I think is not the best moment not just for hgotshotfor the whole thread, last few pages were a collection of rantings, unsubstantiated affimations, deluded hopes and so on…
You can do much more better than that, crew :eagerness:.

Probably F-35 is really a sort of Jack of all trades, master of none thing but if the alternative is resuming the production of the Queen of Hangar Queens…

This information was already posted here multiple times. Still -8, -9, -10, -11 and -12 remaining. Then T-50S-1 and on.

So T-50S-1 would be the “first serial” item or it will be the first of standard serial production?

The fact that in this case they have not published a photo either is almost indicative of the fact that 6th prototype is something quite different from the previous ones but still not the final version.
They are in the state trial phase, so the armed force actually rules the game and they have not any interest in product promotion, so I expect they would try to keep things covered until they have all the planes they ordered to Sukhoi ddesign bureau in home.
So, 9th prototype if not the 10th already, if:dev2: it is the one for first serial production…

Well the publication I read got the information from people who were actually in the decision making, rather than making it up.

Unless F-22 development started before 1936 when Chain Home went operational, then they would have known about VHF radar. Next you’ll tell me they started developing the F-22 before Lord Rayleigh discovered Rayleigh scattering. Unfortunately, whilst there are some good aircraft publication, some contributors are simply idiots, and there’s no easy way of saying that, but it’s the truth. Oh and the F-35 wouldn’t be any more immune to this affect than the F-22 is, nor would any aircraft with fins, or any aircraft with an RCS that’s extremely small relative to the threat wavelength.

Sigma, although I appreciatealso a heated debate, just not put your own words in my mouth, look back at my previous post and you would easily see how you completely mistook my position into the exact opposite of what I wrote,
You are saying just an example that I consider F-35 having a better RCS than F-22, while in all my post I affirm just the contrary.
What I said is just another thing: even if F-22 was designed with stricter RCS requisite than all other fighter planes around, more in particular for what it concern the flank and rear aspect such superior level wouldn’t simply be enought for the mission it was originally conceived for.
At the contrary, the RCS of other planes, althought inferior would be still enought for the way less ambitious missions, obviously differing one from the other, that they were thinked for.
Now, such thesis can also be deadly wrong but if expressing such an opinion let’s feel you authorized to call some person you doesn’t know and some serious professional publishers you have never read anything an idiot, well, it doesn’t seems me that you are doing a good service to yourself.

Who wrote those publications? Pierre Sprey? It would also make zero sense to continue with F-35 development if that were the case. You think they didn’t already know about VHF radar before the F-22? You think they didn’t test that even when developing the F-117? You think they didn’t notice the F-117 getting shot down well before 2005? Detection doesn’t equal targeting and detection range is still vastly reduced even for VHF, then you have the EW on top of that, which the F-117 never had.

It’s not a bold statement at all. The statement that it was cancelled due to VHF radar, which is ancient, WWII ancient, runs counter to all known events. VHF radar isn’t something new, it’s something old, very old, older than jet fighters even. I mean, Chain Home was HF/VHF band and that’s only what? 80 years old. Your publications must be absolutely dire, I would free up some space in your cellar if I were you.

Errh..no , Andrea Nativi, Pietro Bonsignore, Fabio Coniglio and a lot of other serious professionals on field of italian defense publishing.
And no, the continuation of F-35 development made a lot of sense just because the introduction of some counter stealth technologies, not sufficient at all to negate the huge advantage of VLO planes but surely enought to force a reconsideration about tactics and modus operandi of said planes when they have to face them.
For the rest, they have diametral opposite positions to the ones of Pierre Sprey and more notably Carlo Kopp with their anti-Lighting bias: the mission assigned to F-35 are still feasible also against a radically upgraded AD defence System while it is the F-22 that would find great difficulties to perform the one it was almost exclusively designed around.
So, thank you but I think i’ll keep this excellent magazines in my cellar and send you instead my own Latin and Greek books, maybe they would be of some use for you in evaluating the true value of old things…

For the rest, it was not that development of what would become the F-22 started in 2005 or even in 1998 when the F-117 shootdown happened: it started much more earlier.
So when they became fully aware of the problem and it took some time for it even after Kosovo war, the project was near to completion so what would they have done, in your opinion? Scrap all the program?
Or instead keep on trying to find some feasible solution or at least try to salvage something from the project?
They chose the second one, and in the end they obtained not the Air Dominance Fighter they dreamt on at the beginning but almost an excellent 5th gen Air Superiority Fighter able to confortably operate on high altitudes that the F-15C would even find difficult to reach.

So , let’s say that it ended way better than the great majority of those wunderwaffen programs they carried on during the last phase of the cold war and even more during Bush sr and Clinton presidencies that ended regularly in big money for nothing.

Nope, it was interrupted due to cost and manufacturing complexities and in no small part, because of the Iraq War and the need to funnel more money to the army. Enemy air defence systems had exactly zero to do with it.

No contradiction between the two statements, really.
It is also (not exclusively) because its effectiveness felt short of the expected performances that the cost and manifacturing complexity were considered too high and its production was discontinued.
Probably if it worked in the expected way cost wouldn’t have been an issue
Or also the contrary could have been: if the original expected mission were found unfeasibile but the plane wouldn’t have been so costly and difficult to mantain its production would possibly have been maintained.

This was not the mission of the ATF as envisioned, nor the F-22 as developed. There was no loiter whatsoever as a requirement. The ATF was envisioned as an air superiority fighter with short field capability (thrust reversers), superior agility (in the newer metrics), low observables (written in after the initial RFI), the ability to fly the majority of combat time over enemy territory in super cruise. Possibly more I am forgetting off the top of my head. The ATF project evolved around the idea that airfields would be under attack in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. The ATF would be able to use airfield dispersion, high sortie rate (bit of a joke now), and would operate primarily in AFCENT theater where it would take off, accelerate to supersonic speeds as it crossed into enemy territory to engage and destroy enemy frontal aviation before they could support WARPAC thrusts.

As I stated, the 2-d wedge nozzles were chosen for more than one reason: LO characteristics, lesser cooling requirements to meet IR signature, lower drag, excellent performance in dry thrust, ease of fitting thrust reversers (as was part of the original requirements).
Other “Fifth Gen” don’t use them because they have different design goals, in that the requirements are valued differently than in the F-22. The F-35’s LOAN nozzle meet the LO requirement, is less mechanically complex, and the advantages to be gained in vectoring thrust in pitch for a single engine aircraft are not worth it. Not to mention the need to swivel and spread out the heat footprint for the “B” model. The other two, J-20 and PAK-FA, most likely have different design objectives.

There is no best or worst nozzle in this case. The PAK-FA uses a 3-d thrust vectoring nozzle because the RuAF values super maneuverability at slow speeds most likely (that is not to say that the 2nd stage engine will repeat this, for all we know they’re in the process of trying out different nozzle configurations to meet the requirements). The US did not find value in 3-d thrust vectoring (found little yaw response and excessive leakage, but that could have been due to modeling with closely spaced engines or whatever), and they found it hard to meet the drag and signature goals. The J-20 is an odd fowl that seems to have design requirements unique to the Chinese, but it is important to note that the Chinese are still working out the engineering problems with turbofan design, so they might have taken a KISS approach.

We agree in many thing about this so, it seems.
Just allow me to point the fact that between the various too ambitious requirement the ATF program envisaged, the ones that were effectively not dropped were the one that directly related to the mission I referred to, while others, that would have probably been even more important in today’s environment, just as for an example the side looking radars and the ability of operate from unpaved surface were dropped mercilessy as the program’s cost exploded.

So, let’s just say that both F-35, J-20 and PAK-FA for the respective mission that they would be tasked to perform would not need to have the same level of stealth regardless for the angle of vision that F-22 would have needed for its original intended mission, so they are perfectly fine with round noozles.
F-22 in the mission that is presently tasked for would neither also need it so much but given that an austere version of it (maybe for export as an alternative for F-35) was neither tried or even imagined we would never know…