And finally, honorable ladies and gentlemen – that long-awaited birdie is here with us! 
Please, just follow these links:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7007913.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584241,00.html?test=latestnews
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20100129/157716197.html
In the meantime, as always - all the best!
God damn, that is a beautiful looking bird, we should get some loan from Chavez to buy 50 or 60. :mrgreen:
remember me a bit to the late YF-23.
In memory of that beautiful bird, for you PK.
digger
Veeerry Gooood Digger. is that beautiful bird still flying today ?
Interesting…are the Russians still continuing development of their other more notable projects such as the Su-37/47?
Moving to military side of forum…
Yes, my dear gentlemen, you are absolutely right – the Northrop YF 23 indeed was a truly beautiful machine! Thank you very much for that gorgeous photo, my dear Mr. Digger! 
You know, back there in the nineties, I also have had a strange feeling that the USAF actually favored the less sophisticated aircraft. But, after all, who am I to say that… :neutral:
And here is one adequate snapshot of our special guest star:
Sukhoi T 50
Yes - honestly, I really like that birdie!
It has to be said that the T-50 looks awfully like yet another Flanker derivative. The engine and air intake positioning, position of the IR Search & Track system, even the vertical stabilisers. All they seem to have done is modify the body with a chine and fit it with a delta wing.
Also, I rather suspect the RCS will be rather high for this aircraft, although how much is down to the fact that this is a prototype is unclear. There are a lot of details that suggest it isn’t designed for very low RCS however - notably the fact that the air-intakes appear to be straight through to the engines, and the gap between the air intake and the fuselage to divert boundary layer air. Bot are hard to change and are likely to give a significant RCS increase.
Oh, don’t worry, my dear Mr. Pdf 27: this is only a prototype, with certain capabilities in this moment, but our birdie surely will evolve in the next 5 years or so (for example, now it does not have a finalized engine).
After all – just remember the story behind the old MiG 21 variant E-8:
http://www.testpilot.ru/russia/mikoyan/e/8/images/e82_1.jpg
Airplane engineering business always was and still is a creative business, and I am pretty sure that those Russian experts do know what their job is. You know, I still do remember those incredible days in June of 1989 at Le Bourget, when the Su 27 was openly presented for the first time. Initially, numerous experts stood in disbelief, and after that they sparkled in jealousy. But, after all, even engineers are only human beings… :rolleyes:
BTW: do you know that the good old low RCS F 117 in a metric-wave radar field gleamed like a Christmas three back there in 1999? Our colonel Danyi Zoltán, commander of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade, who improved our good old Soviet P-18M Spoon Rest metric-band target acquisition radar, was able to detect all those stealth aircrafts without any problem. Who knows – perhaps the whole VLO aircraft story is a completely wrong path in the combat aircraft history. Nevertheless, I like those fresh Sukhoi shapes in spite of that possibility.
In the meantime, as always - all the best!
Yeah, I’m just a little disappointed in it, that’s all. If given the chance, Russian engineers can produce some fantastic aircraft, I’ve just got a niggling feeling that this time around they’re working to a budget, not a specification.
And it’s no surprise that the F-117 was very obvious to metre-wave radars - it was only ever designed to be stealthy to much shorter wavelength guidance radars. In a real war situation, of course, any stealth aircraft would be operating in an environment where both sides are employing a lot of electronic warfare, SEAD assets, etc. (unless of course they really screw up as NATO did over Serbia and fly exactly the same route at low level repeatedly!). More modern stealth aircraft have reduced signature over wider bands, but are still less effective against longer wavelengths.
Finally, remember that the F-117 is a very old aircraft now - in service for over 30 years - so reduced performance against modern threats is perhaps hardly surprising!
Unfortunately the YF-23 programme has been cancelled in favour of the F-35.
I think the YF-23 is the more attractive aircraft between the two.
digger:)
The F-22 Raptor actually. You’re thinking of another Boeing project that was nicked in favor of the F-35. It was the Boeing XF-32, and the rumor was that it lost the competition (after initially being the victor) largely because it was the most hideous, butt-ugly aircraft ever designed:
Here’s a link from American Public Television’s Nova: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3004_xplanes.html
The problem of t-50 is that it is designed as both fighter and the ground strike airplane. Meaning it is not best in neither of the categories. This can be seen as both advantage and disadvantage.
But IMHO rather disadvantage.
Shishhh! you are right about that one ! one of the most hideous flying machine ever manufactured !
Ahem
It’s a boat!, it’s a plane! No, it’s a Walrus !
No seriously, I was thinking of modern aircrafts. I actually like the Walrus.
very sturdy and versatile aircraft, and amphibious. Also the fact that it was this plane that fished downed RAF pilots out of the channel during the BoB.
Be that as it may, it’s still even uglier than the X-32. Now are you going to concede the X-32 isn’t that bad, or do I have to bring out the photos of the Blackburn Beverley?
It also costs a lot less…
Well, it is uglier. But you can get away with an ugly flying boat. But a multi-role fighter??? Good heavens no!! Why anyone with Russian or Chinese made gear would be trouble because they’d die laughing at our gallant pilots --whose self-esteem would surely suffer. 
As usually, I am late, my dear Gentlemen, but as always – better late than never! 
Yes, my dear Mr. Pdf 27, I completely do agree with you, although I have to confess that, unlike you, I am almost constantly disappointed since that hard personal blow I suffered back there in 1972, when I had finally figured out that my personal flying dream-machine, my own flyable goddess, the one and only Lockheed YF-12 A was suffocated by those incompetent Washington bureaucrats.
Lockheed YF 12A
I’m sure you know that this old birdie was produced by some old-fashioned engineering perfectionists from the MIT and Caltech. You know… those egg-headed guys with spectacles, which were absolutely convinced that the best way for achievement of aerial superiority is the pure engineering excellence, summarized in those popular verses that were sung during those pleasant off-job hours on the front swing at the Edwards AFB:
[i]Straighten up and fly right,
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don’t you blow your top!
Ain’t no use in divin’,
What’s the use of jivin’?
Straighten up and fly yours best
Cool down, papa, and the Bastard will do the rest![/i]
Oh, yes… those were the days! My god, and a quantity of insufficiently informed people are still blabbering today about certain modern look-down/shoot-down capabilities… :rolleyes:
As always, the main problem was the coursed money – the fact that from the days of the Wright brothers through the present day aircraft costs have been increasing by a factor of four every ten years or so. Viewing that inexorable trend in relation to defense-budget, the former undersecretary of the Army, Mr. Norman Ralph Augustine, made a very disturbing prediction back there in 1980: “In the year 2054 the entire defence budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared between the Air Force and Navy three and a half days each per week.”
Levity aside, he - alas - spoke the truth about costs. The trend is absolutely real. And although engineering knowledge is increasing with almost bewildering speed, the saddest thing is that - essentially - any level of performance can be designed into an airplane system, if and only if you have somebody willing to pay the cost. The only problem is that the will is constantly diminishing too.
But that is not our biggest problem in this story of good and bad engineering, my dear Mr. Pdf 27. Much more serious problem is our constant disregard of rational analysis. You see, despite of its success in the first Gulf War, in which the F-117A was celebrated in almost every way for being able to completely paralyze air defense systems during the opening stages of the conflict, its reputation definitely died in 1999 when an underpaid and underprivileged bunch of Serbian AA buffs shot one down with a vintage Russian radar which was introduced 11 years before the maiden flight of that CNN and Discovery channel celebrity.
Yes, my dear Mr. Pdf 27 – the main problem actually was the verity that aforementioned birdie was designed and built quickly and unscientifically, because commercialization of the engineering science for cheap and quick gains was and – alas – still is very attractive. Furthermore - even well-rewarding. Not like in the old-school epoch. You know, those products of the Old Engineering School still are with us. For example the Boeing B 52. It is still flying in this very moment. Good old McDonnel-Douglas F-4 Phantom II as well. Not even to mention the Convair F 106 Delta Dart. It was in active use 38 years after its introduction. And you know why? Because in those ancient times ideals of engineering honesty were so high that engineers never walked the streets only to “get the bloody job.”
The patchwork-engineering was and still is celebrated today as an epitome of the constructive ingenuity, and it seems to me that everything somehow started in early with that stealth celebrity in early eighties, which represented the epitome of the shortsighted development strategy. Yes, I know – it is a pretty harsh statement. But, unfortunately, I still do remember those offers for a new player at the strategic hide-and seek game in mid-seventies. They were better. For example, this was Grumman’s suggestion for a Mach 2 + bomber/fighter aircraft back there in 1978:
Invisible Penetrator – Mach 2 + stealth attacker, Grumman Aerospace Corporation, 1978
The same celebrated principles which are in use today are already present here, my dear Mr. Pdf 27: a minimal cross-section fuselage, curved surfaces for signal deflection, air-intakes shielded by the fuselage and composite materials with non-reflective coating. To foil infrared sensors: shielded exhausts above the wing. That was the work of the Old School. But it was unacceptably expensive for the Department of the Treasury.
And so, patchwork-design was accepted as the best solution for a highly specialized warplane. The navigation system of the F 117 came from the B-52. The engines were borrowed from the F/A-18. The F-16 contributed the computers and flight control system, and the biggest cockpit display was from the P-3 Orion. The tailpipes were lined with ceramic bricks made from the same quartz-like material used on the Space Shuttle, with all those known problems as well. For example, each tile had to be cemented in place individually, and the seams between them were filled with a putty-like material. Even a small gap could act like a tiny inlet, channeling the already blazing exhaust gas and heating it enough that it would burn through to the metal underneath. But quick solutions were desired. Just like today…
Yes, my dear Mr. Pdf – technology is improved, but the mental naivety that someone can come up with a cheap substitute to meet every technological and tactical threat is still perfectly vivid. Faced with the task of building a tactical stealth attack aircraft that would cost less than the big, completely specialized one, modern planners came up yet again with the old and youthful concept called “day one stealth”. What is the essence of that proposal? For the first missions of the war against an inferior enemy, JSF will be a sufficiently stealthy airplane with a limited offensive load - just like the F-117 - but once the enemy’s defenses are destroyed, it will be loaded with external weapons like the older fighters, and voilà – everything will be just fine and sufficiently cheap as well.
The only problem is, as the lesson from Serbia demonstrated, that aforementioned concept will be unattainable against an determined and sufficiently equipped enemy for two main reasons. Firstly, the air defenses will be not inclined to get killed on the first night, so they will sacrifice their lethality for their long-term survivability, thus preserving their capability to constantly stalk attackers for a protracted amount of time. The second one is much more important. Application of non-standard, innovative target detection and acquisition methodology will be able to completely revolutionize the antiaircraft defenses and to bury the whole concept of the cheap Police-Stealth Aircraft.
You know, my dear Mr. Pdf 27, the main problem with soldiers is that, generally, even today they are not trained to think like physicists or mathematicians. Ask them, for example, what they do know about some old pieces of astrophysical equipment called bolometers. Quite astonishing devices, which were sensitive enough back there in 1957 to measure temperature differences in the sky with an accuracy of 10 millionths of a degree of centigrade. Yes – back there in late fifties those devices were capable to measure and to indicate local temperature inconsistencies in the atmosphere caused by a breath from a newborn at 500 meters. With the old, nowadays completely phased-out, but still available Stebbins-Whitford type of bolometer with a liquid helium-cooled niobium-nitride core. You know, if equipped with some specialized optical devices of the Schmidt-Cassegrain type, those old, completely passive and undetectable appliances will be able to detect those supercrusing miracles, which always will suffer from a slightly more intensified air-friction…
Some completely irresponsible students at the Astrophysical observatory of Belgrade actually tried to achieve something very similar like that back there in 1999, but their efforts were abandoned after the ceasefire, which, they were told, will last. They had some other ideas too, so they abandoned that one they had – to hell with the past. As far as I know, two of them are in the USA right now. One of them is finishing his PhD, so his own story will be available after his marriage.
BTW: he is going to marry a girl from Texas. You know… no matter how tough things get, she’s tougher.
Well, that’s all for today. In the meantime, as always – all the best.
Apologies for the short reply - got to go to work in a few minutes…
Firstly, for me the point where development stopped was with the cancellation of the B-70 in the US and the TSR-2 in the UK. Since then, developments have concentrated on small increments of performance and big ones in electronics, rather than aerodynamics.
Secondly, I think you’re being unduly harsh to the F-117 and unduly lenient to the US/NATO airforces. The design of the F-117 was dictated by the fact that the computational power to work out radar returns from a curved surface simply didn’t exist. The flash of genius that realised that faceting the surface would reduce the computational requirements made coming up with a workable stealth design much easier. It was never intended to be more than a large scale technology demonstrator, to find out the uses and limitations of stealth - hence only building about a single squadron.
The US/NATO airforces treated the Iraqis as competent in 1990/91, and threw the whole shebang at them - the same level of force they would have applied if fighting the Soviets in Germany. As a result, all the F-117 missions were part of a larger plan - involving an awful lot of SEAD assets and massive electronic countermeasures support. They also assumed the Iraqis were competent, so never got complacent. In reality, of course, the Iraqis were a bunch of clowns and hence it was very one sided.
In contrast, over Serbia NATO had got fat, dumb and happy after an unchallenged 10 years as the world’s largest military power. They didn’t give the F-117s anything like the support they had over Iraq, and assumed that the Serbs were as competent as the Iraqis - a massive mistake. Frankly I think NATO were lucky to only experience the losses they did over Serbia, and that they only have the decade of sanctions to thank for that…
