thing crap to begin with? :confused:

X-35 was frankenstein pieced together from bits of existing hardware. While it had the general shape of F-35, it was never intended to be an operational airplane, but a demonstrator to validate analytical predictions with lifespan of a couple hundred hours at most.

Now now… thats just a slight exaggeration. The fuselage structure was not cobbled together, nor was the lift fan, nor was the wings. Perhaps the landing gear was nicked off other machines, and some electronics thrown in ad-hoc.

Requiring this massive redesign that is being banded around this thread would clearly imply the bits that were F-35 and not F-anythingelse did not perform to spec.

Why then, was Lockheed given the contract?

The design team that executed X-35 is not the same team that is executing F-35. A large percentage of the people working F-35 now were not Lockheed employees when the SDD contract was awarded. A new, inexperienced team should expect problems that an experienced group of designers would avoid.
Again, X-35 was a technology demonstrator, not a prototype. There is a significant difference between the two.

So Lockheed threw out the people that did X-35 (and YF-22 and alot of F-22EMD) and got a new crew in?

Why on earth would they want to do that? :confused:

1. long wavelengths are not accurate enough to guide a missile, at best they give you a general vicinity and tell you something is out there

Multiple seeker head missiles.

Have an IR head that is radar cued into the vicinity with clever packaging a distributed AESA system can go around it). The seeker will be an improvement on the LOAL concept.

SOC
Baffels limit your max speed and you forget Frenzl’s Area Rule and Wolfgang Haack’s Supersonic Area Rule. You can’t insert baffels in a straight intake duct without produce excessive wavedrag.

Flow inside the duct is subsonic. But, the presence of baffles does limit top speed and does affect the efficiency of the 1st rotor disk.

I twist not the fact.
With this sawtooth fixed Dassault RCS deficits!
Why has the Raptor, F-35, Typhoon and the F-117 (except onthe canopy)

They (the F-22 & F-35) don’t have saw teeth as their LE & TE are aligned to provide one spike in a direction away from centreline. Compared to EFT, it is indicative of the Rafale having greater emphasis on low observables.

However the F-22 does use saw-teeth on panels – see here

You should not be grouping the Typhoon in with the others.

Note that the F-117 was a very rudimentary design, and not all VLO concepts were fully explored. I do believe the wing TE and the engine nozzles are aligned with the sawteeth used on the canopy and on access hatches.

Apples and orranges as i pointed out earlier , the F-35 at this stage can only be compared to the F-22 when it was in this stage , ie. Early SDD , and just started test flights .

I don’t see why it can tbh.

The USAF need aircraft – if the F-22 now costs the same as a F-35 then why not get the more capable aircraft?

*Am I right in saying, that each (of the 2000 odd) F-35s now costs 120 mil or so? [to swallow the program costs]

You missed the unlicensed copy and enhancement of the Rolls-Royce Nene engine. Powering the MiG-15, -17 and Il-28. 20000 copies produced.

Erm, the R-R Nene was given to the Soviets…

Stupid of the brit govt, but your not going to look a gift horse in the mouth are you?

I don’t think that even little nimble Falcon can prevail over Flanker in dogfight.

If the -16 pilot can get it into a rolling engagement (scissors) then yes, the Falcon will beat the Flanker any day… and the F-22, and the F-15, and the F-18, and the F-14 and pretty much any other fighter you care to name.

Much like another single-engine fighter that claims low-RCS due to a different engine intake design, the nature of the design is such that the RCS will still be pretty large. Draken is a very cool aircraft, yes, but you will be able to find it.

I was being sarcastic dude. 🙂

But I do find it somewhat interesting that it wasn’t taken further – if you consider the possibilities of that planform as an extension of the -16XL into the LM JSF concept.