Quote:
Originally Posted by notorious
The wing extensions on each side of the canopy (greatly enlarged from the YF-17 to F-18) are what gives it amazing nose control at all speeds. If an opponent gets a little slow against an 18 it's ****ed.
The only plane that has thrust vectoring (and only 2 dimensional) is the F-22, for the US. I guess the Marine F-35 counts, but I think it's only used for takeoff and landing just like the Harrier.
Our designers determined there is way too much energy lost while using 3 dimensional vectoring. The Russians have it on a few planes, and they appear to defy physics.
It would be on everything if the US determined it increases lethality. |
Yeah, I thought it must be those leading edge extensions. They can't be any sort of panacea though or you'd see them a lot more often.
It's not surprising they didn't work out on the Tomcat though - there are only so many aerodynamic 'boosts' you can give that big ol' bird. That thing was a tank with wings - I just don't see doing much to make them more maneuverable.
They were pretty prominent on the F-16 but not F-15, also a bigger jet. I wonder if they just don't have much impact on a heavy aircraft that's mostly just using brute strength to get where its going.
I read a story awhile ago about the F-15 and how insane they built that thing out of fear of the MiG (I think it was the 25). They thought the MiG was a world-beater so they overbuilt the hell out of the F-15. Then that Russian defected with it and they realized the MiG was pretty much nothing more than a rocket sled and pretty much a complete piece of shit at that.
But they'd built such a good jet that it essentially had no peer for about 20 years. I guess the Flanker would've been its contemporary when it finally came online but the USSR fell shortly after it first hit the scene, IIRC. And my recollection was that they just didn't have enough of those until the 90s to really use them much.
How many military platforms have ever been truly unchallenged for a decade? Maybe the Abrams? I mean they've been trying to replace that thing for 20 years and they keep coming to the same conclusion "damn - this thing is REALLY good - lets just put in some new targeting systems and upgrade the armor again..." My buddy was the commander of a Bradley in Iraq and he spoke highly of those but spoke almost in hushed awe about the Abrams.
I suspect it will go undefeated and history will look back on it about like the Iowa Class battleship - they'll
never make a tank better than the Abrams; they'll just stop making those goliath main battle tanks.