Ideal naval carrier fighter(aircraft) designs.

The first one seems to be quite okay. The third one needs a little work. If you're putting inverted rudders to reduce RCS, you're losing what is gained by the squared engine tunnels, which also looks like it will expose the engine blades from the front.

A stealthier configuration would have to angle the sides of the engine tunnel, then offset the engine centerbore from the intake center, so the engine nozzle is actually higher than the intake, making the engine nacelles protrude from the top and create an S shaped duct to the engine. Instead of squared ramps, maybe a DSI intake just under the LERX?

Probably closest to the FA-18 or JSF, this design is intended to have similar capability to a Tornado but better agility and better air-air capability. Probably slower than a 'clean' tornado but with internal weapons bay so faster with weapons load. Internal weapons would be up to 6 PL-12s, or two 1000lb LGB/PGMs plus two PL-12s.

Not sure about the wingtip connection.

Ok, the engines now lie higher, the inlets are slightly more inwards than the engines and the inlets are ment to be oval, though it doesn't really become clear in the pics.

I've taken the trouble of drawing 3 contemporary carrier fighter designs to the same scale, which leads me to the conclusion that the ideal carrier fighter would be about 18m in length. It would have a wingspan, when in storage config (wings folded if applicable) of about 8m.


EDIT. When you think how capable the Rafale is, relative to its size, it is easy to conclude that it is the best carrier fighter out there. Think how much larger the airwing could be if it had Rafale relative to the other two. You could be looking at 5 ~ 10 extra fighters on a 70,000t carrier

Scratch said:

Ok, the engines now lie higher, the inlets are slightly more inwards than the engines and the inlets are ment to be oval, though it doesn't really become clear in the pics.

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That's better. Now you can flush the walls of the engine tunnel and reduce its side profile for lower side RCS.

planeman said:

... which leads me to the conclusion that the ideal carrier fighter would be about 18m in length. It would have a wingspan, when in storage config (wings folded if applicable) of about 8m.

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What do you mean by the ideal fighter specs, is that just the average of the three aircraft? I think so.

EDIT. When you think how capable the Rafale is, relative to its size, it is easy to conclude that it is the best carrier fighter out there. Think how much larger the airwing could be if it had Rafale relative to the other two. You could be looking at 5 ~ 10 extra fighters on a 70,000t carrier

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You get pretty much for it. It has many hardpoints. With eight Mica AAMs and three drop-tanks it has a combat radius of 1000nm. It's maneuvrable, sophisticated etc...

Another thing that may help is to slightly dihedral the canards (turn the tips upward). That can direct the canard wake up over the wing and down more of the center fuselage, away from the main wing and the rudders.

If you put the canards behind the canopy, it may be a good idea to increase its size to get more control authority. If you want to reduce the canard size, put it in front of the canopy and before the radome like the Typhoon, that can increase control authority by increasing arm leverage and compensate for the reduced canard size.

Keep the nose a bit flat underneath for lift purposes, as that can increase angle of attack.

I've taken influence from a Chinese concept model which appears to show the general direction Chinese aircraft designers are taking (J-14 etc???). I've missed the wing joining section off because a)it's ugly and b) I don't know what it should look like.

I don't think my design is going to look as cool as the Chinese original but I've made my design changes for a reason:

1. The need for a large internal weapons bay means changing the under-fuselage intake for flank intakes and also a much deeper fuselage

2. I think it needs to be twin engined because of the weapons bay. A single AL-31 would be better but it'd mean changing the weapons bay(s) a lot

Note to self - play with single AL-31 and weapons bays in wide fuselage

3. I think it needs to be twin seat, or come in combat capable two seaters for controlling UCAVs etc.

Scratch said:

What do you mean by the ideal fighter specs, is that just the average of the three aircraft? I think so.

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Only coincidentally. Ideally it should be as small as possible to allow maximum number on the carrier, but realistically its a mix of making it as compact as possible without limiting its range, payload, crew mumber etc. Given that another pre-requisit for the ideal carrier fighter is an internal weapons bay, and that none of the three types depicted has that, I've guessed 18m as a fair length given the role profile I'm envisaging, which is a bit more F-35 than Su-33.

crobato said:

Another thing that may help is to slightly dihedral the canards (turn the tips upward). That can direct the canard wake up over the wing and down more of the center fuselage, away from the main wing and the rudders.

If you put the canards behind the canopy, it may be a good idea to increase its size to get more control authority. If you want to reduce the canard size, put it in front of the canopy and before the radome like the Typhoon, that can increase control authority by increasing arm leverage and compensate for the reduced canard size.

Keep the nose a bit flat underneath for lift purposes, as that can increase angle of attack.

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Ok, I see that dihedral-anhedral canard-wing config on Gripen and Rafale(wich both have the canards rather backward), however EF seems to have anhedral canards and a neutral main wing (and has the canards more to the nose). Since I need to funnel the canard wake to the center because of the inverted rudders I'll make them dihedral and have them back like Rafale/Gripen.
The nose is slightly flat underneath now. I made the engine tunnel wider and put it slightly downward to smooth it out. And I moved the down forward end of the rudders to the front to cover them. (What's that called, rudder LERX?)



Now because of the nose, do you know something about that kink in the Flankers fuselage just forward of the wing? Because somehow it seems to decrease with newer models, but I'm not really sure.