Stealth,

Know any good wallpapers for a B1?

 

If your saying there were F18's that could VIF, I've never even heard of that.

 

Uh, not right off hand. I'm more of a fighter guy.

 

I've seen footage of thrust vectoring F-15's & F-16's, but no 18's.... And of course teh F-22 and SU-37)

Yeah, I know all our current front line fighters (F-14, 15, 16 & 18, as well as 22 & 35) can out maneuver the venerable F-4, but only two on this list can out run it (F-15 & F-22).

The two biggest mistakes on the F-4 was, 1.) not including an internal gun (Many thought the gun was outdated, and we were in the missle era- so the F-4 didn't come with one). 2.) The smoky engines- a dead giveaway, and made pilots more vulnerable to visual sighting and engagement whereas a cleaner burning jet would be harder to see with the naken eye.

The design was very sturdy (We were still using F-4's to fly Wild Weasel missions (ECM and Radar killers) in Desert Storm)

Although we'll never see it, I was just thinking if they would refit the F-4 with today's avionics, excellent radar, good missles (The Sidewinder and Sparrow in Vietnam were not as good as they are now), and an internal gun, HUD, fly by wire, and a bubble canopy- it would still be a hell of a plane, with the right pilot behind the stick.

From a looks perspective, the F-16 is one fighter that to me- gives the pilot the best visibility- but, I sat in an F-4 ****pit. I gotta tell you, the F-4 seemed so simple compared to the F-16 I saw, that it seems one could learn to fly that thing (F4) in a day. Maybe not "Ace" material, but enough to get it off the ground, and land it.

The F-16 might take 2 - 3 days.

I think the F-4 got a bad wrap due to lackluster training programs, looking too far into the future, and out dated combat tactics. Today, I think our tactics save as many pilots, as does the fact that they have the best fighters.

 

I had a conversation about this once with a former co-worker who at one time was a structural engineer on the F4. It will never happen, there is nowhere near enough space in the airframe to mount all the modern equipment. Even then the radar and heat signatures are so much larger than today's top level fighter you would be toast in a BVR match.

 

Yep. They can barely fit all the components in the F16, much less an F4. The F16's we're building now for Israel have a large humpback on them for all their specialized avionics equipment.

 

There's something about this plane. It and the F-22 are the best looking planes in the air. They will outperform anything that has flown previously. I'm proud to have a chance to have built the F-16, the F-22, and now the F-35.







http://www.bizbuzzmedia.com/Admin/Im...d%20Martin.jpg

 

No doubt the F-4 was a very cool aircraft and very strong as well. My father wouldn't be around today if not for the structural integrity of them. After taking ground fire he flew back with a damaged aircraft and thinking his back seater was dead. His RIO got knocked out when rounds hit him.



I'll see if I can dig up a photo of the vectoring F-18. They were NASA test planes, I assume to get ready for new aircraft that would incorporate the vectoring. Raoul may have seen the one I'm talking about, as it's in a musuem in Hampton VA.

 

http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/f-18_harv.pl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ8WCzhDWXI

 

Yeah, I know it'll never happen.... (Modernized F-4)

But, if it could, I don't think space would be the problem, given the fact that the F-4 is much larger than the F-16 (13 feet longer, 6 feet wider), but with 25,000 lbs more weight to carry around (62,000 vs 37,000), and only 7,000 more pounds of total engine thrust (34,000 lbs -vs- 25,000 lbs.), it's easy to see why the F-16 can out perform the F-4. In a dogfight, the F-4 wouldn't have a chance against an equally skilled pilot in an F-16.

Hey Stealth- I see you said you built F-16's. A guy who used to work for me said he used to build them too (And before thet he worked on the Super Conductor), but he was with General Dymanics at the time. He got laid off many years ago, and ended up in telecom.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to see this in your rearview mirror, unless you were on the same side...



PS: On the military channel, they showed something like a Top Gun between our F-18 pilots and Germany's MiG-28's and 31's. The F-18's won. They didn't show a lot of actual fight/flight footage, but they did show the debriefings.

The F-15 is larger than the F-4 and F-16:

L: 63' 9"
H: 18' 8"
Wingspan" 42'

Make take off weight (68,000 lbs) 6k heavier than F-4.

But, with engines producing 58,000 lbs thrust, it's (Like the F-16) has a thrust to weight ratio very near to being 1:1. That's a hell of an advantage.




But, at a max t/o weight of 60,000 lbs, and with 70,000 lbs of thrust at it's command, the F-22 has more power than weight. It's going to be very difficult to outmaneuver, out climb, out-accellerate something with more power than weight.

They have the F-22 listed at Mach 1.8 top speed, with mach 1.5 being reachab;e w/o Afterburners (Supercruise).

Artist concept of Naval Variant of F-22:



This thing is smaller and lighter than the SR-71 (140,000 lbs t/o), with the same amount of thrust. The SR may be more aerodymanic- but, I'd bet a dollar that the F-22 could hit (if not sustain) Mach 3 in a dash.



What's ironic, the SR-71 was designed and built a decade before the F-14 & F-14, and it is nearly twice their size- yet it has a radar cross section less than 25% of that of the F-15.

Skunkworks at it's finest...

 

That's exactly what happens when production and engineering work together rather than against each other.

I'm lost in all the aviation muble gumble, all I know is that ya'll are talking about some bad **** fighters!

 

Bighersh,

Those SR-71s were some bad aircraft. I was in Okinawa, Japan not long before they removed the last squadron from Kadena Air Force Base. My old man has photos flying escort with the 71s from the same base during VietNamn era when he was flying the F-4s.

I tend to think they never really showed the whole hand with what the 71s could do. I know just before retirement they broke several distance speed records, but having been in communications I also know they blacked out a lot of time details on message traffic. If they did that for routine flights I have to think that they kept some in reserve when they did make things public. Not as if what they did release was anything to sneeze at.

 

I agree... That's the only plane (Or anything that burns fuel) I've ever heard of that gets more fuel efficient as you fly faster. The engine nacelle cone can be adjusted inflight to shape the force of the air rushing through it to create more thrust. This is not the secret stuff, this is all stuff I've leared from watching "Wings" on the military channel.

I'm sure that SR can do things we don't know, and probably won't know for another 40 years- Since it's only been retired for about 10 years. I mean, if we can make the (HUGE) B-70 Valkarie (Bomber) fly Mach 3, and the original B-1A fly Mach 2, there's no telling how fast we can make a smaller, lighter- but equally powerful fighter jet go. Maybe those jets on the movie "Stealth" weren't all that far fetched- with regard to performance.

PS- that final flight took place in 1990 while I was at Fort Huachuca. Edwards AFB in California to McDill AFB (If I'm not mistaken) in Florida, in 51 minutes, and you know, probably 5 of those minutes were spent slowing down.

Coast to coast in 51 minutes....

Heck, on a bad day- I can't get from work to my house in 51 minutes, and it's only 6 miles away.

 

what blows my mind is that they had 5 pilots of equal traning/skill, they put one in the F22 and the other 4 in F15 eagles. It was the F22 vs the other 4 f15s, and the F22 pilot defeated them all. The other four pilots, combined, saw the f22 a total of 1 time.

and to think the f35 is that much better.

 

I watched the Future Weapons on this bad boy. This thing is amazing.