wow an F414 engine would make that thing zippy! guess the FA-50, if it comes under 30 mill, will poop poop the FC-1 and Tejas

I don’t know what the air-frame life number for FA-50 is, but generally,
The problem with trainers is that their structure is designed from beginning to handle much more hours and cycles than let’s say a fighter strucuture. I think it is still a majority traditional aluminum structure. so weighs bit heavier.

sure they can stuff it with a big engine and all that but range-speed-g. one of them would suffer.

actually FC-1/JF-17 has the reverse problem. they (CAC) one time tried to get its twinseat version to compete in the internal PLAAF/PLAN LIFT (vs JL-9 and L-15) market. turns out the struct is too heavy and still not enough life cycles to make it worth while.

—–

The variant Indonesia purchased looks like the basic trainer version to replace Hawks.
May be they would like to save some hours on their Su-30/27/F-16.

It wasn’t drag or engine size or anything else. It was simply mass which is relatively proportional to cost. When mass/size/cost do not matter, a tailored internal carriage jet paired with a sufficient engine can aerodynamically outperform a jet which carries the same weapons load externally with a sufficient engine. The real issue is cost and complexity. Efficient examples of this are the F-22 and the PAK-FA whereas the F-35 is not an efficient example due to other design constraints including – mass/size/cost.

nah even for top of the line jets where they can splurg they didn’t have much internal carriage (mig-25/F-4/F-15/Su-27)

typically given the same compression ratio and turbine inlet temp your engine’s sfc is about where it is. which means for bigger thrust requires a bigger engine that burned more fuel.

so unless you are building a manned rocket… the bigger body / bigger wetted area necessarily requires a bigger engine. given the speed constraints.
range then suffers.

they had multiple requirements back then. turns out droppabe fuel tanks and stores get you more.

The only way for that logic to be true is if ideal aerodynamic=ideal LO shape,
else false.

The two requirements (LO and good L/D) are not necessarily orthogonal.

no they do not go in the same direction, but they can be reconciled to a acceptable level.
I donno, but I would think there are softwares that solves both the navior stokes and the maxwell equations in discretized fashion given a meshed surfaced. :rolleyes:

also.
internal stores does not necessarily means “more aerodynamic”. if that would so then all the fighters built since 60s would have had internal weapons bays wouldn’t it.
it would be simple really, the trade between “draggy external stores” and bigger wetted area of a more volumnous body would be easily cleared up in the preliminary rounds of configuration studies for any major combat aircraft. any competent aerospace engineers are fully capable of sticking the models in windtunnels and figure it out.

the fact that most designers back then decided against for a internal carriage but instead opted for external carriage in most final fast combat jet designs should tells you bit about which way the trade mostly favored. given the requirements (mostly performance based-aerodynamic derived) and engine technology of the time

and

I would think Raptor derive much of its performance from its powerful engines. configuration wise there is nothing extrodinary about it really. may be the requirement is weighed more towards stealth, AND engine technology can deliver the level of performance, thus driving a internal carriage solution, given that you can still hold performance with engine and aerodynamics.

we can see the same trend indenpendently arrived at in form of PAK-FA and J20. i.e. internal carriage as being acceptable because of the stealth requirements. The heavy leverage on “aerodynamic tricks” ( in form of Levcons and heavy flankerism in case of PAK-FA, and carefully placed canard+lerx for J-20) is to make up for less certainty in engine technology and a desire to comeup with a better performance product than F-22.

and where is flight controls comes in to all this?
well, extra degree of freedom where you can decouple stability and control requirements and performance requirments (in traditional aircraft design both were asking the aircraft layout (tail sizeing, cg etc) to take care of those requirement, not any more with flight-by-wire)
in the end engineering is the art of compromise.

Many thanks i.e

Welcome, although I don’t know what for.

as to LO detection advances, back end boxes prob accounts for as much advances these days as the hw itself.

AESA isn’t magical, true, but it does open up an other dimension of freedom.

Use of Space Time Adaptive Processing in AESA radars can be used for clutter rejection and will help pick up LO targets. This will also work with a PESA radar.

yeah,

actually…

The CAEW is believed to be the first radar to use a technology known as “track before detect” (TBD). Discussed since the 1970s, TBD improves the ability of a radar to detect small targets. To eliminate false alarms, conventional radars have to set a clutter and noise threshold below which radar returns are ignored. In TBD, those returns are assembled into the equivalent of a God’s-eye picture and scanned for patterns that resemble target tracks.

.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?storyID=news/DTIAEW.xml&headLine=Low-Cost%20and%20Effective%20AEW%20Systems%20Find%20Buyers

this should give some insights.

The Eurofighter is “nothing comes close”, which is not the same as “no one comes close”.

yes,
so the author was right on target.

it has nothing to do with EF.

The caption’s flawed anyhow — it was the Eurofighter which famously used the slogan “nothing comes close” :p

SOrry

you guys are way wrong on this one.

“No One Come Close” Is actually a recruiting slogan USAF used and I believe is still using.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkDp7Bgkbg