Boring looking
1) F-22. It looks like a MiG-25 or F-15 that melted.
2) Anything with a canard, except the Rafale since they sculpted the forward fuselage in a cool way. For the most part though, canards are like the new cliche’ of fighter design.
3) JSF. The inlets are kind of cool, but otherwise it’s the same freaking layout we saw on the F-15, F-18, MiG-29, Su-27 only with a single engine. It’s the old cliche’.

Cool looking
1) YF-23 – It looks like a dragon.
2) F-16XL – It looks fast and cool with it’s cranked arrow wing (Which it was).
3) Bird of Prey – The coolest wing design flown in the past 30 years. It just lives up to it’s name in the Klingon sense.

FYI, for those of you who don’t know, he is talking about the material that covers the hingeline, not where the side edges of the flight controls abut adjoining structure. They usually use the shallow diamond edges there.

As for the “ablation” seen on the interior of the starboard rudder, I can’t tell if that’s wear or something actually supposed to be there. However, I wouldn’t be shocked, if it is wear, that it’s caused by the nozzle heat, efflux and possibly sound, especially when you consider the effects of the nozzle efflux vectoring near there.

Of course, it could also be a maintenance guy had to get in there to “fix” something and since it was just a test or ferry flight they weren’t worried about fixing the gap sealer.

That’s a nice pic, BTW, of the flight controls in “Airbrake” mode.

Edit: I just turned off my ZA and noticed that other pic posted above, I don’t know if it’s a gap or the actual actuator we’re seeing there but it’s obviously normal, at least it appears to be. Great pics, none the less 🙂

As for cost over runs with regard to Northrop aircraft, the B-2 was mainly as expensive as it was due to the cuts in numbers built. However, if that was one of the reasons they chose L-M over Northrop, they obviously screwed themselves on that deal since L-M didn’t do a very good job of contianing the cost over runs on the F-22.

As for the A-12, the biggest culprit in the failure of the A-12 wasn’t McDonnell Douglas or the actual prime in that contract, General Dynamics. Anyone who is familiar with the story knows the number one screw up in that program was the U.S. Navy itself followed by General Dynamics. If McDonnell Douglas’s failure on that program was a mark against Northrop, then General Dynamics failure should have been a bigger mark against Lockheed Martins performance since they were teamed with GD at the time, along with Boeing. So that dog don’t hunt as an argument.

Second, Northrop was ready to fly their ATF one year before Lockheed Martin because Lockheed Martin’s original design was so screwed up. Northrop was ordered not to fly until Lockheed Martin could catch up by redesigning their ATF prototype. So please don’t hand me this b.s. about cost over runs and competence when Northrop was basically punished for not screwing up royally to begin with. Also, as a result of Northrop’s experience with the B-2, I would be more inclined to give them the contract, because that means they should have the “bugs” worked out with large composite structures that were needed for the ATF. That’s one of the reasons L-M teamed with Boeing on the ATF, to take advantage of the experience they gained on the B-2 program. So once again, that argument is a non-starter.

I know what my friends on the inside told me and I stand by that assessment. Of course, if what you meant is that all the above were used as excuses, along with the facade of the NATF program, as a reason to hand L-M the ATF contract, I heartily agree.

Just to clear up some of the misconceptions here

1) The ATF was designed to be able to outfly anything in the sky in the foreseeable future. Both the YF-22 and the YF-23 met those requirements, including in terms of maneuverability. The YF-23 didn’t need thrust vectoring to meet the mission requirements, however, Lockheed used TV to make their design even more agile.

2) The YF-23 was vastly superior to the YF-22 in terms of speed and stealth. The P&W powered YF-22 needed AB to get through the transonic speed range and could only supercruise at M=1.4. The P&W powered YF-23 Supercruised at M=1.8 and reportedly flew at M=2.2 with AB. The GE powered YF-22 could get through the transonic drag rise with out burner and supercruised at M=1.6. The YF-23 with GE engines supercruised at M=2.2+ and had a top speed of Mach=2.8+ with AB, some even suggested it’s top speed with AB as M=3+, but that’s still classified so I can’t confirm it. I should note both YF-23’s could go supersonic without AB. One of the areas, however, where the YF-22 had an advantage was reportedly in supersonic turn rate. It is vastly superior to most aircraft in that area due to the control power offered by it’s thrust vectored engines in combination with the airframes supercruise ability.

I should note that these numbers were obviously improved on for the production F-22 with it’s M=1.7 supercruise capability. How much of that was due to aerodynamic refinement and how much of that was due to increased thrust in the P&W engine I don’t have the answers to, either.

3) The main reason the YF-22 was chosen over the YF-23 was political. The people I knew involved in the down select prefered the Lockheed Martin design because they said the Northrop people were very arrogant, because they knew they had the Sh*t Hot design. I actually prefered the YF-23 myself and if it had been built, it wouldn’t have required nearly as much modification to turn it into a FB-23 as the F-22 does to be turned into the FB-22. In fact, the main reason offered for choosing the YF-22 over the YF-23 was that the YF-22 would make a better NATF (The Naval version) than the YF-23 would. The NATF was cancelled less than one month after the down select. It was the excuse to choose the YF-22 over the YF-23, nothing more.

4) For those of you who think the F-22 could easily be brought down or targeted by IR and IR weapons, I have some bad news for you, good luck. Stealth means reducing all signatures, not just RADAR. As such, the F-22 circulates it’s fuel throughout it’s structure before it is sent to the engines and burned to control the F-22’s IR signature.

5) The part of the flight envelope I can think of where the MiG-31 is possibly better than an F-22 is high speed on the deck in a high q environment. The MiG-31 is designed to fly at 1000mph on the deck, to be able to intercept cruise missles. I doubt the F-22 was designed to such a high q value due to the amount of weight it would add. However, the F-22 with it’s excellent look down shoot down capability wouldn’t have any problem taking it out from 40K+ feet where it will be supercruising.

6) If the MiG-31 really had a chance against the F-22, Russia would be building MiG-31’s like hot cakes right now, not developing the PAK-FA. As we know, however, the opposite is true. That’s the reality of the situation right there.

Hi guys,
Just to clear up my references on the trapezoidal wing, it wasn’t an opinion, it’s a fact they are better in the transonic speed range then a delta. My back ground is in aerospace engineering and I’ve read enough papers on it to know that’s why planes like the F-18 have such a wing shape. It has much less to do with the critical mach number and everything to do with area ruling. A trapezoidal wing offers a much better area distribution, closer to a Sears-Haack ideal distribution then a delta wing does for most confiurations in the transonic range. That means a trapezoidal wing generates much less wave drag in the transonic range than a delta wing does. At higher Mach numbers, near Mach 2, a delta wing has clear advantages for supercruise. However, once one factors in the ability to maneuver throughout the speed range and all of the other design points that need to be considered, the delta wing looks less and less attractive and ends up being modified to look like the wing on the F-22 which is about half way between a trapezoidal wing and a delta wing, which makes sense, given it’s mission design parameters.

One thing I haven’t seen discussed here, which goes a long way towards winning a fighter contract, is manufacturing offsets. All three aircraft would easily fill Singapores needs. What most likely happened is the EU wasn’t offering enough, economically, to make the deal. Yes, you practically have to bribe other nations to buy your aircraft these days.

As for supercruise, although the F-104 could technically supercruise it didn’t have enough fuel for it to mean much, outside of an outright intercept. One of the most important ratio’s, with regard to an aircraft with supercruise ability is the fuel weight fraction. Right now, the production F-22 is marginal in that regard due to weight growth. However, it is better than anything else out there in that regard.

Oh, I forgot to add, just to keep the thread on topic, my nation’s fighter aircraft has a bigger penis then your nation’s fighter aircraft. I know everyone here isn’t like that, but it seems 90% of the time, that’s what these threads turn into.

I went to that site last night after seeing that drawing. It’s pretty good fan art, I agree. I think the plan view drawings are official, though or from a publication. The ones showing the plan views of the MFI, MiG1.42 and the production model. Do you know anything about the drawing comparison there, i.e., it’s source? Just curious.

I actually have three view drawings of the Fairchild design, but I can’t remember where they’re at right now. I need to hire a librarian to organize all of my books, magazines, and papers 😀 The picture that Aerospacetech posted, though is almost exactly like the Fairchild submissions. Based on what I remember of my three view drawings, it’s probably 80% accurate with minor details being the difference.

Here is a larger pic of the NAA F/X submission cutaway as shown above
Internal Cutaway