Posted on 09/20/2004 1:23:10 PM PDT by GOP Jedi
"laser armed versions"
I love the way that's casually thrown out. Dude, it's a jet fighter with friggin' lasers on its wings!
Hrm. Tactical lasers a la THEL? Ever hear of this?
Very cool. USAF zot!
"Lock S-Foils in attack position."
Is this the dream of every woman for her man "fighter?"
I sense a disturbance in The Force ....
"All I want are some frikken strike fighters with some frikken laser beams on their wings! Throw me a bone here!"
Great. Now the USAF will have the same underpowered, underarmed, no-legs version as the USMC. They should take a close look at the Harrier before signing on to this one.
Haha. Seriously, though, I wonder how easy it would be to aim and hit another craft with a fixed-mount laser?
How well do you suppose it will do in strafing womp-rats?
Probably no harder that hitting with guns. Perhaps easier because they are essentially instantaneous and non-ballistic, so you don't have to lead the target. Devastating with enought power and the right frequencies of light.
**YOW. I'm gettin' all excited!**
"MOS EISLEY: In other news, Captain Biggs Darklighter, USAF, crashed his F-35 in Beggar's Canyon today. Air Force authorities are investigating reports that he was trying to shoot womp-rats."
First thing you see and it doesn't take a close look is the extraordinary Harrier accident rate. Also, I believe they're long out of production.
Nope. I'm on the losing team (Boeing), and I admire the platform itself.
President Kerry will put a stop to all of this.
From what I've read elsewhere, the laser would be a miniature, solid-state version of the Chemical Oxygen Infrared Laser (COIL) carried on the AL-1 Airborne Laser aircraft. The laser unit would be packaged in a "drop-in" turret that would take the place of the ducted lift fan located in the F-35 fuselage and would take power from the same drivetrain that powers the fan. My impression from conceptual art is that the laser turret would be steerable.
Just so you all know, when it comes to these aggressive weight reduction campaigns, the proof is "in the pudding" as the saying goes. When faced with a bloated design, program managers scramble to pull the weight back into design margins. Typically, they stand up and ask all the engineers to "sharpen their pencils" and put together a list of potential solutions to hit their new target.
Many of these changes are already known about and require some form of concession or trade-off with the customer. Others are suddenly viable because cost targets are seemingly lowered to absorb impacts. Finally, many of the proposed changes are just SWAGs that many fine design engineers are challenged by and jump through hoops to try and achieve.
The bottom line is the old saying "you can't put 4 pound
of sh*t into a 3 pound bag" still applies. Trade-offs from the specification (as the design matures) proving what was possible over what was fiction is the name of the game.
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