Message posted by Sundog on April 08, 2003 at 16:36:57 PST:
I actually liked the Boeing design, not out of aesthetics, the F-35 is better in that regard. It just reminded me of all those 40's and 50's Saunders Roe designs. It had the "portly" fighter look..lol. But from an engineering perspective it had ALOT of advanced features. It just simply couldn't match the F-35 wrt to STOVL, but that was pretty much a forgone conclusion, which is why Northrop Grumman was pissed when the gov decided to make the JAST program into the JSF. Northrop Grumman was looking into using beeld air to operate the lift fan. Originally they were just to be research projects to determine if a bleed air lift fan was better than a shaft driven fan. But the gov switched it to a production demonstrator program and Northrop knew the bleed air fan wouldn't work so they tried to go with a lift engine, but they knew the cards were stacked aginst them by then. Similar to what happened with the ATF. Everyone knew there would never be a naval ATF (NATF). The YF-23's performance is still classified top secret. Hell Northrop built the plane they submitted. The government delayed them a year because Lockheed decided their original design couldn't meet the mission requirements. So basically, Northrop was penalized for knowing what they were doing. Then they decided to award the contract to Lockheed, mainly because the Lockheed YF-22 could be navalized easier than the YF-23. Then within one month of awarding the contract, the NATF was cancelled. Of course, they tell you today it was because of "lower risk", but I would point out, if that was the case, it should have been noted that Northrop wasn't the company that help up the program to redesign their plane! Don;t get me wrong, the F-22 is a kick ass plane and thank God the production version isn;t as Butt Ugly as the YF-22 was. However, I would rather see an airplane that looks like a Dragon (The YF-23) cruising our skies, than the aircraft that looks like an F-15 that sat under the heat lamps a little too long and began to melt..lol. However, to the original question. I think the F-35 should be called the 'chick' since it looks like a baby Raptor. ;)
In Reply to: Re: Bird of Freedom: The F-35 posted by Chris McDowell on April 08, 2003 at 14:51:16 PST:
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