Posted on 07/27/2025 5:42:21 AM PDT by whyilovetexas111
Which in the hands of the deep state will oppress me?
How about paper airplanes.
Fix our system so I wont have to burn it.
Near the end of the contest they did a redesign of the front end, looked much better.
I question that. Boeing had a very hard time getting hovering and landing vertical, switching from hovering to flight working on their plane. I remember watching the documentary on this, Boeing lagged and at the end made a major design change and couldn’t do certain things without pieces of the plane detached for airflow reasons.
I’m not sure which is more offensive. A hideous design presumably based on function,, presumably the best functionality that Boeing engineers could conceive, or the reworking of the esthetics contrary to function.
All STOVL jet aircraft at that point were single engine. Imagine matching thrust output when transitioning from horizontal to vertical flight? They killed a lot of pilots in the Harrier... a much simpler aircraft.
The XF-35 was just further advanced than the Boeing aircraft by the flyoff. Looks were undoubtedly a factor, but Boeing also didn’t check off a lot of the program requirements on-time.
To me it looks like it wants a
bucket of fish thrown its way.
It reminds me of feeding Shamu, the
Killer Whale at Sea World in Florida.
F-20 was mainly for export to friendly countries with modest military budgets, wasn’t it? I wonder if any are still in operation.
The original design goal for the F-35 was for first day of war stealth only. It was originally intended to have stealth for the first day of war to take out enemy defenses, then non-stealth external stores for extended operations.
Somehow that has morphed into an all-stealth all the time expectation.
The Stealth on the F-35 was also designed to be exportable, so the L.O. coatings were designed more for durability than absolute Stealth performance.
The A is an adequate replacement for the F-16. The C is a mediocre replacement for the F/A-18A/C, and the B is totally unnecessary, as the Marines don't really need STOVL operations at all. If they did, then what they really needed was an updated AV-8B with modernized avionics including automated hovering and perhaps a new engine with FADEC, not a supersonic, stealthy VTOL aircraft.
At the end they reworked the front for better aerodynamics and looks. But after that, they didnt finish all the tests they needed to to meet the deadline.
Didn’t they call the X-32 “The Monica” for reasons...???
I’m not sure it was ever put into production. That might be the one before it, the Tiger?
The Norththrop Tiger Shark was known as the best jet fighter that never got made. It was a competitor to the F-16 Falcon. Smaller and much cheaper and almost as good. We could have made 2x as many for the same cost (or something).
Just as an FYI yesterday I saw ann article where Pakistan used cheap little JF-17 fighters to beat India’s expensive ones.
There is a very strong argument for using cheaper, smaller but more numerous fighters.
Later gator
Or I might have been thinking of the successor AFTER the Tiger Shark. the Super Tiger.
And it might have been competing with the F-14 Phantom.
I think I’m getting my planes confused.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F11F-1F_Super_Tiger#/media/File:F11F-1F_NAN12-56.jpg
I had to look it up, and yes, you’re right, it was the F-5 Tiger II that I was thinking of. The F-5 was a cool looking little plane with a pair of small jet engines rather than a bigger single engine like its successor the F-20. The F-20 also had more advanced avionics and radar.
F-5 wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5
We sold the F-5 like crazy to all kinds of friendlies around the world, and per the wiki article it is indeed still in operation in places like Brazil and Mexico. The Swiss and the Norwegians also flew them but retired them years ago. Taiwan just retired their F-5’s in 2023. Pretty remarkable for a design that goes back to the 1950s.
Believe it or not, even the Iranians had some, dating back to when we sold them to the Shah. In fact, the Israelis destroyed some Iranian F-5s on the ground in their recent attacks on Iran.
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