Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning the rationale of UCAVs in general – it’s just that I’ve seen enough projects ‘grow’ themselves into cancellation that I have serious doubts as to the current direction J-UCAS is going. The ‘original’ UCAV designs from the 1990s (8-12K weight, SSB payload) seemed to offer a better justification than an F110-powered X-47B. We’ll have to wait & see whether it survives.

Indian1973 & Tmor – you might want to have a look at the new ducted-fan UAV proposed by Kestrel Aerospace in the UK. I’m sure I saw the same design in T3…!

The MiG SM-50 (MiG-17 with a liquid rocket) came close, as would have the rocket-equipped Lightening (though since it was a double Scorpion, I guess that would have been four…).

The most insane three-engine fighter has to be the Polikarpov I-152/DM-2. A biplane with two ramjets. That’s what comes of state-sponsored vodka !

The three Hueys are all 214 Ishafans (the IAF also has a handful of AB212s, which look similar from the frontal angle (with near-identical intake/fairing contours), but I’m fairly sure all your birds are Lycoming powered).

The two ‘civvy’ birds are the Panha 2061 (reverse-engineered AB206 JetRanger, subsequently ‘replaced’ by the equally-reverse-engineered Shahed-274 and Shahed-278) and Panha 2-75 Shabaviz (reverse-engineered AB205A Huey).

There’s a clue on the rear fuselage 😀

You say tomato, I say tomato, Boeing says joined wing, Lockheed Martin says box wing (“now with wing[let]s”).

Probably one of their Common Support Aircraft (CSA) proposals. CSA ran out of money, and the role has reverted back to the E-2, S-3 and F/A-18E/F.

Can’t comment on the new lid, but the IRST will be fitted to the fleet downstream (I’d guess 2007/8). The PIRATE sensor package was not intended to be available for IOC, but will be part of the multi-role FOC spec. Productionization contract was awarded last year.

Good to see the Euros have twigged onto the block concept (“No congressman, it’s not late, it’ll just be added in a later block…”) :diablo:

I was ignoring Albacore since she was only an experimental vessel.

Couple of points. Firstly, if you believe the marketing speel, the Skyflash was a wunder-missile, with significantly better capabilities than the E model Sparrow. It was probably out-ranged by the AIM-7F/M (of little relevance given real-world ROE), but its targeting capabilities were allegedly still comparable with the newer missiles.

Secondly, IIRC the F-4M was a genuine swing role aircraft. Little in the way of guided ASMs, but it trucked a fair number of BL755s across Welsh firing ranges.

That said, the slats and internal M61 do it for me.

Great choice of pics for comparison btw.