er, climb to 70000ft on your turbofan? and the air it needs will come from…. where?

with such a short wing span, climbing that high would need a high supersonic speed, something your turbofan simply can not provide

in fact, what you’re trying to make is a little bit like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]216212[/ATTACH]

chances are you won’t make it work before a couple of centuries…

yes, Luneberg Lenses are used for the F-22… if you look at their size, they’re tiny compared to the rest of the aircraft.

F-22 don’t even stand .22 caliber shots; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaoYz90giTk

The whole side of the plane is around 6 m2 I have around 9m2 that I can cover with 1 cm thick kevlar structure. It would also protect the engine..it is integrated structure…it is only 135 kilos + one fuse former behind radar ( 5 kilos ). The steel plate around the pilot about 120 kilos ( 5 mm steel ). These part would also form the forward fuselage pretty much ( except radar dome )…some overlapping parts migh increase it with 10-20 kilos. Canopy is more problematic If I wanna make it also bullet proof. A-10 has 4 cm thick plexi and Me-109 had even 9 cm thick windshield. F-18 has 17 mm thick plexi ( can take a bird stike at 540 kts ). Rear fuselage may have 6-8 mm thick kevlar and rocket holding spaces might need 3/4 inch thick kevlar or 5 mm steel casing outside and 1 sentimeter kevlar. This same structure also protects the outside of the missile bays and gives needed structural strenght with ribs. The whole wing is a big hollow plate with ribs and spars and attached to fuselage in spars and missile bays with bolts..so the wing comes of when needed. Some attachment points at front and rear. There has to be some access panels too that increase the weight a bit.

Hydraulics might eat some area in the wing for sure. 100 kg less fuel than anticipated. Structural model in 1/5 scale would be interesting. Landing gear design is ready already..and its attachments to fuse and its retraction mechanism. Could it work with compressed air like in R/C models..it would be the litest ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercarriage

you got only a part of the truth… the F-22, as any other aircraft in existance today, can’t stop even the .22cal bullets from penetrating it, that is correct… but what you fail to understand (on purpose?) is that it’s been understood long ago that there’s no way to make a viable flying armored vehicle.

Combat aircraft ever since the WWI have to face anti-aircraft weapons that are way to powerful to be prevented from penetrating the airframe with the technology of their time. Anything you may try to armor it won’t be efficient unless it is so thick and heavy that your aircraft won’t even fly (or, at best, in a straight line). That is why the combat aircraft use another way to improve survivability: they are made to have high tolerance to damage through isolation of components (so that the damaged ones don’t damage others in turn) and redundancy of components.

The only exceptions of more or less modern aircraft carrying some armor are the SU-25/39 and the A-10, which have armor plates to protect the pilot from small arms fire, which is something specific to their mission (attacking low and slow). But the sheer weight of that armor, despite their big size, makes them sluggish and completely inappropriate for air combat.

The F-22, as you said, won’t stop a .22cal bullet from penetrating it, but whatever that bullet may hit (except maybe the pilot, which is about the only part that is not redundant) will either continue to function or be isolated and the function will be maintained through redundant parts.

Then about “no way the F-22 gets your marvel into his sights”… the Japanese did just that in WWII, with aircraft like the Ki-27 that could turn on a dime, or the Ki-43 or the A6M (the Zero)… In their philosophy, the aerial combat was like a samurai duel… their problem was that other countries were looking for efficiency (kill the other guy fast, with a deadly punch, if possible unseen) rather than “elegance”… So, even if the Japanese all could turn way tighter that their American counterparts, they got slaughtered over the time… you simply don’t win a war just by trying to avoid hits… it doesn’t work that way…

@ hopsalot

news? or sellers propaganda…

Bogdan’s mission as of now is to avoid partners from bailing out of the program. what matters is not “the percentage” but simply how much cash you do have and can afford to spend on it, and how well your job will be done.

If you strip down your military for a single asset that, besides, can’t really do the job that YOU need as well as you’d need to, you loose capability.

what’s the point in spending huge amounts of money you don’t even have in order to weaken your defense?

Small countries like netherlands, denmark or belgium all have similar needs: air policing of their airspace with quite a small budget to do so: operations inside heavily defended airspace are nowehere near the top of their priorities or needs, and even those who aim at such things will mostly use cruise missiles and such stuff to get there anyway.

the only countries that eventually may have use of such technology are those that go around the planet waging wars for any reason (valid or not is another question) and these countries can be counted on the fingers of one hand: USA, UK, France… and that’s about it. And, interestingly enough, they usually have quite weak opponents that can’t really put up a credible air defense etwork… when such a network exists, it is more about economic pressure and diplomatic talk as nobody wants to get involved into something too costly, neither those three, nor their potential “enemies” like China or Russia

the Rafale had its first flight in 1986, two years after the french decided to get out of european fighter program and do stuff on their own. It was seriously delayed by the governments decision to slow down things to spare some cash as the cold war had ended and they felt there was no hurry to get it into service… had it received the fundings and orders as planned, it would have been in service by the mid 90’s

when the french finally retired the Crusaders (which were so worn out that some had broken in flight) they had to wait for sseveral years before having anything that would be able to do some air to air job… the M version was put into service first in the F1 standard to fulfill that role (fleet defense). there, again, was no hurry to put the fully developed multirole version into service, according to the politicians.

once more, the main difference is that the F-35 can’t be ready because of technical delays while everybody would love to finally get their hands on it… while the rafale couldn’t be ready because the politicians didn’t want it to be ready too early

Certainly the other 2 factors shall not be forgotten.

1/10 size F-22 would yield 1/100 of the F-22 radar signature.

That would mean total invisibly in battle field conditions.

:rolleyes:

it’s a matter of angles between surfaces (among other things)… a B-2 is huge compared to the raptor, yet its RCS is even smaller… and can remain so for a wider range of wavelenghts

So are ya saying also D-21 ignored all physics ? Is politics same as ignoring that also small countries might need to defend themselves ?

I am glad you don’t keep repeating the flying coffin phrase again.

I might be inventing an universal stealth fighter which even the future radars cannot detect. This migh need the MLU like every 20 years till about 2100..and still burns only 600-800 liters / hr ( on economy drive ) and goes supersonic on supercruise. Not diamond nor gold plated but still ( and stings like a bee ).

:rolleyes:

D-21 was a failure… your “idea” is going same way @ Mach 6 at least…

with variable air intakes, you may manage to get slightly supersonic, but your biggest problem will remain your engine which can’t cope with supersonic airflow… it is not made to do so