too bad that is match move over a clean plate of skill images. next time they should at least take the time to film the sky before post working a computer generated model over a low resolution image. I can recommend looking into nuke or shake (if they use mac computers) but really they should actually build it if they think that image can fly. Enough thrust behind anything can fly. Look at an A-10 the wings are not flight surfaces just weapon racks they could not figure out how to justify any other way. The control surfaces on an A-10 are next to the engines like every other truboprop design. A turbine can use a different type of surface but the odds are those are simply designed to look like rounded corners, the after burner choke is from the F-16C/D version, the other parts are likely copied off other designs so no one asks why the contract for space liner is not getting worked on. It would be comedy but I don’t want to have to pay higher taxes for comedy I want actual designs and eventually space yatchs and space fighters. But really the point of the T-38 is to understand super sonic flight and a left and right side propulsion. At less than mach one having four left turning smoke shifters is no big deal but at mach they have to spin into each other or you can only use one. Pilots fly the T-38 so they learn to go left you need less push on the left or more push on the right. To turn right you add more power to the left propulsion system. The F-16CJ model does use a choke like they have in that image but when the choke is closed the slipstream effect is far more extreme and the speed is fast enough high speed camera’s have trouble when on a fixed mount. That image above looks like a chase car is filming the air craft as they fly by at stall speed about fifty to six miles per hour… I can see 140 mph but reason anti aircraft guns lead incoming air craft is the rotation speed is not fast enough to film that scene. I need to see if I can find images of Boeing work on the C-130 Hercules when they added an air-conditioner and claimed it was a new air frame. Well that is one less company the military needs to worry about bidding on the new trainer… they were a supcontracter working on getting enough of the original design up in the air and clearly they don’t even have a designer who can take their cnc data and toss it solidworks or autocad.

First you have to start with what plasma is.

a normal airfoil works by sweeping dust under the carpet so to speak. A normal person can picture a lazy person sweeping dust under a carpet and then having to walk over bump in the floor. This is what a prop does to move across the surface of wing faster along the bottom than the top so the pressure increases under the wing, much like inflating a ballon easy to picture.

plasma is to most scientist water vapor that burns into a gas which has a specific heat great than the vapor point. That sounds like mumbo jumbo to most people. So with out changing what it is you explain it as water that is heated until it boils forms separate oxygen and hydrogen molecules that when they crash back together as super heated gas. The easy way to think about it is that usually when there is no salt water vapor most stable state is two hydrogen spinning around one oxygen atom or if you use an xray four oxygen atoms that have eight hydrogen atoms looping through the whole cloud of gas that moves like a liquid but floats when any engery is added, which are called thermals or thermal drafts. Lighting follows the paths created by these as the various water vapor modules swap their hydrogen atoms through other close clusters of water vapor. When it is a weather thing they call it water vapor, mist, fog, contrails, and clouds. In science this same thing is called vapor when it is below the vapor point and plasma when it is hotter than one hundred degrees c’ or two hundred twelve degrees f’.

So you have vapor moving across a surface, the inertia of the metal is not going to move and does not trade ions for the most part except on very small amounts with vapor moving across it. So the vapor ions bounce off the metal and increase in speed. The ones further from the metal move slower as they do not have added energy of bouncing off the metal. This something the write brothers figured out at kitty hawk with the first airplanes. You can note that the name on the first upside down airfoil is byod not write for a reason. Inventors generally forget to file paper work as they are out drinking and partying because they did something new and interesting. I don’t know who fault that was back then but when I see people who say they understand plasma moving across a lifting body and have no idea where the fast moving air is, are usually file clerks or patent trolls not actually scientists. I have no respect or sympathy for them. If they said they were paying for the design that is one thing but people can not figure out the basics of shooting the rapids while white water rafting really should not be claiming to be inventors or scientists. I have a meteorological degree I was supposed to finish up and I have no idea if the course every all got transferred to the air university which include hydrodynamics, fluid dynamics, thermal convection better known as thermodynamics, fluid modeling, with the aviation model, the pvn model which I don’t even remember what it stands for as well as particle physics and several other disciples. It is not the science that is usually the problem but when scientist try to explain something and five other people look up synonyms and simply claim it is different thing. There are a lot of very smart people that can not tell you that a vortex array is a series of fan blades. They use vortex because they want the physics effect you see in a toilet as the water drains. It is actually not the correct term but explaining that most fans move the air / vapor / plasma around the edges of the fan effect not through it, is usually only worth explaining by trying to talk through one. Put a desk fan on a desk and speak through it the air that moves forward that misses a fan blade or more importantly the air moving around the blade you hear. Everything else is scattered. So to explain that a turbine works by sucking the air through the center not the outside edge as they usually actually do, they call it a vortex. It also does not move in a straight line but moves like electrical current around a wire not through it. But when working with people who don’t actually understand science you see patents that are exactly the same concept and design granted because the patent examiners have not been required to do due diligence for years. Likely part of that plank – Eisenstein mess. Plank worked for the US Army as government issued scientist and his job was to make sure the designs that came out of the research belonged to the united states government and no inventor would be able to prevent the military from using a technological advance made possible by our school system and economy. Plank was littelry dumb as board. Some of the notes you could read when I was growing up about the Manhattan project and the puns and inside jokes they were making about him likely did not help the issue. But as far as plasma goes, pressure moves objects, the heat removed from plasma and applied to a lifting surface makes flight possible but I can put a rocket on a plank of wood and have it fly faster than an airfoil. A knife or sword cuts through vapor much faster but the whole point of super heated air is to increase the air pressure. The best example is a goderds rocket engine or the A-10, the wings are not lifting body but weapon racks. You can shoot off both and still fly through the air as long as you have on turboprop because the fan in the turbo prop changes angle to move air from in from of the engine to behind it, create suction or vacuum in front of the engine and more pressure behind it. It is simply lack of understanding what pressure does.

I remember the first time I got to see one up close and I got to see a Thunderbolt II because all the warthogs had been given missions and we were only allowed to work on craft that did not have an active mission at AETC bases. It is one of the few air frames that can angle the turboprops in different directions. Most fighter jets the after burner points one direction and that is what you get. The F-35C is likely the first new fighter jet to have a directional afterburner assuming lockheed got that in the revised spec for the F-35’s to make them more useful and appealing for export at some point. But tangent aside the warthog name change came because of request for a built in map screen, instead of a paper map. I don’t know who set that in motion but I still think the older name is cooler, even if the new consoles are more useful.