At the rate they're going, China feels a lot like the USAF of the 90s. Not tech wise, obviously they're far beyond that, but in terms of how they're just throwing everything at the wall and pumping out one exotic airframe after another just because they can.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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You mean the 1950s. The 1990s US aerospace industry was in the midst of mass cancellations and mergers post-Cold War. Whereas in the 50s you got all sorts of designs, like the F7U, F5D, Century-series, and a littany of light and heavy bombers.
Nah, in my opinion the X-planes we got during the 80s-90s were way cooler and more exotic and much more mature too.
cool and exotic is relative. if you were living through the 50's you'd have witnessed the very idea of airplanes getting completely turned round. they went from teardrops and crosses to wedges and darts. the shift from propeller to jet propulsion is a far more radical shift than the advent of stealth shaping. every other year you'd be seeing something radical that you never saw before. swept wings. deltas. suddenly everyone was talking about the sound barrier. then that gets shattered. you never heard of mach before. suddenly you have rocketships doing mach 2. even the prevalence of tricycle undercarriage was novel and exotic because less than a decade ago, the most titanic wars known to man were won with prop planes that taxied around with their noses up in the air.
they only look goofy in hindsight. in the moment, there would have been nothing cooler.
they only look goofy in hindsight. in the moment, there would have been nothing cooler.
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It is whatever all the think tanks and all the """""experts""""" want it to be.
In Gen Z vernacular this is something known as cope.
Why does the twin seater JF-17 have a swept vertical stabilizer?
The B is heavier, has a different fuselage, which means different weight distribution, which means a different center of gravity, which means a different moment arm is required in order to maintain yaw stability and authority. Pushing the stab and it's control surface back is better than increasing their height too much due to hangar height limits and due to the fact that higher stabilizers induce higher rolling moments, which would have necessitated even more additional weight to strengthen many other components. I also doubt it has the same wing as the single-seater.
Even ignoring that; you'd have to be an absolutely uneducated drone to not admit that the J-35 would be one of the stealthiest aircraft flying today. It's basically a scaled-down F-22.