One cannot just slap a V-tail and TVC onto an aircraft and call it a day. There are significant aerostructural and controllability/stability factors that are taken into account when designing an aircraft. You’d have to see how such a configuration would perform throughout various mach numbers and weapon/tank configurations in terms of controllability, flutter, center of lift and mass, drag, etc… It would probably require far more work than is worthwhile.

The research to do many of those things has already been done, and certainly its aerodynamics in various configurations have been extensively studied and tested. The F-15 was used in all sorts of TVC, canard, tailless, etc, trials, e.g. F-15 STOL/MTD, F-15 VISTA, F-15 MANX, etc. Granted there would still be plenty of work to do for weapons carriage, launch envelopes, etc, but it’s not as daunting as starting from scratch.

“Ainsley Earhardt named one of the 15 hottest Newswomen in US”

… flew in an F-16 with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.

Er, yeah, Ainsley Earhardt is pretty hot, but she is not a military pilot. She got a ride in the back seat of a Thunderbirds F-16, same as lots of other reporters.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3919937/aerial-acrobatics

She sure looks cute in that flightsuit though.

Erkokite :

As far as I know , the active capabilities of Spectra have never been used outside of French territory . Some capabilities have been demonstrated during the South-Korean and Singaporian evaluations but under tight restrictions and against foreign aircraft flown by Korean and Sing pilots .

Cheers .

Incorrect. The Greeks talked about how the ECCM in their F-16C Block 52+ were able to compensate for Rafales’ active jamming during exercises a few years ago.

Here’s a thread that talked about those exercises, to refresh your memory:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1355569&postcount=357

djcross.. just to make things clear, what do you say clinton cancelled? teh A-12 AvengerII development? it was Dick Cheney (who was there with Bush as president) who cancelled it… and if you want to refresh your memory about it, you should read “The five billion dollar misunderstanding” book… quite interesting how an apparently good idea for a good aircrft can be butchered (and not by the politicians, but those who were supposed to make it)

Was about to post the same thing. The Bush I administration canceled the A-6F, the A-12, and the F-14D, basically gutting the USN’s long range strike capability. The Clinton administration went on a procurement holiday of sorts, and a lot of airframes retired under their watch, but they really didn’t cancel any major aviation programs themselves. The fact is that most of those have happened under Republican administrations.

Exposed ? Well , not quite so when I look at what the -9M seeker can actually “see” . To start with , there is no way for the seeker to get a “look-up” attitude because of the aircraft ‘s body and wings wich proves that the F-22 has not been made for dogfighting (we knew it) .

Of course the F-22 isn’t optimized for dogfighting. It just happens to be better at it than other aircraft 😉

In a hard turning dogfight with IR missiles , the Raptor will NOT be at ease and will get shot by any fighter with wingtip IR missiles and/or HMS .

This does not seem to have hampered the F-22 much in exercises, including at al Dhafra. If you actually look at the angle the missile is out into the airstream, it has a sufficiently wide field of view – in real life, even “close in” dogfights are not happening at such short ranges that masking of the seeker by the airframe is an issue most of the time.

At any rate, as I said earlier this is no longer going to be an issue since the Increment 3.2 F-22s can use AIM-9X, which will do away with the need for LOBL entirely.

Now the drawback of the F22 is that it doesn’t have a dogfight missile. Nor LOBL capability which could come in handy to pull a quick shot compared to firing an AMRAAM.

The F-22 uses the AIM-9M currently with LOBL. The AIM-9 bay door opens and the rail extends the missile so that its seeker is exposed.

The AIM-9X Block 2 is LOAL capable so quicker shots will be possible since the missile will not have to acquire the target on the rail.

It was im afraid a bit of an experiment to see how long it wold take bluewings to repost this on the strategy page forums as a credible scource.

As someone who used to post on SP before finally giving up due to the complete lack of moderation there, I shake my fist at you in impotent rage. Not because you posted this, no, but because now I will be forced to go there and see whether your ploy worked.

You are a bad, bad person. 😉