Going a bit further back, I would have binned the UK emphasis on VSTOL, and focussed instead on building a high-low mix of fighters. Having suffered the ’57 defence review, the UK would need to buy American (or equivalent) for the ‘high’, probably the Phantom, but could go for a UK project for the ‘low’. I would look at building the Jaguar as a fighter, to be a cheap low end fighter, to bulk out the force. The RAF would get c.400 Phantoms, and c.400 Jaguars, and another c.200 Phantoms for the Royal Navy.

I would have built up the UK carrier force in the ’60s, buying a suitable 50,000 ton carrier, and a larger number of subs. I would buy large numbers of VC-10s, to serve as tankers and transports, keeping the project on track, perhaps as many as 20 a year, and the same with a UK production line for Hercules perhaps. I would can the whole Nimrod project, and just do what Canada did, and build a heavily modified version of the Orion (i.e. buy the Orion airframe, but fitted with Nimrod type systems). A total of c.80 VC-10s, c.80 C-130s and c.80 Orions would be a good start. I would also buy a lot more helicopters, possibly building the Lynx as an enlarged Huey, more akin to the Bell 214ST, but with the advanced four bladed rotor.

For the bomber force, I would heavily upgrade the Vulcans, with new standoff missiles, ideally the Skybolt, since a lot of the problems were almost sorted by the time it was cancelled. Ideally, they would be replaced by a purchase of FB-111s, once the problems were sorted, though not ideal bombers, they would be good enough. In the late ’60s, the UK would focus on designing a multi-role fighter, similar to the Tornado, but with more powerful engines, as a genuine fighter. Ideally, they would be able to replace all the Phantoms and Jaguars with one common type, operated by both RAF and Navy.

You noticed that Great Britain ran into serious economical problems after WW2. The force it had was actually disproportional to the economic power.

One thing always surprises me: all programs where UK has serious participation in, are not famous in UK, for example Eurofighter or A400M. Dropping out of those programs would finally make the British aviation industry the little idiot of the much larger American industry, while in both other programs the British participation is larger, British influence is bigger, and the British are welcomed (while not irreplacebale).

And the winner is GONZO. Mr. Udvar-Hazy owns 824 airliners with 254 more on order. He is the CEO of the International Lease Finance Corp. and the following newspaper article makes interesting reading.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/10flyboy.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I don’t think ILFC belongs to its CEO. Maybe the English Queen is the winner, because maybe the Royal Air Force belongs technically to her. Like with the Royal Navy: Her Majesty Ship (H.M.S.).

F-16 has been shot down by MiG-23 in confliction between Israel and Syria then also was shot down by Pnavia Tornado in NATO’s exercise! Now in my oppnion, the Fighting Falcon can be shot down by any aircraft, even a bomber like Tornado!
All of advantage that F-16 is only nice looking, nothing more!

I actually learned the most write-offs of Fighting Falcons are due to even less dangerous things as Tornados: Birds. What a bl00dy aircraft!

For example, Variable Incidence. I wonder how many in this board can raise their hands up and tell you flat the name of an operational fighter with actual variable incidence wing and what variable incidence is.

F-8

Then there is variable camber. Nobody talks about that anymore because that is already a standard feature in every wing. Well, except for those with “hard” wings with wing fences.

Hard to find a starting point. Most aircraft had leading and trailing edge devices, but since F-16 these have become useful outside take-off and landing. So F-16 got a variable camber wing.

In practical use, variable geometry wings were rarely fully swept in flight. Most missions were flown with wings in mid-sweep somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees. Mid sweep gives the best handling and range for high subsonic mach numbers.

Which is quite clear if you have a setting optimised for higher (>1.2) Mach number or high dynamic pressure flight.
Most interesting swept-wing aircraft is the MiG-23, which is more than any other swing-winger optimised for high Mach numbers. When one looks at drag the advantages are clear, but when one looks at the weight and overall performance the disadvantages are obvious, too.
Swing-wingers are better in the corners of the flight envelope (low-speed low, high mach high, high speed high). But with lowered consideration to this skills and more “multirole” airframes the swing-wing is indeed out of fashion.

High-wingloads do allow long time low level flights, all the others can do that for brief dashes or at reduced speeds only.

Possibly a moderate wing loading combined with active gust load allevation could improve low-level ride quality, too. With strong wings and quick slat-flap systems, a fighter wing has the potential for it.

One issue with variable wings are that when they are swept backwards the centre of aerodynamic moves backwards. This together with that it also get pushed backwards when the plane goes supersonic creates certain difficulties. It would probably interfere with the wanted unstable configurations of today.

For this reason swing-wing fighters have quite huge elevators. Actually, with a relaxed stability or unstable design in subsonic this problem could be adverted a little bit. Stability in supersonic regime otherwise calls for huge stability margins in subsonic (static stability: aerdynamic center behind center of gravity).

Sometimes. Apparently when they were testing the Tomcat’s wing-box the test rig broke before the wing-box did 😀

Static strength does not automatically mean good fatigue behavior. Normally a structure can sustain only a small amount of its static strength for fatigue reasons. Means, even if a structure accepts 1000 lbft moment, it would crack early if this static limit is achieved often. And now you see: Each time an F-14 pilot makes a high-G maneuver, he actually steals airframe life. The limitations for the Tomcat for the max G speak books. I guess the 8.5G limit for the MiG-23 was only possibly due to disregard of lifetime issues. A conventional airframe can achieve better fatigue behavior with lower weight, especially designs like the F-16 (which, however, did have some considerable fatigue issues because pilots used “all 9” too often).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing-wing

This should explain why VG wings haven’t taken the aviation world by storm!

Actually, the wiki article is only partly wrong. The last sentence says, that the advent of relaxed stability has made the swing-wing superfluent. I can’t see how this can be.

Anyways. The swing wing was always used – as previous posters already pointed out – for aircraft with low-level penetration capability and short landing distances. Today the better use of high angle of attack non-linear lift and the much stronger engines make them superfluent. With current engine technology you could give the MiG-23 an engine that practically kicks it into the skies. Current fighters (EF, F-22) need less than 500m take-off roll in a air2air configuration with unrestricted engines. In the mid 60s engines weren’t that good. Also, the aircrafts in question were not desired to be fighters (F-111, Tornado, etc). So high TWR wasn’t of much use after take-off.

Swing-wings are a structural nightmare, set tight limits on G-load and can end an aircraft’s life much earlier than for comparable conventional aircraft.