hagaricus
ACCESS: Barclaycard
- Joined
- 5 November 2010
- Messages
- 174
- Reaction score
- 170
I've been greatly enjoying all the fun around the "aircraft" presented by iran recently.
The consensus is that it's a mockup/fake, so how about a "what if" it wasn't?
Much of the criticism revolves around the crappiness of the model, but what if it's not a crappy model, but a crappy aircraft? It's clear they've done a deal of computer modelling, so it stands to reason that they'd shove it through x-plane a few times to make sure it flies OK at least in theory, they also made at least 2 R/C models of it, which shows more dedication than a film prop. I'm assuming they gave it the same computer treatment as far as RCS is concerned.
So here's the premise: They figured they wanted an indigenous aircraft industry, and could only achieve so much by modifying existing aircraft, and you've got to start somewhere. They figured that anything with a future needs to be stealth, so they concentrated on this aspect. I'm positing that rather than wood & fibreglass it's actually alloy & carbon-fibre. It's otherwise little more than a kit-plane. The avionics have been identified by JFC Fuller, it clearly can't house a radar, and I'm assuming that they're coating it with some RAM they got from china (probably along with the engine, which I expect to be non-afterburning) And that this RAM is not yet applied to the unveiled example, hence explaining the poor surface finish. Maybe it's got some passive IR sensors to aid interception?
The logic is that if these are indeed relatively stealthy, assisted by the fact that they are small and operate at low level (hence no pressurised cockpit needing less secure fastening) and can be mass-produced cheaply, carrying 1 or 2 IR homing AAMs (I have no idea what they might have in this way) or a single ASM, then releasing swarms of them from short runways (which will be more numerous, thus harder to knock out than big bases) might actually be quite an annoyance to incoming strike aircraft, shipping, or land forces.
To round up the incongruent features, the wierd wing configuration is about STOL to aid dispersal, and the lack of HUD is explained by helmet-mounted display technology. The wobbly canopy glass is actually a stealth feature to diffuse incoming radar before it hits the surfaces in the cockpit (yeah, right). The small air intakes are about keeping radar off the compressor face, and as everything else points at a subsonic aircraft, I'll chuck in some notion that they will somehow work OK in that regime. Oh and the guy in the cockpit is Ali the giant, The tallest pilot in all Iran
So yeah, it's all a stretch, but this is the department of speculation. I love the bizarre & unusual in aircraft, and this is definitely both those, so I'd like it to live, if only in the parallel universe of fevered imaginings. I hope this isn't too far off-ball for even this section, if so I apologise. B)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0BmM1h0CPw
The consensus is that it's a mockup/fake, so how about a "what if" it wasn't?
Much of the criticism revolves around the crappiness of the model, but what if it's not a crappy model, but a crappy aircraft? It's clear they've done a deal of computer modelling, so it stands to reason that they'd shove it through x-plane a few times to make sure it flies OK at least in theory, they also made at least 2 R/C models of it, which shows more dedication than a film prop. I'm assuming they gave it the same computer treatment as far as RCS is concerned.
So here's the premise: They figured they wanted an indigenous aircraft industry, and could only achieve so much by modifying existing aircraft, and you've got to start somewhere. They figured that anything with a future needs to be stealth, so they concentrated on this aspect. I'm positing that rather than wood & fibreglass it's actually alloy & carbon-fibre. It's otherwise little more than a kit-plane. The avionics have been identified by JFC Fuller, it clearly can't house a radar, and I'm assuming that they're coating it with some RAM they got from china (probably along with the engine, which I expect to be non-afterburning) And that this RAM is not yet applied to the unveiled example, hence explaining the poor surface finish. Maybe it's got some passive IR sensors to aid interception?
The logic is that if these are indeed relatively stealthy, assisted by the fact that they are small and operate at low level (hence no pressurised cockpit needing less secure fastening) and can be mass-produced cheaply, carrying 1 or 2 IR homing AAMs (I have no idea what they might have in this way) or a single ASM, then releasing swarms of them from short runways (which will be more numerous, thus harder to knock out than big bases) might actually be quite an annoyance to incoming strike aircraft, shipping, or land forces.
To round up the incongruent features, the wierd wing configuration is about STOL to aid dispersal, and the lack of HUD is explained by helmet-mounted display technology. The wobbly canopy glass is actually a stealth feature to diffuse incoming radar before it hits the surfaces in the cockpit (yeah, right). The small air intakes are about keeping radar off the compressor face, and as everything else points at a subsonic aircraft, I'll chuck in some notion that they will somehow work OK in that regime. Oh and the guy in the cockpit is Ali the giant, The tallest pilot in all Iran
So yeah, it's all a stretch, but this is the department of speculation. I love the bizarre & unusual in aircraft, and this is definitely both those, so I'd like it to live, if only in the parallel universe of fevered imaginings. I hope this isn't too far off-ball for even this section, if so I apologise. B)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0BmM1h0CPw
