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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 sen
by 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 agoSaaB 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 agoSAAB 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.