All the high performance fleet defenders had some sort of high lift device. F-8 had adjustable wings, F-4 had boundary layer control, F-14 had swing wings. F-18 and F-35 have nothing and consequently their supersonic performance is poor. A fixed wing F-14 would have required some other high lift device, as the book says. Either that or give up on state of the art kinematics and go the F-18E/F route.

While I agree that ship-borne aircrafts generally feature some sort of high lift devices, not all of them carry the same level of weight/cost penalty as the swing wing. Look at Rafale-M, which almost exclusively relies on its low wing loading to achieve low speed performance.

you aren’t seriously suggesting that the Knights ONLY do display formation!?

I think half of them are Instructors in VKS.

Couldn’t the same be said for other air forces? I mean all those hours spent on formation flying on the airframe do incur a hefty cost. That’s why the blues still flies A model hornets. Couldn’t the knights pick a more economical choice? Like the Yak-130?

I’m sure this has been discussed before but does anyone know what’s in that stinger-tail? Anti-spin chute?

Great pic of T-50 by the way.

What is that?

Its not the recessed Phoenix launcher… what is it? I didn’t think F-14s got FAST packs…?

They where Phoenix launch rails that double as external fuel tanks. I don’t think they were every built though.

My new acrylic painting. Exercise Red Flag, Alaska 2012. Best regards, Piotr Dubowik http://www.sztukaitechnika.pl/blog/60,red-flag-alaska.html

Impressive work! You’ve captured the menacing shape of the viper nicely. Interesting that the F-16 is on mil power while the F-22 in full afterburner, in a presumably a rolling scissors fight.

For those who can’t stop bitching about surface details, I present to you…

[ATTACH=CONFIG]233160[/ATTACH]

This is certainly not a good week for aviation. One fatality and one injury. R.I.P.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-space-crash-virgin-idUSKBN0IK24220141031

This is a really sad news. R.I.P. Michael Alsbury.

This has been doing the rounds today:

http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/5286120/

Now clearly a drone, I was wondering is it actually an X47 in the hover? And what weaponry is being used? There’s light flashes and then the explosions.

The whole thing looks more like a test to me than an actual combat strike but I could be wrong.

Normally you would expect a delay for the sound after the visible explosion. I guess they also had advanced tech to make sound travel at the speed of light. :rolleyes:

I mean come on…(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELe52UcZJb4)