Northrop Releases 6th Generation Fighter Concept, Image

I like how the picture depicts it shooting at ICBM's and asteroids. Not that it's very relevant here. But I doubt it was built to protect us from space debris...

a reply to: JAY1980

I'm doubtful they're asteroids.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Boeing Phantom Works president Darryl Davis is refusing to take Northrop’s bait by disclosing new information about his advanced research and design unit’s secretive “T-X” and future fighter projects.

In an interview with Flightglobal in Washington this week, Davis stayed tight-lipped on when the company intends to fly the clean-sheet, next-generation trainer it is developing with Saab for the air force.

link.

Boeing seems to have come up with a theme song.

We're not gonna take it!
No, we're not gonna take it!
We're not gonna take the bait! Anymore!

ahem.

I believe that the USA has had the ability to make a Mach 2+ supercruiser with amazing stealth abilities and long range...the problem is, it would send the US broke to make anything like a useful number. The real trick will be getting all the desirable performance and capability characteristics achieved at a reasonable cost. So the next 10-20 years will need to see breakthroughs in manufacturing and processes as much as the actual flying tech.

the ability to put multiple shot, megawatt laser in a fighter plane will change everything. if possible.

will you need super stealth? maybe. but i doubt the range in which you engage the enemy will not be as close as depicted in the artist concepts. doesn't need to be.

Range will be the telling point with Lasers.That and the myriad of atmospheric conditions it has to work in for accuracy.

Yes but the more altitude you fly and you have less difraction, in a thin atmosphere more easy to use laser.

a reply to: darksidius

But it becomes much easier to see the high flier, too.

That said, there will not be a megawatt class laser on an aircraft for a good decade or more. They are still too bulky even with the rebuild HELLADS is getting for its modules. You WILL see what we called 'military grade' lasers (100 kw+) on aircraft within 5 years.

I would bet on a fighter with a laser within 10.

a reply to: anzha
For a bomber size like the LRS-B the laser gun must be ready realy soon.

Lasers have come a long way in terms of data transfer, surgery and industry, but frustrating to see that whilst this concept has been around since the early 1960s, it's well over half a century and we still need something the size of a warship to have even a low powered weapons system. :-(