US F/A-XX and F-X & NGAD - 6th Gen Aircraft News Thread

[antwerpery]

I’m calling it first. After looking at all the evidence, it’s obvious that Boeing is gonna win the navy’s FA-XX contract too. In fact, they probably already signed the contract and are just waiting to announce the confirmation at a later date.

 

[CaribouTruth]

I’m calling it first. After looking at all the evidence, it’s obvious that Boeing is gonna win the navy’s FA-XX contract too. In fact, they probably already signed the contract and are just waiting to announce the confirmation at a later date.

I'm not so sure, not a great idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Giving it to Northrup seems prudent, they're not making any fighters currently and if Boeing cocks up the NGAD you can still use the F/A-XX as a land fighter. Northrup withdrew their NGAD proposal very recently, possibly because they're sure they're getting the naval fighter.

 

[zyklon]

I suspect it may be one of possibilities, yes. Boeing Bird of Pray was said to be almost ridiculously stealthy, many orders of magnitude below best 5th generation signatures.

The Bird of Prey's MTOW was also in the 3-4 ton ballpark. Can't imagine the F-47 being that size or even close to it, which will inevitably impact signature management.

It will most certainly be able to get into AIM-260 kill range against almost anything, and it quite likely can perform WVR/BVR BCMs to not be the first to go down.

The AIM-260 is generally expected to have a range in excess of 200km at an absolute minimum. That's hardly WVR.

That said, I believe that the F-47 should be roughly F-35-sized, which itself is pretty much the smallest in service 5th-gen in the world (~81 m^2) with one F119/F135-class engine.

So do you anticipate the F-47 to be a single engine fighter like the F-35?

I’m calling it first. After looking at all the evidence, it’s obvious that Boeing is gonna win the navy’s FA-XX contract too. In fact, they probably already signed the contract and are just waiting to announce the confirmation at a later date.

I've already hinted to such a scenario at least a couple of times here.

From a budgetary perspective, it may make a great deal of sense to grant the F/A-XX contract to Boeing by merging the F/A-XX and NGAD programs. Moreover, it's been at least a couple of decades since Northrop manufactured a naval fighter.

Though in terms of risk management, it's an absolutely horrible idea. However, who are we to stop the current administration?!

 

[CaribouTruth]

From a budgetary perspective, it may make a great deal of sense to grant the F/A-XX contract to Boeing by merging the F/A-XX and NGAD programs. Moreover, it's been at least a couple of decades since Northrop manufactured a naval fighter.

Though in terms of risk management, it's an absolutely horrible idea. However, who are we to stop the current administration?!

It really is a topsy turvy world, could've given the stealth fighter to Northrup who do have a lot of experience in stealth and given the naval fighter to Boeing (MDD) who also have a lot of recent experience in naval fighters. I guess this whole thing is a diversity measure to increase cross capabilities in the MIC. Bit of a DEI program.

 

[00CuriousObserver]

Ok, after happy pages of sweet revenge, some first impressions.

1. Photos hide rear, but also emphasize supersonic flight.
2. Canards - supersonic stability (and performance), but also apparently maneuver requirements were maintained. Lile it, hate it - canards will hit high frequency LO. But won't kill it(after all, it's Boeing, i.e. an obvious bird of prey descendant). Low frequency one can still be wastly better than 5th gen. No easy L-band workarounds.
Maneuverability will help such aircraft to operate at low altitudes; it will help it in both wvr(which it probably very much capable of reaching) and contested bvr.

3. Huge(relatively) cockpit and relatively weak, single wheel frontal chassis. Not necessarily, but this plane can in fact be very small, perhaps as small or even smaller than F-16.
5. Wings look rather long.
6.adaptable engines are basic feature of the package.

Summary: likely light(even against expectations, though it was already expected to be smaller than F-22). Given presence of canards and highly advanced (towards efficiency across flight modes) engines, likely meant to fly very far.

Speculations:

4. Fuselage shape smells drone variant(just "remove" cockpit in your imagination). Likely aimed at high incriment dedicated loyal wingman in the future, and almost certainly meant to operate with them normally. Not just "command" them, but be *part* of them. Which will also amplify stealth of manned component - not directly, but through similarity of "blinking" LO airframes.
I wonder how high are Boeing chances here, though, given that USAF is doing everything to prevent vendor lock.

5. Lightness speculation, together with obvious high integration with CCAs, probably means that something has to give.
In F-22, range was sacrificed. In F-35 it was aerodynamic performance(efficiency). Here, I feel it will be IWB depth.
LWs, F-35s and B-21s can carry voluminous payloads.
If you aim at a bay capable of only AIM-260s and future WVR missiles, it can be extremely shallow, or even conformal(bays). APKWS in bay doors?
6. If lightness speculation is true, it's unlikely USAF sees DEW as it's future. Maybe F-35 and B-21 are seen as more suitable.
7. Maneuver performance is still viewed as important.
8. Numbers are seen as important, and general vector of buying 1 7th gen aircraft by 2054 as wrong. Which is very refreshing.

Overall, given how much US fun community now burns and copes(oval office release as misinformation), USAF most certainly managed to surprise community. While it's certainly funny to watch meltdowns, I won't be exactly as optimistic as to expect that USAF doesn't know what it wants, or can't get it.
Yes, it does feel like canarded fighter mafia's sweet revenge. But a very advanced and forward-looking one.

If it's F-35 sized, doesn't that mean sensor capabilities are also sacrificed?

 

[bsdnf]

UNO!

 

[enroger]

I don't know how some members creaming over this is able to reconcile "small size" and "extreme long range", usually those are contradictory attribute.

Even with adaptive cycle engine multiply range by 1.5, you still only get 1.5 the range of say F-16 or F-35, not as "revolutionary" as some would like is it? And certainly not as useful in pacific theater as USAF planned in their earlier vision.

And exotic wingform will not help that much with L/D, the most efficient wingform for cruising is still a long straight wing. The exotic dyhedral/anhedral thing I suspect has more to do with stealth rather than aerodynamic efficiency, as demonstrated by their Bop project

 

[mangchaocs]

View attachment 148393
UNO!

“You can’t love canard only when it was adopted by a US aircraft.”

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

So do you anticipate the F-47 to be a single engine fighter like the F-35?

Well, if the F-47 has to be cheap enough compared to the F-22 to be procured in greater numbers than the latter while having guaranteed inter-generational capability leap over the 5th-gens, then I believe that a F-35-sized F-47 would be the minimum.

Otherwise, there's perhaps going to be some rather major sacrifice in capabilities.

Or perhaps the USAF believes that it's a good idea to just outsource the radar and sensor systems to other allied manned aircrafts and loyal wingman UCAVs, although I don't think that this is necessarily a wise choice.

 

[Biscuits]

I don't want to discuss the reaction of other forum, but Americans (including Canadians) in other forum seem to be too excited.
Even if we do not see the true image of the f-47, this does not prevent americans from claiming that it is the most powerful.
It seems that Trump will lead the United States from victory to another victory.

It seems you have no other perspective than coming here and giving the perspective of other nationalists, under a thin veneer of lamenting, as if we should care what rabid magas think showing off a CG makes them powerful...?

And this is a pattern of your posting which is incredibly consistent, whether politics, air force, navy or other news... I just wonder, why??

My bet is they'll build a couple of prototypes and then the program gets axed, which won't even be a problem because Boeing got the bailout and they'll announce they're skipping 6th gen European style

The root problem is unrealistic and mutually contradictory requirement: America is defining this program as air dominance, or at least air superiority, so by definition it must be at minimum superior to J-36 and J-50. At the same time they also require it, or should I say their financial situation requires them to constrain cost to below F-22.

At this point they don't have much info on J-36 and J-50, and they haven't spent money on it yet, but knowledge of both J-36/50 and program cost will emerge at around the same time, and they're inevitably heading toward a moment where they compare how much they're spending with what it's up against, and have to make a decision on which requirement to abandon, but their pride will prohibit them from abandoning the former, while their finances prohibits them from abandoning the latter, and in either case by that point it'll be way too late to abandon either.

This already happened to NGAD when they put it on pause for Trump to deal with, Trump being Trump has no idea what's going on, but engineering reality hasn't changed.

No, I'm sure they can get something out. We will still have to wait until they fly.

Based on the few things they've shown us however, there are questionable elements about the control surfaces and aircraft size. This doesn't mean the aircraft can't and indeed it for political reasons must go through, but it's position on the 6th gen hierarchy might always be questioned in a similar way Su-57 is questioned among 5th gens.

And America with a peer/near peer military aviation industry to China and no2 economy can defintely afford to put this aircraft in service, at some point in the future. Even Russia with a Germany sized economy could put the Su-57 in. There are similar political concerns of not letting the enemy field a clear generational advantage. The question is how long the development will take and how much compromises are made in the design.