There is a picture out there in this forum with the strakes. They are small snubs. I was thinking the Phantom thread by you had them, but was wrong. One thing I hate about Google’s new algorithms is how it ignores old for new. With no competition you cannot even get decent searches from dogpile.com which used to help. Part of the problem was they outlawed deep web crawlers, too. 🙁

Society it appears is experiencing a retraction of knowledge under this perfect storm of legislation.

The AIM-120 greatly outranges the AIM-7 because it is less draggy, flies a ballistic trajectory, and is designed to use both pitch and roll prediction to extend its kinetic glide.

F-2 always impressed me with its ability to carry 600-gallon jugs

This is contradicting..:confused:
Absolutly all upgrade on any 4th Gen fighter does improve its capability.
Be that SH, F-15C/E, F-16C, Mig-29, EF, Rafale, Su-**.

I’m talking about what is good for Boeing, not the USAF or USN. Boeing simply isn’t going to get domestic F-15SE orders. Trying to squeeze more effort out of F-15 money pit. What is possible is attacking the soft underbelly of F-35 orders, that of its initial price. Aiming for a stealth F-16 sized fighter that is cheaper than F-35 is an option. The F-16 is popular around the world because it is affordable. Its price makes it difficult to sell eurocanards (Gripen, EF2K, and Rafale) abroad.

It would be available in wartime. They don’t load it for weight savings, giving it a slight bump in peacetime performance.

A stealth F-15 that isn’t really stealth doesn’t make much sense, it sounds like aiming urine upwind. They should have considered a more redesigned F/A-18 that targets the USN and undercuts F-35. You could have even justified an F110-powered miniaturized F-32 derived from the work on X-32. Both options piggyback on COTS technology and aim for domestic sales that undercut the opponent. F-35 is so bleeding edge that growing pains in the program keep sounding like surprises that either delay or add cost to the final product. What ever happened to beating out the gee whiz guys with good enough and practical?

I think thobbes confused J-8 with JL-8, which is from the K-8. It would be silly to buy J-8 or J-8II for attack missions.

Venezuela will probably move towards J-10A to maximize their Russian and Chinese loyalties. Utility helicopters will probably lean towards the best open market solutions. Look for them to maximize the paramilitary forces under the new guy. It’s survival of the regime.