What think ye all? Will it fly? Any chance of it being the new Hercules (i.e. the standard to meet or beat in its class)? Will it sell?

I think there are some differences to the Hercules. The C-130 is a fully capable tactical lifter, while the C-390 will be restricted in the usage of rough airfields I guess. I have also some doubts with the field performance.

However, the “strategic” airlift (stuff from airport A to airport B) will be handled quite OK.

One thing: I haven’t seen any figures on the MTOW. The range and payload are most likely “edge values”, means, it won’t make the stated 5900km with 19 tons payload. With a number on the MTOW we could make more educated guesses.

Embrear is mounting a civil wing on a military fuselage, with all advantages and disadvantages.

A precise explanation can only be given by experts, but an american engineer once commented that the best place for canards (probably during a discussion on the optimum placement of canards) was on one’s enemy’s aircraft. Paul (overscan) , probably can quote the incident with complete details.

It was actually Kelly Johnson, and he would surely have more to say about the issue. Fact is that with current control techniques either design can bring comparable results. I have the feeling that canards are beneficial for aerodynamic design, but aerodynamics are not everything and if the margin is low, the canards might well be abandonded for other advantages.

I think one need to differentiate between different canard philosophies. The Eurofighter for example has canards clearly ahead of the wing, while some design use something like coupled canards, which are (seen from above) partly above the wing.

Canards are advantgeous over a pure delta. And the delta is still the most common wing planform of fighter aircraft.

The B-58 had no non-nuclear capability in service. The RS-70 final production iteration would have been capable of carrying conventional weapons.

The delivered pound TNT (or whatever) is equally priced as if it was delivered by ICBM or UPS Overnight. The idea of making conventional conflict with Mach 3 aircraft is even too strange for the USAF. And as long as you are able to penetrate the others airspace and drop something with some chance of survival, the military mission is fulfilled. If the sense of additional spending is to reduce the number of body bags, then other option seems two magnitudes more promising than buying new bombers.
No justification to waste billions of dollars. In my opinion, the cancellation of the B-70 was absolutely the right decision, as was the decision to cancel the YF-12 or F-108.

In Russia, they didn’t even develop the T-100 into anything useful. Finally it helped to develop some crude methods of CG shifting and it reached a top speed of M1.8.

Than the B-52? Mach 3 and 75,000 vs Mach .85 at 40,000 for starters.

Very primitive assumption, which possibly helps over North Vietnam, but surely not over the Soviet Union. No problem to build a missile that reaches 100,000ft and Mach 5. Guidance no problem either. Add some MW to the illuminator. Due to high altitude the B-70 can be detected hundreds of miles before it enters the airspace.
The B-52 had at least some capability to survive a missile hit. I think the lost airframes reflect only partly the number of SAM hits over North Vietnam. A Mach 3 aircraft has less room for trading.

I can say it. Consider this: a number of B-52s were lost over Vietnam. A good part of them were due to SA-2s. Now, the A-12 and SR-71 flew over Vietnam and Korea at speeds and altitudes roughly the same as the B-70 would have flown. Lots of SA-2s were fired at them, and nobody ever managed to bring one down. Had those BUFF crews been in Valkyries, they wouldn’t have been shot down.

There were a lot of plans for making the aircraft far more survivable as well, so it would have been a legitimate part of the nuclear triad as well had it been placed into service.

Here’s my list:
B-70
F-12B
F-23A
Yak-141
Tu-144D

Aha, I would love to see 100 750lbs bombs seperate from a Mach3 Valkyrie. It would remain a dream, no matter if the Valkyrie went into service or not. During the Vietnam conflict he B-58 was operationally available, still it wasn’t used. Why? Because it was (though just being a lame Mach 2 aircraft) an extremely specialised, very complicated aircraft. In SE Asia it would have been completely misplaced. Same applies for the Valkyrie, possibly even more so.

The Valkyrie in operational service would have been a disaster for the American tax payer, like all B-52 successors were.
The losses of B-52 crews (in KIA and MIA) are equal to those in one bad week in on the DMZ front, and they do not justify billions of expense. The loss-to-destruction ratio is still hundreds of times higher for a killed B-52 crew member compared to a no-name grunt, send home in a bodybag after his first encounter.

And: in Linebaker II the USAF and USN managed to silence the Vietnamese air defence within one week. The loss ratio was quote acceptable, significantly below WW2 levels. So why replace an aircraft?

In prices of 1962 the USAF could have one entire wing of B-52 for one Valkyrie. I think the USAF still regrets they didn’t build an B-52I with 4 engines and more structural reserves.

@all:
all aircrafts listed were well away from any operational use. Some (for example the B-70) can be considered a disaster when in service. The only aircraft I accept as close to service entry is the TSR.2. Why the British government killed this aircraft remains the everlasting secret. The TSR.2 was my opinion possibly equal or even better than the F-111A (hard to say, when the F-111 had remained a prototype, everybody would cry for it today).

One question: in the early years until ~1980 there was plenty of competition, for each program there were often a dozen applications with normally 2 to 3 equally good contenders. Some programs used prototypes, some not. However, one connection between nearly all programs is that they blew up their cost plan and went into service later than expected. So, from all experience we cannot really say that competition reduces prices or delay.

The last point did not matter at all, the fixed inlets in mind.
The F-14 with F110 engines and fixed inlets was down to Mach 1,88 from Mach 2,4.

Sure it didn’t matter, but it is interesting to note that F-18 has significantly slower top speed than F-16, although both have comparable thrust to weight, engines and inlets. So other things must be of importance. My guesses:
– non-existent wing-sweep on F-18
– more trim-drag in supersonic for F-18
– probably less speedy, more subsonic optimised engines (the F100 came from the M2+ F-15)
But only guesses.

So you are in agreement with DJCross that the F/A-18 has a straight wing? This was all that I was attempt to address.

Yes, I think one can call it a straight wing. However, I wouldn’t sign his statement that the wing is the reason for high drag and bad range. And if he doesn’t have deep inside knowledge of the F-18’s aerodynamics, I would it rate a “wild ass guess”. In textbooks the wing sweep’s influence on drag is often covered very academic.

Then wasn’t this an issue with the F-5 as well? As far as i understand it, the wing is where the F-18 still shows it’s descendance from Northrop’s original lightweight fighter. Which had supersonic performance at low cost as one of it’s main selling points.

I think to recover the lower sweep, you need to use a thinner airfoil. That may lead to structural implications, and you have lower volume for fuel. The advantage of the rather straight wing is the good lift, especially with leading edge devices (which all Northrop aircraft had).

Sweepback has three aims:
– increase of dry cruise mach number by delaying drag divergence, may also be achieved with thinner profile
– reduction of “sound barrier” drag peak, especially meaningful for older supersonic jets which had problems with climbing over it
– reduction of supersonic drag by keeping the wings out of the Mach cones of the bow. Below Mach 2 of very limited importance, but may be a reason for the slow top speed of the F-18.