By far, the largest planes have high wings. L-100, An-124, An-225.

How does the empty weight of L-100 compare against, say, 747-100? And how does the cruise drag compare?

@ 1: Sure Ro/Ro airlifter have high wings. Belly on the ground, wing high. Belly low and wing low would be … challenging.

@ 2: No idea, hard data I mean. For larger aircraft the tube (fuselage) has to be more substantial (= usually heavy) to bear the loads from main landing gear *and* wing. For smaller aircraft the question of landing gear weight comes into question, and for airliner also the question of ground support (e.g. stairs) requiremetents.
Drag: It’s all about interference drag.

Not sure why South Africa has not tied up with any major US defense contractors for manufacturing BVRAAMS .

We still remain the best .

Are you kidding me? Getting into all the ITAR trouble? Denel Dynamics customer support alone is ****** enough, don’t need ITAR in the game! :rolleyes:

# too fat, but due to landing gear not enouh internal volume, esp since those four suckers will … suck likev there’s no tomorrow
# the upper and lower engines would have differnt thrust behaviour due to different nose-intake interaction
# the two un-integrated intakes create all kind of funny and undesirable effects
# too much frontal area
# area ruling nightmare
# wing-fuselage interference nightmare
# too low; will suck dirt like a dyson
# due to the far-rear main landing gear this thing would have an insanely high t/o speed
# you’ll burn off your tail
# tail too large
# you’ll rip off your fold-down wings on the runway in case level deployment fails
# the leading edge angle of the fold-down wing can’t take Mach, except when they are extremely thin which makes them borderline useless for slow flight
# there’s not enough cockpit for the WSO

A high wing with a fuselage landing gear is heavier since the fuselage has to be strong enough to take the loads of both elements. That, however, is offset by the lower weight of a shorter, fuselage mounted landing gear. Also the escape routes are less complex, since you’re basically sitting on the ground already and don’t need any slides, which again saves weight. Also the fuel system can be designed a little less complex (gravity feed), and one can avoid having fuel lines in the cabin. And then the fuselage adds a little lift in the high wing config. A high wing aircraft can be landed more precise, as there is less ground effect.

But: Then there’s interior noise, as all the noise elements of the engine are in direct line of sight of the cabin. Pax don’t like that. And the engines on a high wing turbofan are heavier, as there is more “armor” needed against catastrophic failures where vanes could enter the fuselage directly without shielding from the wing.

But the real reason that on fast long-range airliners the low wing dominates is that it has less drag than a high wing, and more so the faster you fly. And the larger the aircraft, the heavier the high wing option is.

Whatever Korea buys, it will be flown at the highest altitude possible to avoid North Korean SAMs.

Korea is shopping for HALE, not a MALE like Eitan, and it is up to the IAI to prove that Eitan is infact a HALE.

Then there is that Korea ban on Israeli arms purchase after the T-50 fiasco.

Then what’s Japan’s execuse for not building a Global Hawk class drone? Lack of money and technology?

Well, 25% of US senators aren’t Koreans, but Jewish.

Stop selling weapons parts.

Can’t fly high enough aerodynamically to escape a heavy SAM that has all the time in the world to target you. Not since the 1960’s.

And I’d assume the SKoreans’ would not penetrate Northern airspace with their UAV, but rather circle off the coast. And in case they want one more with Mainland China or Japan in mind, MALE or HALE is ghupft wia gsprunga.

Long feature on Russian TV1 on Midas (with multiple hose-drogue pods) training with MiG-31 and Su-34. Had the reporter sit in the rear gunner station and film it.

They are hell-bound to make it fly by February. Lots of pressure on the suppliers, also at the cost of testing.

Sanem, disagree. Everything and everyone wants to link back and requires bandwidth and increasingly in real time. With the current GEO setup there’ll hardly be more than 2 AEHF over the WestPac (The old Milstar II are just too slow to count). That is about 860 Mbit/s, 96 HDR channels, and 4 nulling antennas. That’s only the equivalent of 3 TCDL links (Compare: one full TCDL is already required for a single ARGUS or a single HDRAT). Of course the UAV can fly via LDR/MDR links, but the sensor data need much more. Renting commercial open bandwith isn’t even a good idea against the Persians any more. And a blimp within Chicom reach is just an invitation. But it doesn’t stop there. Kinetic vulnerability of GEO relays (need to go to MEO and swarms). Vulnerability of sat-controll ground stations (need to be virtualized and distributed). And so on. USAF-internal estimates talk about 4.000 motion imagery spot equivalents by 2015, currently the average is 60 (that would be not even a SINGLE Argus!!) and they can’t do without using commercial sats. Aerial relays will be able to take only a certain portion, and only in theatre. Everything that needs link back to CONUS or an inter-theatre link will go via orbital relays. Currently a single MQ-1/-9 orbit requires about 200 men. Where do you think they are sitting? In theatre? No, in Creech, linking back via orbital relays. And that’s just the Air Force …