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Finland is deciding on its biggest national purchase ever this year, new fighters to replace the F/A-18 Hornets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Progra

Finland is deciding on its biggest national purchase ever this year, new fighters to replace the F/A-18 Hornets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program . It seems every fighter has had its share of scandals, though the local press of course doesn't report of a lot of it. The lift fan space in the B variant has forced a "fat" design on all the three variants, with resulting aerodynamic penalties. To me, it seems it would have been relatively easy to just design a new airframe ignoring any commonality in airframe, because - the airframe is not the expensive part. Maybe it was in the fifties still. Instead use all the systems like the engine, avionics, sensors, software etc where the cost anyway is nowadays. Even aerodynamic design can be done with computers nowadays so you don't need so much calendar time in costly wind tunnels.

jcun4128 5y ago
The Ryan Vertifan was a cool design but I imagine how F35's is done has advantages. Wonder what the Russians thought about their Yak 141.
CapricornNoble 5y ago
Pretty sure I heard a USAF general make a similar argument for the way ahead / 6th gen aircraft development: that airframes need to be iterated faster, with sensor and weapon packages being much more plug-and-play. So we should be able to stuff the same AESA + Distributed Aperture Sensors in a single seat/single engine fighter, a tandem-seat strikefighter, and a side-by-side seat penetration bomber. You replace the airframes as your materials science improves and your desired flight envelopes/mission profiles change. You replace the internals as your electrical & software engineering improves. Alternate between the two, like Intels old "Tick/Tock" cycle. Far better than doing clean-sheet designs that need to debug EVERYTHING new simultaneously.
- Stranger43 5y ago
  SaaB have been putting this philosophy into production planes for close to a decade, and it's been talked about a lot within the eurofighter consortium. We don't hear much about how say India or Israel does thing but both have a record of performing significant modifications/improvement to existing airframes.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    SAAB Gripen aerodynamics and structure is from the eighties though, at least looks like that from the outside. But the new Red Hawk trainer looks great.

jcun4128 5y ago

The Ryan Vertifan was a cool design but I imagine how F35's is done has advantages. Wonder what the Russians thought about their Yak 141.

CapricornNoble 5y ago

Pretty sure I heard a USAF general make a similar argument for the way ahead / 6th gen aircraft development: that airframes need to be iterated faster, with sensor and weapon packages being much more plug-and-play. So we should be able to stuff the same AESA + Distributed Aperture Sensors in a single seat/single engine fighter, a tandem-seat strikefighter, and a side-by-side seat penetration bomber. You replace the airframes as your materials science improves and your desired flight envelopes/mission profiles change. You replace the internals as your electrical & software engineering improves. Alternate between the two, like Intels old "Tick/Tock" cycle. Far better than doing clean-sheet designs that need to debug EVERYTHING new simultaneously.

Stranger43 5y ago
SaaB have been putting this philosophy into production planes for close to a decade, and it's been talked about a lot within the eurofighter consortium. We don't hear much about how say India or Israel does thing but both have a record of performing significant modifications/improvement to existing airframes.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  SAAB Gripen aerodynamics and structure is from the eighties though, at least looks like that from the outside. But the new Red Hawk trainer looks great.