BAe FSW Harrier!

With all the recent talk of FSW designs with planeman et al I was looking through some forward sweep proposals and I came across this one.

The BAe P1226 was a 1984 proposal for a highly agile follow on to the Harrier GR.5 and makes use of much of the AV-8B/GR.5 fuselage but with new rectangular intakes and a remarkable wing layout making use of canards, FSW with wing tip missiles and tail elevators! Also noteworthy is the fact that it has ditched the traditional bicycle uncercarriage for a more conventional layout featuring main gears that retract into wing pods, Tupolev style.

Obviously someone put this design quietly into a drawer and forgot all about it.

Super maneuverability eh... It's interesting that the British guys planned planes with forward swept wings too... BTW wan't it you who posted some pictures of the forward swept Tornado...??

I did a quick research of this plane, but I was pretty unlucky... I couldn't find anything useful...

Was this model able to land vertically, and forward swpt wings make the plane quite unstable right... how was this problem solved...?

[edit on 29-1-2006 by Figher Master FIN]

One of the big design problems with the harrier is that in order to remove the engine you have to take off both wings to work on it. With a FSW design it could minimize the time needed for engine repairs. But again i thought the JSF was suppose to replace the harrier?

Fascinating design mate, never seen that before. I thought you were going to post this, which as unlikey as it looks is also related to the Harrier:


Do you have a complete list of drawings for all the Hawker P# or something?

I have some pics of an AV-8 undergoing an engine change, sadly they're actual film pics and I can't scan them. It was something to watch. While I always liked the ability to hover, I always wondered about the fact that you have to remove the wings to change the engine.

FIN, No, I've never heard of an FSW Tornado, I did post pictures of a proposed Tornado version with reduced RCS but apart from the faceting it was basically the same as the GR.4.

This design would be incredibly unstable yes, but FBW would take care of that.

Jehosephat, I'm only guessing but I think the old problem of having to remove the entire wing would remain. Yes, the JSF is intended to replace the Harrier but this project dates from 1984 and so predates it. This may well be one of the projects we ditched in order to join JSF.

Planeman, This design is later than the P.1214, I think it was an attempt to get similar performance for reduced cost. I haven't got a complete collection of drawings but it is pretty comprehensive (not just Hawker either).

Zaphod, yes quite. When I was younger I used to wonder how come the fuselage didn't just fall over once the wings had been removed

Might interest you, not FSW but a Harrier development concept of about the same time period: belly intake wind tunnel model.

Actually a very exotic design, I love it

Kinda reminds me of the Berkut...

Originally posted by planeman
Fascinating design mate, never seen that before. I thought you were going to post this, which as unlikey as it looks is also related to the Harrier:

Do you have a complete list of drawings for all the Hawker P# or something?

That looks like an F-16 with the tail of a british Vampire...

Thats 'cos your not looking at it properly.

Here's it is in thrtee view, plus another, rather attractive Hawker Siddeley FSW concept from around the same time;

The "X wing" is certainly a contender for the coolest design in the world. Pitty it never flew. looks like the single rear jetpipe was an attempt to incorporate an afterburner into the Pegasous(sp?) which already has 20,000lbst dry -so, maybe 27,000lbst+ with reheat.

It looks nice but it's compromised by the typical faults of period 'lobster tail' tri-post designs.

Namely that in order to decouple the canard and/or tail moment arms you end up adding so much area aft of the nozzle group that you cannot balance the aircraft on a vertical jet lift.

The gear pods are also a problem because they effectively create a great deal more surface area and 'three wing roots' worth of structural weight and complexity for little or no gain (too small and too far aft to be weapons enclosures for instance). Even as the weight of the gear also compromises wing spar strengthening prerequisites and often total wing:ground clearance on pylons.

Being as the original purpose of the tripost design was to reduce frontal area drag and allow for afterburning without the miasma of problems associated with the PCB approach on hot gas/reingestion (and thrust droop) as well as nozzle/fuselage heating; there isn't much gain from simply 'pretending' by cutting out the aft trailing edge. As you are then losing all the up and away performance that a lower wingloading and more internal fuel grants in comparison to the 100+lbs/square foot that is typical of the harrier 1 and 120-150 that is the better-when-bigger 'gift' of the H2.

We discovered that there were basically 2 ways to get to a more viable system metric that combined believable vertical lift configuration with almost painless cruise flight. One was to separate the nozzle/burner section from the engine and send it aft (in which case you are still crippled for ruling and fineness by the wide Pegasus style front fan needed to run the forward nozzles, though these were often dual ejector systems rather than straight fan bleeds ala the E-7).

The other as to send the engine aft and go with a RALS or Tandem Fan design which allowed the forward nozzles to be fully retracted into the blended inlet/fuselage area (like Tornado) and required 'only' that the shaft for the fan drive or bleed air ducts from the engine be routed forward past fuselage fuel cells and what not as the forward post either be on the centerline outboard and so the primary inlets could be located 'wherever' (chin or flanks, forward or aft) on the fuselage perse to ammeliorate jetflow problems.

This in turn brought the landing gear back to the inboard wingroots or fuselage and kept the overall commitment of framing and skin to a minimum. Even as it allowed you to pull the engine from the rear without taking a giant bite out of the trailing edge or trying to 'decouple' the lift nozzles from their fairings (almost always a drop-down compromise).

There were two designs representing each approach as I recall. One was Rockwell or Republic and I think the other was MACDAC. The first looked like an update to the XV-12 with features from the F-107 but had a USB system and A-5 styled inlets with canards. The USB flap was huge and the overwing exhaust, though not fully capable of STOVL, was sufficiently powerful to enable ESTOLs similar to a Harrier's rolling VL's at around 60-90 knots. Or STOL takeoffs in a like 400ft or so but without a skiramp.

The other was basically a tailless F-15 with a single tail and 'conventional' 2D nozzles but also a lockout valve and vertical lift nozzle on the bottom, of each engine, similar to the X-32s. It was unique in being a twin but had full STOVL via a RALS suite I believe.

CONCLUSION:
Never give up fuel, wingloading or a sufficiently long inlet to get proper shock compression (and CG) placement just for a simpler aft section. Particular when the Pegasus is so terribly vulnerable to stall migration on a short duct up from the burner or against that /giant/ fan.


KPl.