A little background is indicated here. Northrop always had a strong Advanced Design group, not glamorously named like Lockheed's Skunk Works, but very creative, following Jack Northrop's vision. For many years they were based on the top floor of the Engineering building along Broadway (now Northrop Ave.) In the mid 50's into the 60's, under Welko Gasich with Lee Begin running Configuration, the N156, T-38 F-5 series was developed, culminating in the F-5E with uprated engines in 1972. Walt Fellers was a key figure by then and the AX program with Jerry Huben and Don Heinze was a result. The P-530 was Fellers baby too with Lee Begin in the Project Office and Jerry Huben responsible for configuration. This evolved into the LWF proposal and subsequently the YF-17.
Northrop had no Navy experience and so teamed with McDonnell for the NACF proposal based on Northrop's design, but significantly larger. As part of the deal Northrop retained the right to design responsibility for overseas sales of a land-based variant, the F-18L. The production effort kicked off in 1975 and the F-18A Configuration group under Jerry Huben evolved into F-18L Configuration Development by 1980. Lee Begin was the the Program Office with Haig Asdurian running Engineering. Advanced Design under Bob Sandusky was doing studies that led to the ATF proposal and when Northrop won, they disappeared into the compartmented Special Access world. Walt Fellers and Bob Sandusky's names are on the YF-23 patent although Tom Wier then Ken Victor managed configuration eventually.
There was a need for a "white world" Advanced Design and the F-18L folks and Advanced Design people who could not be cleared for SAR because they were foreign born or something were merged into Advanced Projects under Pete Audano, Dave McNally, Engineering and Jerry Huben, Configuration. Several of the Northrop projects shown in this thread come from this group between 1980 and '85. They were called Advanced F-5 -F-18 Configuration Development. The ND-102 was Walt Feller's baby and he meticulously massaged it with Jerry Acord and Don Stack.
As an interesting aside, when we developed a configuration for the Supercruiser with a diamond shaped wing we were visited by a deputation from ATF configuration who removed all drawings of the design.
The picture dated '82 shows a model of the dorsal inlet design and on the original you can see that the drawing on the board is of Bud Nelson's Compact Efficient Fighter (CEF) that appeared as Future Combat Fighter. Who are those people?
BillRo
