What next?

Nothing…. there are no prospective oil contracts for Halliburton in North Korea :rolleyes:

As usual the entire west will stay out of this one, and let the locals sort it out since no “strategic interests” are threatened.

Versatility, reliability and cost effectiveness.

Avionics, Engines/avionics & fair enough.

Besides, how versatile is a ****ty couple hundred mile radius?

Speaking purely of the airframe, no avionics, no engines – its crap.

Doesnt the SH also have this ? instead of a dedicated air brake !!

You mean the vertical fins both deflecting inboard to form an airbrake?

The A, B, C & D hornets had it too.

As a result of their inept design [which really should never have been let near service], the hornet doesn’t have enough elevator control to pitch up on take-off, so the two rudders have to deflect inboard to induce further nose up pitching to get the damn thing off the carrier deck right.

It really is hard to fathom why the Navy decided to utilise such a singularly useless airframe.

The F-22 doesn’t have elevators in the conventional sense, the rear horizontal tailsurfaces are elevons – they both perform the elevator and assist in the aileron roles. When an F-22 is banking, you will often see one “elevator” point up and the other down – same as the corresponding ailerons.

Oh, and you don’t need a powerful computer for FBW, the F-22 having a better CPU makes bog all difference. The CPU is there to combine the various sensor feedbacks into one coherent picture.

Point by point i can tell you that you are simply wrong from the aerodynamicists perspective.

* The wing of the F22 is curved along the spanwise direction, reflecting a tailoring toward supersonic speeds by controlling the separated vortex in conjunction with the leading edge flaps. The Su27 is a simple tapered moderately swept wing. The F22’s wing is not only over a generation ahead of the baseline Su27, but a fully one generation ahead of the coupled canard/delta design (ie. the Rafale, Typhoon, and later Su27x. In fact this wing is so advanced (therefore so expensive), it wasn’t repeated in the lower cost F35. Although the X32 had a very advanced supersonic wing also.

* In terms of aerodynamics, the F22 does have a triplane like aerodynamics, except that the forward fuselage strake is aerodynamically more efficient than an explicit canard as found in the Su27 triplane derivatives.

* Instead of the 2D supersonic inlets (which traces back to the Vigilante if not earlier), the F22 has a 2-1/2D inlet where the cross flow situation is taken into acount.

* The fly by wire system of the F22 is the most advanced in the world where it take into acount of integrated flight manuevering using all the surfaces. Basically, instead of decoupled effectors (i.e., let’s use only rudders to generate yaw), all the control surfaces participate in flight manuevers. The only other known aircraft to have near this level of advanced flight control is the Japanese F2 (unfortunately, their avionics was claimed to be crap by some here).

* The aeroelasticity of the F22 takes into account the thrust vectoring requirements, making this the first and ONLY operational fighter plane out there designed with TVC in mind, instead of just add ons. If you claim it’s simply an add-on then you have absolutely no idea what it takes. A simple clue is why the YF22’s PIO accident caused such a pain to the firefighters. Just exactly which requirement that’s such a big deal? Supersonic TVC manuevering as part of routine. Just about every fighter plane can have a TVC upgrade, but most, if not all, won’t survive the way F22 uses it. Why is it so important how the F22 uses it? TVC has two distinct flight manuevering advantages. One at low speed and one at high speed (at intermediate speeds, high subsonics, it’s actually not as good as aero control surfaces). At low speeds it’s quite obvious, wings stall. At high speeds…the servo mechanisms for the aero surfaces became too weak. This also requires a high stiffness body mount for TVC operations. The way the Su27xx mounts it, the entire rear fuselage would buckle.

* Small increases in drag counts at high speeds is a BIG deal. Anybody who ever drives a car at drag limited speeds knows that, don’t even need to go to fighter plane speeds.

* The F22 is a more unstable aircraft than the Su27. Logically, what limits the ability to fly something more unstable is ultimately limited to the update rates of the flight computer. We all know where that’s going.

All the above IS aerodynamics. Just because someboy souped up their Pintos and drive at 150mph on the freeway doesn’t make it a sports car when a Ferrari is idling by at 60mph.

– What do you mean by curved? Changing aerofoil sections or changing camberlines or changing aerofoil section stacking line? :confused:

– While the F-22 nacelle forebody will not induce the undesirable downwash on the main wing that a canard would, undoubedly it will provide less control authority.

– No comment (Dunno anything about it)

– I believe the MiG 1.42/1.44 used a similar autonomous system, although did that aircraft have TVC?

– Uhhh, aeroelasticity has nothing to do with TVC [it might possibly move the aero centre of a lifting fuselage back, but that would be beneficial], I think you just mean general loadings through the airframe. Also, the reason TVC allows greater supersonic manouverability is that it can be used to retrim for the move in aero centre from subsonic to supersonic flight. That means the elevators remain in their neutral position with full range up or down – giving improved manouverability. The actuator strength is not an issue.

– Yeap, its proportional to the wing setting angle*V^2, not just V^2 as in subsonics.

– Dunno what the static margin for either is so cannot comment.

DEW is directed energy weapon

DOC is direct operating cost [basically the overall cost of an aircraft from purchase to dismantling]

Anyway as far as mothership is concerned , the ABL is sort of like a nothership releasing a ton of Lasers to take down missiles , with time they should be able to make a mother ship of DEW’s now that would be something 😉 And then we’ll make way for will smith to come and save the earth while bill gates gives the mothership a cold:)

Why??

Will the mothership be using Windows in its computers? :diablo:

A virus made by microsoft would probably work better than any Norton or McAfee product to be honest 😀 😀

Onto the thread in general. It should be possible, however, I don’t see the benefit it would bring (apart from maybe ultra quick deployment). But transporting several DEW equipped UCAVs in a C-17 or similar to an airbase would be almost as quick, and definitely a more secure base of operations than a slow target in the sky.