As they said, they make the aircraft unstable on purpose though, not because it's a "flaw"...
Player has properly accused me of being old school, I related in a previous post that the F-15 was the last old school big wing lots of power fighter, and IMHO it is still extremely competant A2A, I well understand relaxed stability, but I much prefer an aircraft where the FBW is basically tweaking flying characteristics rather than dealing with design flaws. As the latest QLR on the F-35 pointing out the airframe buffeting, which is suspected to be related to the vertical stabs, one of the possible? not likely IMHO, fixs is flight control system tweaks. As I did a little research, I found the F-18 had a similar buffet, also involving the verticle stabs, relating to vortex bursting. Those are design flaws, in the F-18 it was fixed by a fence on the engine nacells just aft of the leading edge, easy fix, no problem. Now my prejudice is real, I have flown the Mitsubishi MU-2 as right seat man, it comes in a short body, several knots faster, and a long body, hauls more load, much more stable in pitch. The Mitsi was a Japanese turbo-prop hotrod with a small highly loaded wing, so small that it has full span fowler flaps, gorgeous, fowler flaps, but no ailerons for roll control, instead spoilers were used for roll control. To that lovely combination the gear extended from the tubular fuselage, main fuel was in tip tanks, which often feed at different rates, do you see where I'm going. Beautifull, fast, efficient airplane, I loved flying it, two weeks after the last time I flew with one of my best friends, he was dead. Look it up in the NTSB reports, Mitsubishi 271MA, November 1988, at Chicago Midway. Below 105 knots roll control was very poor, there was always a roll moment going on with those tip tanks, which you basically had to ignore, even with full deflection of the spoilers into the wind, the nose gear is shorter than the mains, so you had to physically rotate the aircraft with back stick at 105 knots, as I recall blue line was 120 knots. Once the gear and flaps were up, it climbed like a banshee and flew well, but it had to be in trim about all three axis, or you fought it the whole time.
