France-Germany-Spain Future Combat Air System (FCAS / SCAF / FSAC)

I don't think we can read anything into the models of Tempest and SCAF. They are purely models for the politicians to pull off the covers and nod and smile and make statements while hoping nobody from the manufacturer is going to tell them how much money want to actually build it. It builds up public interest, gets toured around and makes for a tangible PR object (Tempest is still touring, it was back at Cosford for the airshow a couple of weekends ago). They are representations, even in the past models of projects like Concorde and Jaguar never looked quite like the real thing.
Interestingly though, Tempest has an undercarriage and a cockpit you can sit in and decals to make it look genuine and show off cockpit concepts too, whereas the SCAF model is purely a generic plastic 3D shape for static display.
 
Great images! Thanks a lot. Interesting wing choice for a stealthy plane. We've seen something similar with Tempest project plane as well. I wonder if next gen US planes will stick to more diamond-y shapes or will they too go for these type of wings?
 
totoro said:
Great images! Thanks a lot. Interesting wing choice for a stealthy plane. We've seen something similar with Tempest project plane as well. I wonder if next gen US planes will stick to more diamond-y shapes or will they too go for these type of wings?
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The Mcdonnell Douglas ATF submission had a similar wing planform, IIRC. As well as that Lockheed Martin concept shown around eight years ago. In fact, that Dassault design reminds me of the LM design, with the exception of the intake layout and the axi-symmetric nozzles.

Ref 1 (Secret projects)

Ref 2 (At Code One)
 
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Deltafan said:
Slowly, but surely (from Dassault website) :
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Ahaha ! Just finished my try at a drawing when I saw these on your post !!
here :
NGF-200619.jpg

the color lines show the same angles used on edges. Stealth designs as this advantage that one can guess some same edges angle are used in different part on the airframe, it helps when estimating the shape. Anyways, just a try…
Now these new images you post looks good.

EDIT: corrected with new image posted by H_K, here.
Now if I keep the length as 19m, it makes a span something like15.50 m...
 
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The cockpit height and canopy geometry seem questionable. In fact, the forward fuselage geometry, with the sharp nose and rearward cockpit placement, actually reminds me of the YF-22, which I'm not fond of aesthetically. I'm going to chalk this up to a "stylized" concept.
 
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GARGEAN said:
Archibald said:
Mixed opinion, too. Not very beautiful, but IMHO, most stealth aircraft since F-117 are ugly. Never been a great fan - except perhaps the YF-23, all the others, russians, Chinese, American, are ugly and all look the same. The chinese types are typical of that. Give me a Su-47 or Su-35 any day.
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Hey, you ever looked at T-50 closely?
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Fair enough, not too bad, but the Su-47 really looked 100 times better.
 
H_K said:
galgot said:
Ahaha ! Just finished my try at a drawing when I saw these on your post !!
here :
View attachment 615413
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Nice job. Want to overlay your drawing with this image from Dassault’s Bourget video?View attachment 615454
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Thank you for that image ! here :

NGF-190619-2.jpg

Happy it wasn't tooooo off ...
I'll correct later. Actually I like the 3d renders posted by Deltafan, the artist certainly managed to make it look better than the mockup.
Though I still hate one piece canopy...
And indeed as Sundog and Sferrin noted, its close to the latest Lockheed concept from some time ago.
Curiously some edges on the Lockheed concept are curved tho, where here they retain all angled edges...

EDIT: Posted the corrected drawing in my previous post , here .
 
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Rodrigo Avella said:
Very similar for me.
comparacion-jpg.615524
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Well that makes a refreshing change.
 
Rodrigo Avella said:
Very similar for me.
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Indeed. Are these Chineses concepts fan arts or official stuffs ?

Or this one too , make it two engined :
cddr_mda-ngc-bae_011.jpg

A stealth swept wing V-tailed fighter look a lot like another stealth swept wing V-tailed fighter. Just possible configs.
Like for example , this :
Pic01.jpg
looks a lot like :
hqdefault.jpg
 
We could draw two conclusions from the air show model if it was indicative of what they really develop:
1) The wing sweep angle tells about the Mach number at which compression effects become bad. So super cruise speed would likely be lower than that.
2) The existence of tail stabilisers means that the German-French product run the risk of getting put into the gen 5+ category instead of gen 6 category by American companies' PR.
This already applies at this stage. The Americans have no gen 6 aircraft under development save for their bomber and some drones, though.
 
Maybe more this one… Even if less than 30 years is young for a grandmother...
 

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LowObservable said:
Grand-mere, c'est toi?
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Or Grand-Père :) Avion is a masculine word in French. Note also how the world changed from a time when French project would be named ACF, for Avion de Combat Futur, a French acronym, to now NGF (New Generation Fighter) an English acronym for a French/German project.
Must be impossible to make an acronym that works both in French AND German... :D

And its indeed about the same size as ACF... which was too big (and expensive) for Fr AF, as was the Mirage 4000.
 
inlets look very small for a 3 steamed engine. But nice one. Do we know at what scale is the mockup grossly?
 
I am scarred when AIrbus call it expendable... Will the French budget survive? (expendable + low availability rate = nonsense).
 
TomcatViP said:
galgot said:
Must be impossible to make an acronym that works both in French AND German... :D
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Think at the BMW E-Tron...*


*etron = crap (literally) in French
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hahahaha, i must confess i had not realized this. I read E-Tron in an English voice, if that makes sense!
I heard Toyota, in France, had to change the name of its MR-2 spider :D
 
TomcatViP said:
inlets look very small for a 3 steamed engine. But nice one. Do we know at what scale is the mockup grossly?
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1/1 but, we need to wait for the demonstrator and its final shape.

Dassault indicated that there are 4 designs, the two Le Bourget mock-ups show only one the four. If the first known design (Dassault video from May 2018 and Euronaval mock-up from October 2018) is not obsolete there is two unknown designs (three if the design from 2018 is obsolete).
 
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If I would to do any guess in what the design would look like, it will be a cropped delta wingplanform, maybe with canards to stabalise the air flow so it doesn't separate at high AoA. I think they will use some cleaver plasma actuators or boundary layer suction system for that so they don't have to make a very complex canard for stealth reasons. I do think it is a pity because what you see on the Rafale, being able to pull 11G maneuvers in case of emergency, that would be wasted. That aircraft is extremely refined aerodynamically. The only reason why it isn't as fast as the Eurofighter is because of the smaller engines mainly.
 
sferrin said:
Deltafan said:
Slowly, but surely (from Dassault website) :
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Hmmm
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zen said:
Deltafan said:
Slowly, but surely (from Dassault website) :
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Hmmmm.....
Looks a bit like Replica.
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"Slowly but surely" was not for the shape of the NGF mock-ups of Le Bourget but to get new images/photos/drawings of the shape of these mock-ups…

For the shape, I prefer wait the first flight of the demonstrator in 2026 (if there are a demonstrator and a flight) to give my opinion...
 
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