4 ms·

I guess they just have a big enough budget that losing millions of dollars of plane to a bird isn't a big deal?

• dmoy 1y ago
  It's more like if you make a plane resilient to bird strikes, you sacrifice a good chunk of performance - envelope, maneuverability, something. Depending on how fast the plane is going, "good chunk" might be a hilarious understatement too. Hitting an object at 1000mph imparts 4x the damage compared to hitting an object at 500mph. If you want to see an example of a durable military aircraft, look at the A-10: (Hit by a literal bird, still flying: https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/a-10-warthog-hits-bird-at-races-does-significant-damage/article_e3688020-269b-5dfa-9383-748c9387178c.html https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/a-10-warthog-hits-bird-at-r...) (Hit by idk what, giant hole in engine, engine on fire, still flying for an hour back to base: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-another-story-10-warthog-landed-safely-hole-cowling-left-engine/amp/ https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-another-story-10-warth...) Anyways, that's a military plane designed to get hit by... stuff... and as a result can take bird strikes. But its max speed is like 400mph and it would get absolutely wrecked by any serious opposition from fighters. The more resilient you make a plane to birds, the more vulnerable it is to missiles, per unit price. And missiles is kinda the point of the whole endeavor.