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I know it was a necessary mod to add guns and moar fuel, but compared to the F.1 variant, it does look like it's due to have little Lightning babies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_QueSST
It's a decent design, but to make the boom quieter it's designed like a vegan substitute. Concorde is 50 years older and superior in every metric.
I don't want it to sound like a door closing when you break the sound barrier. It should wake the neighbours and shatter windows as a big fuck you to limitations.
It's what I always liked about Concorde. Not just that it was fast and ridiculously cool, but that no one else made it work and twice a day, every day, it'd remind the US that the Empire was back by coming in low and loud with the Rolls Royce symphony orchestra playing over NYC on the way in to JFK.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_QueSST
It's a decent design, but to make the boom quieter it's designed like a vegan substitute. Concorde is 50 years older and superior in every metric.
I don't want it to sound like a door closing when you break the sound barrier. It should wake the neighbours and shatter windows as a big fuck you to limitations.
It's what I always liked about Concorde. Not just that it was fast and ridiculously cool, but that no one else made it work and twice a day, every day, it'd remind the US that the Empire was back by coming in low and loud with the Rolls Royce symphony orchestra playing over NYC on the way in to JFK.
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It's a product of the times. Less money, less room for financial error, more data to plow through before the next stage can be taken, more complex tasks.
The P-51 Mustang went from drawing to combat in less than 6 months and (once they changed from a shitty American engine to the Merlin) became one of the best fighters of the war. Apollo took Man from LEO to the moon in a few years, a feat that has yet to be repeated. When De-Havilland said 'I want to make a bomber out of wood. Oh, and it'll have no defensive weapons' everyone laughed at him. The 3rd Reich went from not existing, to jet/rocket powered fighters in just over 10 years and were on the cusp of long range stealth bombers, atomic weapons, ICBMs, cruise missiles, precision guided air to air/ground weapons.
But back then, they had cash to burn (i remember watching a documentary on SLS and the project manager was saying that NASA in the 60s had access to almost as much cash as the defence budget, where now it's like a percent or 2) and there was no mountains of data to assimilate and peoples sensibilities / stupidity to deal with.
Americans basked in the light of F-1 engines burning holes in the sky rather than complaining about noise pollution. No one cared about how much it cost, because they remembered that the money wasn't being launched to the moon, it was being spent in the US, putting Americans into work building wonders.
And there was a lot of 'fuck it, let's see what happens' back then. There was a genuine fear during the Manhatten project that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and the whole planet would burn. When Frank Whittle was showing off his new engine to the Air Ministry, he didn't fully understand how it worked and was really surprised when it over-ran, he couldn't turn it off and it exploded. The test pilot for the project that eventually became Lightning went transonic several flights too early because he had a feeling it'd be ok and just did it.
They were still experimenting with wing designs that would allow control during the period when the shockwave was moving back along the wings and he had no idea what'd happen. Nearly everyone that'd tried it before had crashed. But, he had the thrust and a good feeling and just nudged through. As it happened, they'd accidentally stumbled on the perfect set up that has been copied ever since.
Typhoon II and Lightning II still aren't fully mission capable and the UK are already planning their successor, Tempest. It'll be all British to avoid the multi-national clusterfuck that Eurofighter Typhoon was and Lightning II is. I can't wait.
The only bad thing is the name. I wish they hadn't wasted such awesome names on turd aircraft and saved Typhoon and Lightning for the next generation of British built aircraft.
The P-51 Mustang went from drawing to combat in less than 6 months and (once they changed from a shitty American engine to the Merlin) became one of the best fighters of the war. Apollo took Man from LEO to the moon in a few years, a feat that has yet to be repeated. When De-Havilland said 'I want to make a bomber out of wood. Oh, and it'll have no defensive weapons' everyone laughed at him. The 3rd Reich went from not existing, to jet/rocket powered fighters in just over 10 years and were on the cusp of long range stealth bombers, atomic weapons, ICBMs, cruise missiles, precision guided air to air/ground weapons.
But back then, they had cash to burn (i remember watching a documentary on SLS and the project manager was saying that NASA in the 60s had access to almost as much cash as the defence budget, where now it's like a percent or 2) and there was no mountains of data to assimilate and peoples sensibilities / stupidity to deal with.
Americans basked in the light of F-1 engines burning holes in the sky rather than complaining about noise pollution. No one cared about how much it cost, because they remembered that the money wasn't being launched to the moon, it was being spent in the US, putting Americans into work building wonders.
And there was a lot of 'fuck it, let's see what happens' back then. There was a genuine fear during the Manhatten project that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and the whole planet would burn. When Frank Whittle was showing off his new engine to the Air Ministry, he didn't fully understand how it worked and was really surprised when it over-ran, he couldn't turn it off and it exploded. The test pilot for the project that eventually became Lightning went transonic several flights too early because he had a feeling it'd be ok and just did it.
They were still experimenting with wing designs that would allow control during the period when the shockwave was moving back along the wings and he had no idea what'd happen. Nearly everyone that'd tried it before had crashed. But, he had the thrust and a good feeling and just nudged through. As it happened, they'd accidentally stumbled on the perfect set up that has been copied ever since.
Typhoon II and Lightning II still aren't fully mission capable and the UK are already planning their successor, Tempest. It'll be all British to avoid the multi-national clusterfuck that Eurofighter Typhoon was and Lightning II is. I can't wait.
The only bad thing is the name. I wish they hadn't wasted such awesome names on turd aircraft and saved Typhoon and Lightning for the next generation of British built aircraft.
I agree and upvote everything said here. And I would like to add a curious detail, Mankind went to the sea in boats, rafts and a kayaks for thousands of years, before the sail was invented... In the case of aviation and spaceflight, less than 70 years (a human life-time approximately) passed between the first unsafe flight of the Wright brother's Flyer 1 over Kitty Hawk, and the day when a man from Earth came to the Moon, in peace, for all mankind, in the Saturn V.
Well, the next and obvious step, for the men back then is to think like Arthur C. Clark: mankind will send a mission to the Jovian moon Europa by 2001...
Why we haven't done that? well, for many reasons. Horus mentioned most of them so I won't repeat what's already said. Basically, the technology has advanced exponentially, but the research and approval procedures go slower and slower each year...
Not to mention the fact that the politics holding the money see no reason to make such a mission...
Well, the next and obvious step, for the men back then is to think like Arthur C. Clark: mankind will send a mission to the Jovian moon Europa by 2001...
Why we haven't done that? well, for many reasons. Horus mentioned most of them so I won't repeat what's already said. Basically, the technology has advanced exponentially, but the research and approval procedures go slower and slower each year...
Not to mention the fact that the politics holding the money see no reason to make such a mission...
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It'll be outlived by the aircraft it was built to replace.
Simply because they never built enough, they never sold it for export so it's too expensive to keep the production line open to make parts so the current fleet have a finite life span.
They've already committed to keeping the Eagle for the forseeable future as they need 'cheap' aircraft for the less difficult tasks that need numbers to achieve. And lets be fair, there's still not much that can tangle with an F-15 and get away with it.
Simply because they never built enough, they never sold it for export so it's too expensive to keep the production line open to make parts so the current fleet have a finite life span.
They've already committed to keeping the Eagle for the forseeable future as they need 'cheap' aircraft for the less difficult tasks that need numbers to achieve. And lets be fair, there's still not much that can tangle with an F-15 and get away with it.
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Yeah, the F-35 is supposed to replace Falcon, Hornet and Harrier as the mid-level fighter whilst Raptor replaced Eagle. The problem is numbers. One on one, a Raptor will trash anything in the sky right now, but a hundred of them just isn't enough, and more just is too expensive.
The plan is to keep Eagle and use them as missile trucks from BVR whilst the Raptors do the dogfights. The Raptors would get the locks required, send the data back to the Eagles, which would then launch the missiles from long (safe) range. Means they can cover more sky/kill more stuff.
The plan is to keep Eagle and use them as missile trucks from BVR whilst the Raptors do the dogfights. The Raptors would get the locks required, send the data back to the Eagles, which would then launch the missiles from long (safe) range. Means they can cover more sky/kill more stuff.
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I dunno. There's little data on either at the moment as the T-50 isn't really in flight at full capability and the Raptor is still classified goods. From what is available is the T-50 is designed entirely with the Raptor in mind as a target and a lesson and addresses a lot of issues with the Raptor such as a small internal bay and better thrust vectoring, but the Raptor is faster, lifts more and is more powerful dry.
Put that to the fact also that the USAF have never really used the Raptor for anything except embarrassing Iranian Phantoms and movie deals, means that despite being the original Gen 5 fighter, it's still very much an unknown quantity in combat except the taken as read statement that it'd wipe the floor with anything currently in service anywhere in the world. That statement alone has killed the Raptor programme as it is so far above everything else that they can't sell it abroad because then other nations will be able to copy it and it doesn't have an enemy to justify its existence (and high price tag).
Yeah, the F-15 2040C, a version of the F-15C with all the missiles and a direct datalink to the Raptors
Put that to the fact also that the USAF have never really used the Raptor for anything except embarrassing Iranian Phantoms and movie deals, means that despite being the original Gen 5 fighter, it's still very much an unknown quantity in combat except the taken as read statement that it'd wipe the floor with anything currently in service anywhere in the world. That statement alone has killed the Raptor programme as it is so far above everything else that they can't sell it abroad because then other nations will be able to copy it and it doesn't have an enemy to justify its existence (and high price tag).
Yeah, the F-15 2040C, a version of the F-15C with all the missiles and a direct datalink to the Raptors
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Yeah, I'd been meaning to, and add more aircraft here, including the reverse wing T-38 that Mooncrasher showed (I've been reading up on why the wings are backwards and fell into a hole of supersonic wing designs), the Teen fighter series, Harrier, Spitfire.
Edited: Also want to do some rotary as well, Chinook especially
Edited: Also want to do some rotary as well, Chinook especially
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Although, to answer your original question, yes and no.
No groundbreaking invention ever makes its investment back. Air travel until the 60s was a rich mans dream. Concorde never turned a profit, Apollo certainly never did. Tesla balances precariously on success and bankruptcy, same with SpaceX (Elon once commented that the 2 best ways of wasting money these days were electric vehicles and rockets). But then to say they were wastes of money, misses the point.
Because the expense at the moment is the mountains of cash spent on R&D making them work. Stealth technology, supercruise engine designs, re-useable and autonomous rockets, efficient EV designs etc. But once the breakthrough comes, the R&D can be applied to other, similar designs for a fraction of the cost, and they will justify the tremendous expenditure.
The analogy I'll use is Formula One. I remember the phrase that it costs £100,000 (I use pounds as over 70% of F1 R&D is conducted in the UK) for every 0.001 second increase in speed in track. Which is a ridiculous expenditure.
Until the breakthrough comes. Disc brakes, independent suspension, KER systems, tyre compounds, crash safety and construction materials and techniques were all tested on tracks, in F1, before they arrived on production cars. And because the R&D had already been done under the most strenuous of environments, they didn't need testing, just applying.
So will Raptor earn its cash back on the battlefield?
No, not a chance.
Has it become the benchmark for every fighter since, with the lessons and tech applied onto things like the F-35, T-50, the Tempest and others to come?
Absolutely.
Also, think about it. Right now, the Raptor is the fighter to beat. It's probably earned itself a place in military history solely on the fact that it was such a game changer that everyone else had to stop whatever they were building and then have a long hard think about whether or not they could build something that could beat the damned thing in a fight, which is costing the Russians and the Chinese even more cash cos they're playing catch up and have been for nearly a decade.
There aren't many aircraft in history that can make that claim. Probably not since the arrival of the jet engine with the Me262 has that happened.
And if I'm honest, that's worth the cash.
No groundbreaking invention ever makes its investment back. Air travel until the 60s was a rich mans dream. Concorde never turned a profit, Apollo certainly never did. Tesla balances precariously on success and bankruptcy, same with SpaceX (Elon once commented that the 2 best ways of wasting money these days were electric vehicles and rockets). But then to say they were wastes of money, misses the point.
Because the expense at the moment is the mountains of cash spent on R&D making them work. Stealth technology, supercruise engine designs, re-useable and autonomous rockets, efficient EV designs etc. But once the breakthrough comes, the R&D can be applied to other, similar designs for a fraction of the cost, and they will justify the tremendous expenditure.
The analogy I'll use is Formula One. I remember the phrase that it costs £100,000 (I use pounds as over 70% of F1 R&D is conducted in the UK) for every 0.001 second increase in speed in track. Which is a ridiculous expenditure.
Until the breakthrough comes. Disc brakes, independent suspension, KER systems, tyre compounds, crash safety and construction materials and techniques were all tested on tracks, in F1, before they arrived on production cars. And because the R&D had already been done under the most strenuous of environments, they didn't need testing, just applying.
So will Raptor earn its cash back on the battlefield?
No, not a chance.
Has it become the benchmark for every fighter since, with the lessons and tech applied onto things like the F-35, T-50, the Tempest and others to come?
Absolutely.
Also, think about it. Right now, the Raptor is the fighter to beat. It's probably earned itself a place in military history solely on the fact that it was such a game changer that everyone else had to stop whatever they were building and then have a long hard think about whether or not they could build something that could beat the damned thing in a fight, which is costing the Russians and the Chinese even more cash cos they're playing catch up and have been for nearly a decade.
There aren't many aircraft in history that can make that claim. Probably not since the arrival of the jet engine with the Me262 has that happened.
And if I'm honest, that's worth the cash.