'Affordable' Stealth fighter?

[Go4fun]

deathjester QUOTE: "Something like, a project, that a country with...umm, less monetary advantages, could reasonably begin, and see through to production with a small indigenous aircraft industry...".
So if this small country had lots of forrest and lots of woodworking industries already it might be feasible t build wih wood. Otherwise joncarrfarrelly has the upper hand.

[Hobbes]

I agree, wooden construction isn't the road to take. Current fighters are stressed to allow 9G turns; you don't want to compromise on this because your survival rate will plummet. A wooden construction that can take 9G would be very heavy.

Carbon fibre is very expensive because it requires lots of manual labor. IIRC one of the reasons the JSF is so expensive is because Lockheed is developing new machines to automate the production of CFC parts. Another reason is that they had to figure out how to build stealthy aircraft in a production environment. Again, lots of new tools and techniques. The previous stealth programs were on much smaller scales and more experimental; there's a lot of new stuff moving from 'experiment' to 'ordinary production' in this program.

In the past, these new developments would be spread over dozens of aircraft types, now it all ends up in one program.

The Mustang was easy to develop because it was an incremental improvement over earlier aircraft. Nothing new to invent or new production techniques to implement. it was also built in an era when aircraft were simple enough that you could improve them noticeably by installing a more powerful engine.

[PR19_Kit]

The Mustang was easy to develop because it was an incremental improvement over earlier aircraft. Nothing new to invent or new production techniques to implement. it was also built in an era when aircraft were simple enough that you could improve them noticeably by installing a more powerful engine.

NA did introduce the laminar flow wing on the Mustang, but AFAIK that was the only 'breakthrough' item.

Photos of the prototype show a remarkably ordinary looking aircraft for the period, but then it was intended to compete with the P-40 that the British Purchasing Commission started off looking for.

[deathjester]

From what I've read, the detail design of the aircraft is where the innovation lay.  Fuselage shaped for least drag, laminar flow wings, 'jet thrust' radiator exhaust, the ,masses of internal fuel, and so on.  They didn't go in for mad aerodynamic solutions because they knew it would take too long to validate, cost too much, and would put off the purchasing commission. 

[Caveman]

I think that facet stealth is what you are after. Aircraft can be as reflective as you like a long as the reflections go away from the reciever...

the germans had a pretty good stab at it in the 1980s



http://www.rp-one.net/lampyridae/lampy.html

[deathjester]

Yes, thats the sort of thing I was thinking of!

[Caveman]

Well there is also the TDEFS



and Dornier 2000

[eatthis]

I think that facet stealth is what you are after. Aircraft can be as reflective as you like a long as the reflections go away from the reciever...

the germans had a pretty good stab at it in the 1980s



http://www.rp-one.net/lampyridae/lampy.html

they nicked the tail off a tsr2 

[Spey_Phantom]

the EADS MAKO looks like it could have been a good European light stealth fighter, similar to the F-5E.
if they made the fuselage a bit wider, it could fit a small weaponsbay for 3 AMRAAMS or 2 JDAMS 

if they removed the wingtip sidewinder-rails, you have quite a low RCS 

[Caveman]

i would love to have seen a production hopeless diamond!

[PR19_Kit]

Didn't the 'Diamond' have twin inward pointing fins? I've got the Pegasus kit somewhere I think....

[Caveman]

That was have blue



though Im sure that there is probably an in between which didnt have wings but did have the fins

[Mossie]

Good overview on the transition from Hopeless Diamond to Have Blue here:
http://www.f117reunion.org/f117_history.htm