Lockheed pre-ATF & ATF studies

flateric

flateric

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"Clearly, ATF was going to be superstealth and not a cousin of YF-12 or SR-71," explains Osborne. "I stopped the YF-12 derivative effort, and we started working on an F-117 derivative for ATF." The design submitted in the Lockheed proposal looked like a larger and elongated F-117 with some significant differences. It had a high wing rather than low wing and four tails instead of two. The inlets were placed below and behind the leading edge of the wing. The highly faceted airplane weighed around 80,000 pounds and was far from aerodynamic.

"We knew we would have serious problems with the supersonic requirements," recalls Osborne. "Our design could go supersonic, but it was a real dog of an airplane. With enough power, you can make a brick fly. We did not know how to analyze a curved stealthy shape in those days. The software wasn't sophisticated enough, and we didn't have the computational capacity we needed. We had our hands tied by the analytical problems. Lockheed had become convinced that, if we could not analyze a design as a stealthy shape, then it could not be stealthy. We would not break through that barrier until 1984." Lockheed's submittal for the concept exploration phase was not received well by the Air Force. The company placed last in the field of seven."

F-22 Design Evolution
by Eric Hehs

Code One Magazine April 1998

That's how beast look like. Year is 1983.
 

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Hmm, just noticed unmatching description - "It had a high wing rather than low wing and four tails instead of two. The inlets were placed below and behind the leading edge of the wing."

Seems to be some iteration on pic posted, but picture origin is surely from Lockheed ADP.
 
Oh, just remembered that this goblin in fact was disclosured in Code One paper version - this one in the first post (slightly different angle though and much better quality) and later iteration. Where the hell are four tails again?

[removed image - better versions later in thread]
 
"After a poor showing in the concept exploration phase, Lockheed had to turn around its ATF program before the next proposal was due. The company had just lost what became the B-2 with a faceted design to a more aerodynamic flying wing design from Northrop. Lockheed had also been cut from consideration in the Navy's Advanced Tactical Aircraft program after entering that competition with a highly faceted design. The Air Force's response to Lockheed's concept exploration proposal forced the company to rethink its commitment to faceting for stealth.

"We simply started drawing curved shapes," recalls Osborne, "even though we could not run the designs through our analytical software models. When we went to curved airplanes, we began to get more acceptable supersonic and maneuver performance. Instead of relying on software models, we built curved shapes and tested them on the company's radar range. The curved shapes performed quite well in the radar tests."

The Lockheed configuration quickly progressed from faceted to smooth. The configuration just preceding the company's final dem/val design, called Configuration 084, was smooth except for a faceted nose. "We knew how to make a stealthy flat radome," recalls Osborne, "but we didn't know until early 1985 how to make a stealthy curved radome. We started drawing them in late 1984, before we knew how to analyze them."

F-22 Design Evolution
by Eric Hehs
Code One Magazine, April 1998, Vol.13 No.2
 

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Also, where's the high wing? I see at best a mid wing.



flateric said:
Oh, just remembered that this goblin in fact was disclosured in Code One paper version - this one in the first post (slightly different angle though and much better quality) and later iteration. Where the hell are four tails again?
Click to expand...
 
frank said:
Also, where's the high wing? I see at best a mid wing.
Click to expand...

OK, Frank, let's try to turn on our imagination:)
 
Page 20 of the CAF presentation...

JSF X-37

JSF X-37?

JSF X-37?
 
There are as well 'JSF X-36' typo. But I'm remembering (hmm, from Bill Sweetman's book) that this X designation system have other assignment changes - Lockheed's ASTOVL/JAST would become X-32 for example. I hope we will not discuss 'YF-24' here?
 
Hi,

the Lockheed pre ATF studied.
 

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Hesham, the design you show isn't a design study. That was Lockheed-Martin's design submission that won them their place in the ATF demo fly off. However, after they won, they realized they had problems with that design and went back to the drawing board to redesign their submission for the ATF demo. IIRC, Northrop was forced to delay work on their YF-23 as a result of Lockheed-Martin's screw up in order not to embarrass Lockheed or the Air Force. In a way, Northrop was penalized for getting it right the first time.

This is why I thought it was laughable when Lockheed-Martin went after Boeing for redesigning their JSF submission.
 
Sundog said:
Hesham, the design you show isn't a design study. That was Lockheed-Martin's design submission that won them their place in the ATF demo fly off. However, after they won, they realized they had problems with that design and went back to the drawing board to redesign their submission for the ATF demo. IIRC, Northrop was forced to delay work on their YF-23 as a result of Lockheed-Martin's screw up in order not to embarrass Lockheed or the Air Force. In a way, Northrop was penalized for getting it right the first time.

This is why I thought it was laughable when Lockheed-Martin went after Boeing for redesigning their JSF submission.
Click to expand...

Ironically the design Lockheed submitted was the one the USAF like the most out of the four Lockheed proposed. Then the real one turns out to be almost identical to one the USAF didn't like (page 14 upper left Paul ;) )
 
Sundog said:
IIRC, Northrop was forced to delay work on their YF-23 as a result of Lockheed-Martin's screw up in order not to embarrass Lockheed or the Air Force. In a way, Northrop was penalized for getting it right the first time.

This is why I thought it was laughable when Lockheed-Martin went after Boeing for redesigning their JSF submission.
Click to expand...

Hmmm...
First flights
LWF
1/GD 2/Northrop - GD wins
ATF
1/Northrop 2/Lockheed - Lockheed wins
JSF
1/Boeing 2/Lockheed - Lockheed wins
UCAV/J-UCAS/UCAS-D
1/Boeing 2/Northrop - Northrop wins

Tendence, I must say)
 
Model of Lockheed Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) design submission.

According to F-22 Raptor (Enthusiast Color Series) by Bill Sweetman, MBI Publishing Company, 1998:

Lockheed's original design echoed the F-117, with its arrowhead shape and blended forward fuselage, which might have restricted the pilot's downward view. It featured a more conventional trapezoidal wings and vectored thrust to meet maneuver requirements and a horizontal tail, however. The four tails and boom-mounted horizontals survived into the final design, but little else of the planform did.
Click to expand...

The lower body shape of the original Lockheed design foreshadowed the F-22--the overwing and gridded inlets of the F-117 would not work in a supersonic aircraft. Internally, it was completely different from the F-22, with a single weapons bay in the midfuselage housing a rotary launcher. The vertical tails are highly swept and would have been quite heavy.
Click to expand...

Additonal views, although smaller, of this model can be found at the beginning of this topic:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2001.msg23476.html#msg23476
 

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crossposted from Skybolt's message in CL-1980 thread, added some artist's impressions

CL-2016, one of the configuration developed by Lockheed for the official ATF competition. This is the one shown, for example, in Aerofax F-22.
Souce: Bill Slayton via Scott Lowther.
 

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Flateric, are those top two images different variations of the CL-2016, since they are clearly not the same design? The top one close matches the 3-view, with the fuselage spine running all the way to the tail, but the middle design has much more of a blended wing/body than the other design.
 
surely, CL-2016 had many variations (I guess)
at least both artist's impressions originated from Lockheed
 
Hi,

the Lockheed-California parasol-wing fighter.
 

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Are both the engine intakes and exhausts located between the wing and main body? The afterbody looks more like an exhaust ramp, so it's hard to tell.


hesham said:
Hi,

the Lockheed-California parasol-wing fighter.
Click to expand...
 
From Code One Magazine:
 

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From Code One magazine:

Lockheed's proposal configuration, called 090P, had a streamlined nose, trapezoidal wing planform with positive sweep on both the leading and trailing edges, and four tail surfaces (two horizontal and two vertical). The large vertical tails were canted outwards. The leading and trailing edge sweep angles of all of the surfaces were aligned at common angles. The design had a wide strake that ran in a straight line from the wing leading edge outboard of the inlets to the point of the nose.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=40
 

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From Code One magazine:

The Lockheed design carried six air-to-air missiles in a rotary missile launcher. The launcher was loaded away from the aircraft. (Lockheed also designed a version of the launcher that could be used independently for airfield defense.) When closed, the bottom of the launcher became the lower skin of the aircraft.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=40
 

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Not sure if this has been posted on the forum before. It is a chart depicting the evolution of the ATF design that led to the YF-22.
 

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Hi all,
I dont know if this drawings was already posted as the pre-ATF, ATF and F-22 topics are numerous in this blog.
The drawing is dated 1982 and the caption, rather exhaustive, is in English.
I cant add more...
Nico
 

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Hi boys,
digging in my 'Stealth' folder I found those two interesting pictures, dated November 1990 but surely dating back to previous years. One depicts an all-red windtunnel model, during visualization of air flow patterns. Lockheed said that the YF-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter required more than 24,000 hours of wind-tunnell testing. The model seems to me a very early shape of the project.
I found also another pic with an engineer working with Cadam; also with a magnifying glas it's impossible to read the words on the screens; the configuration seems an evolved one, with canard wings.


Nico
 

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Historical Nov.6, 1986 'Lockheed STAR' issue
 

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