Originally posted by Imperium Americana

May look something like this in the near future.

Ah yesss....The ADF-01 Falken. I was always partial to the XO-2 Wyvern, though.

Loves me some Ace Combat...need to get me AC-X for me PSP.

Get in front of me and I lase your butt to ashes. X0-2 no match for the Falken.

[edit on 9-2-2007 by deltaboy]

[edit on 9-2-2007 by deltaboy]

Originally posted by deltaboy

Get in front of me and I lase your butt to ashes. X0-2 no match for the Falken.

boy i fell that one.
hook line and sinker......

Originally posted by JSR


boy i fell that one.
hook line and sinker......

I never said it was a real figher either prototype or concept. Just that it could look like this.

How about the possibility of tailless fighters like the x-36 that rely completely on thrust vectoring to turn?

Morphing Tech:

Only if the total wing area itself 'vanishes' without porking up internal volume ala B-1/Tornado/F-111. If you simply push it along a fixed axis at the root ('multiple joints'), either longitudinally or by spanwise change, you may alter the aspect ratio but you will NOT necessarily get a superior fighter. Because the resulting gull effect and shoulder vs. low wing loading paths is going to imply massive changes in aerodynamic forces and structural load paths.

What they are suggesting is less a true shape change than 'seamless' VG.

We've already been at least partly there with the MAW and a couple other testbeds.

3D Thrust Vectoring:
Not really useful for most missions though 'fighters' (uninhabited) may make good use of it in dynamic maneuvering. I think that as the requirements for LO become ever more severe you will see increased use of various forms of active blowing to diminish the requirement for deflected control surface effectors.

And if continuing progress in miniaturized fuel cells, solar and LTA occur, some form of electrostatic thruster or electrogravitics will come online to literally change the vector of applied forces /around/ the airframe.

On small uninhabiteds.

For the rest.... ainh. A missile operating at Mach 3-4 gets plenty of lift from it's conventional aero controls. It gets less as it transitions through the Mach off the launch rail but only until the motor burns out. Given that true 'fighter' missions will be flown by aircraft that look and perform more like missiles, the question is how fast you want to go for how long with different propulsion sources (turbine or ducted rocket). Again, axial shunt ala Pif Paf seems more useful to me than direct vectoring in most circumstances.

The higher the threat from DEWS, the less you will want to invest huge amounts of resources in the 'fighter' itself. And the more you will concentrate on saturation by numbers and onset rates.


KPl.

I'd say, space capable fighters, unstable layout, unmaned, lasers!!!

Space capable in 6th or 7th gen. Yes, this is a must.

Just how capable is the question. If they can dock with orbital platforms, then all the better.

If you expect them to be spaced based or even possibly being able to reach the ISS etc, they will either need extra fuel tanks or new technology to reach such a altitute, IMO. It would be almost as cool as Chuck Norris if fighter jets could reach low orbit.
Personally, I think it is extremely unlikely the next gen of fighter jets will be able to reach low orbit. If our Air Force could do that why even have NASA?

NASA is the public front. Not my opinion, it was the founding intention.

Fighters in space will only become a reality when non-orbital space(deep space?) will become lucrative 'territory'.
Orbital assets IMHO can be sufficiently defended and attacked with other orbital assets or terrestrial systems.
Infact I doubt space based fighters will ever be a reality.
More like space based capital class ships.
That too only 10th gen..

Originally posted by bodrul
on topic this is the 6th gen aircraft

No way is the F-302 gonna be the next gen aircraft!


I don't like picking holes in stargate (I do like the shows) but they use the turbofan engines w/ afterburner in space... that doesn't work!!!

[The rocket is the big central engine]

Originally posted by Daedalus3
Fighters in space will only become a reality when non-orbital space(deep space?) will become lucrative 'territory'.
Orbital assets IMHO can be sufficiently defended and attacked with other orbital assets or terrestrial systems.
Infact I doubt space based fighters will ever be a reality.
More like space based capital class ships.
That too only 10th gen..

The one thing that small fighters get you from space is a freefall tactical entry over ANY threat nation in about an hour.

Provided 'you only burn changing the inclination and coming back up' (and are willing to abrogate about 3 different treaties) it is a viable solution, given two things:

1. You invent a refueling ELV that is either HOTOL or sufficiently 'not on the scope' to overhead as to come up and gas+gunup+restock the carrier platform occasionally (fighters can reach orbit on their own but cannot bring enough gas to act as their own fuel transfer system).

2. You LO the asset enough that a HEO or Trans (wierd orbit geometry) system is undetected and thus unengaged by terrestrial hard kill or DEW attack. Obviously, with the Chinese now playing hardball ASAT across multiple levels to /completely/ deny us lookin on the 'their private affairs', we must think of winnning the High Frontier battle whether vacuum itself is worthless or not. The notion that 'the next fast recce pass may have a rod from god onboard' could be an element in convincing them to play nice.

CONCLUSION:
Particularly with the notion of air to air weapons reloading as well as refueling being investigated in a serious way now, it seems likely to me that either an LTA HALE type endurance carrier for micro-UAV (imagine the savings in structural weigh penalty if you can blow off installing landing gear as a 'modern day Sparrowhawk') or a spaceplatform mission set is indeed at least being considered.
In the latter case, all the high energy problems of a TAV type skip bomber ala Falcon also tend to vanish as you can theoretically use Spaceship One level technologies to simply rocket your way back up to the next passing orbital station after hypersonic weapons release and blatantly 'wingborne' exit from theater.
And of course there are no slipstream wake effects to what amounts to a skyhook recovery system (hard dock before reload) in space.


KPl.

I think people are getting a bit confused with the F-22 Raptor. Whilst popular media hypes it as being a 5th generation fighter, the US Government and indeed the aviation industry (see aviation week and space technology journal) does not consider the aircraft to be fully 5th generation because it has the old onboard canon taken from the F15. Therefore is it classified as being 4.5 generation, this is the same for the Typhoon, which has 4th generation stealth characteristics and therefore can only be considered as 4.5 generation due to it's advanced avionics systems.

The only aircraft currently considered to fall into the 5th generation category is the F-35 Lightning II as it has both stealth, advanced avionics and also upgraded weapons systems. It also has the VTOL capability which is now considered to be essential given the nature modern and future expected warfare (with usually small or limited access runways).

As for 6th generation, as some people have pointed out, they are likely to encompass both visual, IR and radar stealth. They are also likely to have either a high altitude, high speed or VTOL capability (depending on designation). In addition, future generations may employ future engine technology such as ramjets or scramjets, although due to their speed limitations these are likely to be replaced by the more speed efficient and flexible Pulse Detonation Engines (PDE's) in devlopment in the USA, China and Japan as we speak.

what does having a gun onboard have to do with fighter generation? as has been shown many time in the passed - not having a gun can be dangerous - and teh F22 is the first operational 5th generation aircraft.

Quite right. Also the F-35 was designed with the Mauser 27mm gun from the Typhoon and Tornado so that, by your yardstick, would make the F-35 4.5gen as well, clearly not the case.

I expected generation 5 to look more radically differnt than other fighters, in the end it didn't, imagine taking the swept wing design of the F-117, deleting the tailfins, adding full thrust vectoring afterburning turbofan engines and instead of the top heavy frontal aspect, sit the crew down in the middle of the airframe leading to a aircraft almost symetrical in the horizontal plane, usign the radiused RAM skin instead of the angled version of the F-117 would allow the intakes to be blended into the wing before it thins out.

Sor of a cross between the B-2, the F-117, the Avro Vulcan (3 bombers, I know) and the F-22 we ended up with, it would've looked amazing, god knows how it would've handled.