And if it is neither too costly nor too secret?
Giving them an open door out of their current financial troubles?
Most definitely, but who'd want a degraded version? The 100% domestic version will need to be very, very good for the 90% export version to fly off the shelves F-16-style. Older readers will recall how the 90% F-16s sold.
Boeing alumni ran the merged company from '97 until Harry Stonecipher, ex McD, took over in '03, after the Darleen Druyun debacle; after his forced retirement in '05 it was James McNerney, ex GE and 3M; after which it was Muilenberg, who was a Boeing lifer; followed by Calhoun, ex GE and finance; and now Ortberg, ex Rockwell. So a McD alumni has only run the merged company for 2-3 years out of 27.
I'm presuming the grey arc at the top of the canopy is actually the tip of a ventral inlet.
Between the spelling & grammar mistakes (my personal favorite was literally in the first sentence of one of their "articles". Sad!), their penchant for including "information" that cannot be independently confirmed/verified, & the fact that they have apparently plagiarized/stolen writing from people in the past (one guy on Twitter evidently had a lovely such "experience" with them), it's readily apparent that the only difference between these dudes & TMZ is a single letter, at best.
Perhaps the plane will mostly fly itself, and a solo pilot will be free to focus on commanding CCAs as well as coordinating the mission in general. AI pilots are already dogfighting. Maneuvering the plane should be one of the more straightforward tasks that can be offloaded to a computer, compared to the decision-making process during a mission. If the F-47 has novel control surfaces, it will already have to be fly-by-wire to an extreme degree.
If F-35 was exportable, I don't see why F-47 won't be.
If anything, recent F-16 and F-15 export sales (F-16V/Block 70, F-15SA/QA) have been of aircraft above USAF standard, not below. F-35 sales are at the USAF standard.
Were USAF standard (probably for the most part). Now, the DOD is buying a different radar to what the export / partner customers are paying for. This is not just typical of US DOD. Other countries probably do hold back some sovereign capability, whether that is publicly shared (by head of state no less) or not is a different matter. Russians have export variants / configurations and I'm sure so do Europeans. Unless one strips down and evaluates domestic variant right down to code, there is no way to tell for sure.
The F-15 was exportable but the F-22 wasn't.
A shame there is already a Phantom II. It would fit perfect with stealth but Phantom III would be too weird. "VooDoo II" would likely be politically unacceptable as would "Demon II".
F/A-XX will be using an F110 derivative with variable-cycle features.
Thanks for sharing. Interestingly, the POTUS and CSAF mentioned 5 years worth of experimental flight totaling hundreds of hours in support of the program leading up to this stage. From a flight hour, and time perspective that is more than most if not all X plane programs. Which then leads to an interesting question of whether they build something after the initial X planes as they marched towards the RFP stage of the program in 2023. The last three of these 'five years' basically.
Just to add to the other relevant popular criticisms of The Su-57 & J-20 - where is The IRST, & what hath become of EOTS? Imagine if this thing has even the slightest "tunnel" underneath. Good luck trying to polish that turd.Not that I substantively disagree with any of this, but surely you'll have to concede that this sort of nuance is exactly what was singularly lacking in the arguments of American contributors in past "discussions" on the subject of canards and low observability. Indeed attempts at such from other quarters were generally met with derision, so it still represents a change of tack and it seems entirely fair to call that out, especially with some classy humour thrown in (as has been the case here)
So why not consider the existing variable cycle engine, such as YF120, F136?
Maybe we should ask if aeroelastic materials are at play here and as far as hinge or rotation gaps, the canopy doesn't seem to have a seam line either. Maybe it bends or changes camber based on flight envelope.
Probably zero, fixed canards are 1960s vibe.
Not sure I understand you. Are you talking about NGAD demonstrators here? Ones that flew for last five years?
