4 ms·

An interesting footnote: the proposal Grumman beat to win the DARPA contract that led to the X-29 came from General Dynamics, who were pitching a forward-swept

An interesting footnote: the proposal Grumman beat to win the DARPA contract that led to the X-29 came from General Dynamics, who were pitching a forward-swept wing variant of their ubiquitous F-16 called the F-16 SFW. http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article26.html http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article26.html GD really wrung as much mileage out of the F-16 airframe as they possibly could, coming up with all sorts of weird proposed spinoffs from it. They bid on the fighter-bomber contract that was eventually won by the F-15E Strike Eagle, for instance, with a delta-winged F-16 they called the F-16XL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16XL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16XL), and they attempted to jam thrust-vectoring into the platform with the F-16 VISTA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_VISTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_VISTA).

duxup 7y ago
Makes sense as the F16 really seemed to be a successful system cost to utility wise.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Yeah, plus it had been a huge success in the foreign military sales market. So any F-16 2.0 that got traction was a product they could potentially sell to dozens of countries, even if the U.S. Air Force never bought it.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Same with the F/A-18. I remember being really into naval aviation when I was a kid, and I'd look at carrier air wings. There would be F-14s for air superiority, A-7s for light attack, A-6s for heavy attack, EA-6Bs for electronic warfare, KA-6Ds for tankers, S-3Bs for anti-submarine warfare, etc. Now I look at a modern carrier air wing, and it's F/A-18E/Fs for air superiority, F/A-18E/Fs for light attack, F/A-18E/Fs for heavy attack, F/A-18E/Fs for anti-submarine, F/A-18E/Fs for tanking, and EA-18Gs for electronic warfare. Same for the Marine Corps and a bunch of foreign nations. For that matter, the X-29 was itself a variant of the F-5, another lightweight, low-cost design that got a lot of mileage in different roles, including being the starting point for the F/A-18 design. Sometimes it pays to be cheap.

duxup 7y ago

Makes sense as the F16 really seemed to be a successful system cost to utility wise.

smacktoward 7y ago
Yeah, plus it had been a huge success in the foreign military sales market. So any F-16 2.0 that got traction was a product they could potentially sell to dozens of countries, even if the U.S. Air Force never bought it.
nostrademons 7y ago
Same with the F/A-18. I remember being really into naval aviation when I was a kid, and I'd look at carrier air wings. There would be F-14s for air superiority, A-7s for light attack, A-6s for heavy attack, EA-6Bs for electronic warfare, KA-6Ds for tankers, S-3Bs for anti-submarine warfare, etc. Now I look at a modern carrier air wing, and it's F/A-18E/Fs for air superiority, F/A-18E/Fs for light attack, F/A-18E/Fs for heavy attack, F/A-18E/Fs for anti-submarine, F/A-18E/Fs for tanking, and EA-18Gs for electronic warfare. Same for the Marine Corps and a bunch of foreign nations. For that matter, the X-29 was itself a variant of the F-5, another lightweight, low-cost design that got a lot of mileage in different roles, including being the starting point for the F/A-18 design. Sometimes it pays to be cheap.