Incredible payload on F-35!

Originally posted by jensy
Look just because an aircraft can carry more missiles does not nessicarily make it an airsuperioty fighter. The Russians have considered a variation of the TU-160 as a long range interceptor with its entire weapons bay full of A-A missiles, however it would be lucky to out manouver most other craft.

Jensy

Absolutely jensy, I have no doubt that the F-35C can lift the payload depicted, and much more besides. What is silly is that it can accomodate them all internally. If armed in the manner shown the F-35C would HAVE to carry part of this load on external pylons under the wings. The drawing showing them all inside the fuselage is fantasy.

Like here for example


Are we to assume that the F-35C takes off with its doors hanging open? Closing the door with two AMRAAM's on it would appear to present a bit of a problem otherwise.

My point with the F-22 is that it is physically considerably larger than the F-35, if then the much smaller aircraft can accomodate all the fuel, systems and structure necessary and then a larger internal load (by volume) of weapons than the F-22 *as well* it could only mean that someone screwed up the design of the F-22, the notion is ridiculous.

[edit on 26-8-2006 by waynos]

Originally posted by waynos
My point with the F-22 is that it is physically considerably larger than the F-35, if then the much smaller aircraft can accomodate all the fuel, systems and structure necessary and then a larger internal load (by volume) of weapons than the F-22 *as well* it could only mean that someone screwed up the design of the F-22, the notion is ridiculous.

They screwed nothing. F-22 is designed for maneuvrability and supercruise. It cannot be so "fat" as JSF, beacuse it needs to fly it's mission with 1.7 Mach speed. Also it has 2 engines - and one aditional engine takes a lot of space. Also due to F-22 has much smaller wing loading (increases maneuvrabilty) and higher thrust to weight ratio, partially because of smaller and lighter internal weapon bays.
F-22 has also more internal fuel and longer range than JSF, at least I think so.
So those planes are by no means equal.

But that is the point. The F-22 fuselage is massively bigger than the F-35's The engines go behind the bays so the F-22 has more useable volume internally ahead of the engines than the F-35 could ever have. The F-35 is designed to carry the majority of its load externally, not as shown in the drawings. The F-22 also has one large bay and two smaller ones I believe, where the F-35 only has two small ones, they simply *cannot* be loaded up as shown.

[edit on 26-8-2006 by waynos]

Originally posted by waynos
But that is the point. The F-22 fuselage is massively bigger than the F-35's The engines go behind the bays so the F-22 has more useable volume internally ahead of the engines than the F-35 could ever have. The F-35 is designed to carry the majority of its load externally, not as shown in the drawings. The F-22 also has one large bay where the F-35 has two smaller ones, they simply *cannot* be loaded up as shown.

Does/could this mean that the F-35 is a better A2G fighter than the F-22?

I suspect, that with all such aircraft, it will be horses for courses and there will be missions which best suit each of them over the other (or more accurately missions where the using huge and expensive F-22 is overkill).

My argument is nothing to do with which is best, merely the silliness of the idea that the F-35 can carry more internally than the F-22. If that were the case you could make an argument for varying the fuel/weapons ratio and scrapping the F-22 altogether for a smaller, cheaper 'Raptorised' F-35D.

However the F-35 is an aeroplane, not a TARDIS, so it isn't really possible.

The F-35 was built with the SDB in mind. It can carry 8 of them internally along with 2 AMRAAMs. God only knows how many it can carry externally with multi bomb racks and such. The F-15E is said to be able to carry 28 of the damn things. I'm pretty sure this thing will surprise skeptics when it comes out, but that's just an opinion.

I'm not skeptical about the F-35. I'm only skeptical of that silly drawing and the claims that are being made to try and justify it.

Is everyone just going to ignore the question about closing the doors I pointed out above because it is too hard?

[edit on 26-8-2006 by waynos]

If you look on aerospaceweb you will see a genuine diagram of the F-35's internal weapons arrangement (posted below). Surprise surprise, it is clearly the original from which the fantasy version was modified and it shows the F-35 has nowhere near the capacity shown on that one, as I said all along. Also note that *no* weapons are attached to the doors, which would have to be specifically stressed for the job resulting in higher weight, cost and complexity. Even if this wee done, nothing could be dropped from the bay while weapons were attached to the outer doors (which I believe Ch1466 pointed out long ago).



[edit on 26-8-2006 by waynos]

Waynos made the argument, it is a physical impossibility for the F-35C to carry more armaments internally than the F-22A for one simple factor, lack of volume space.

Plus attaching the ordinance to the bay doors is ridiculous because that would require fortification on the doors, which would ultimately result in taking up more volume space and adding more weight and parts to the plane that isn't necessary, and it would also block the paths of any ordinance attached to the bay carriage.

The F-35C and F-22A are different airframes designed and built with different missions in mind.

Shattered OUT...

[edit on 27-8-2006 by ShatteredSkies]

To those asking if JSF or Raptor has the larger internal storage space, the answer is: "it depends."

Raptor was designed to carry 2 AIM-9s and 6 AIM-120s. These are fairly small weapons, 5 inches (AIM-9) to 7 inches in diameter (AIM-120), and AIM-120 is ~12 feet long. So Raptor has relatively short and shallow internal bays. Where you run into trouble is with larger bombs. A 2,000lb LGB for example is 15 inches around and 14 feet long... there's not enough room in the Raptor to carry it.

Which is where JSF comes in. While F-35 has less overall internal space than Raptor does, it's distributed a bit differently to allow storage of fewer but larger weapons. While Raptor can only handle Mk. 83 based 1,000lb JDAMs, JSF is designed around Mk. 84 2,000lb bombs and has enough space to store the longer Paveway LGBs.

Hence the confusion: Raptor has has more internal space and carries more missiles - but JSF can carry bigger bombs.

That is pretty amazing & not only can it carry weapons in the internal bay but can also carry them on the wings & body like the F-16.

Falcon out...

Some images for you all to warp your minds around-

1. Weapons Bay on the 1:1 Mockup.
www.f-16.net...
www.f-16.net...
www.aerospaceweb.org...

2. Scaled perspective showing the raised inlet shock cones and the TOE IN of both munitions to stay within the fuselage outer skin and outside the inlet trunk envelope.
www.jsf.mil...
www.aerospaceweb.org...

3. Size Of the SDD Prototype Weapons Bay Door.
www.jsf.mil...

4. Full Ventral View Of The Bay (halfway down) on another Model.
navy-matters.beedall.com...

Now. Let's be clear here dears. The F-35 was always a mistaken design for emphasizing the use of heavyweight munitions off a lightweight fighter because shallowXwide actually allows the carriage of MORE munitions, in greater variety, than narrowXdeep.

Something that the worthless Air Force KNEW when they spec'd it out because they were already hip deep in the MMTD or Miniature Munitions Technology Demonstration that led to the GBU-39.

The F-22 CAN (photographic proof) carry the GBU-39 which has about 80% of the penetration power of the GBU-32 in it's sleeved variant. And the GBU-32 itself has about 80-90% of the penetration power of at least the baseline GBU-31. That being about 2-2.5m.

i.e. There is ZERO NEED for a two thousand pound IAM, internal carriage, option from a tactical airframe. You either need a lot bigger weapon which can go through upwards of 12-15ft of hard target roofing (i.e. the GBU-28 or 37) or you can do _just fine_ using more of the smaller munitions to attack different target types (more weapons systems, less command nodes etc.). Even to the extend of employing more than one bomb to go through the hole breached by the first (4" EDGE/WAGE driven differential accuracy on the SDB).

For this alone, the JSF is a complete and utter JOKE because it doesn't /start/ to do more than the F-22 does until it goes to external carriage and in so doing, it loses about 50% of the internal fuel radius advantage due to drag and the need to maintain an operational norm of 5 minutes burner or 3 complete circles when engaged by threat systems which now see it 'just fine'.

ARGUMENT:
As usual, Emile yells 'grenade!' as he drops an alka seltzer into the fishbowl 'to see what fizzes over the edges'. He has yet to justify the source of this bogus drawing and may not be able to without acknowledging personal association with it.

And it takes three people to raise the BS alert flag that it _just ain't so_. As his 'inscrutable defense' is a hard negative to disprove given the enthusiasm of the unwashed masses for the 'new and improved!' malarky associated with Lunchmeats PR campaign.

The F-35 has a fractionally TINY weapons bay which, I might add, has _gotten smaller_ as the truly large munitions in the AGM-154 class have effectively been dropped from all consideration of internal carriage and indeed the F-35B (you know, the one that the USAF supposedly wants a couple hundred 'CAS variants' of and which Britain is all of a fluster over getting 'with full stealth' as a Day-1 penetrator) is itself a 1,000lb munition limited system now. So much for commonality. So much for it being a 'better ground attack fighter'.

CONCLUSION:
If you want to see a (for the airframe scale) MONSTER weapons bay and an overall brilliant design, look at this-

www.dfrc.nasa.gov...

By removing the 'Air Combat' requirements inherent to a cockpit and high-alpha/supersonic airflow, you can move the ENTIRE inlet path above the likely (S2A = worst) radar viewing angle without violating the basic structural integrity of a blended, low-wing, monoplane. Or splitting the structural load paths for gear and weapons racks across the wingroot lapjoints. All the while maintaining a fuselage:weapons bay fraction that is almost 70% of the total body length and a tortoise shell enclosure that is _shallower_ than the F-35 (less differential ruling problems) while having largely the same loading capabilities in the production A-45C variant. If you want a narrow weapons bay, you need to make it long enough to accomodate tandem or long-body weapons and this is how you get there.


KPl.