I have only recently heard of this plane, ahs anyone else heard of it and if so could you tell me a little about iit,like capabilities. I would get a picture but i dont know how.

I'd never heard of it, and there's nothing on the Boeing IDS (Integrated Defense Systems) site when I did a search.

I would guess, Maybe F-15 + AESA?

i know it exists because if you do a google search of F-15 ACTIVE you can get real pictures of it.

Originally posted by SmokeyTheBear
I have only recently heard of this plane, ahs anyone else heard of it and if so could you tell me a little about iit,like capabilities. I would get a picture but i dont know how.

This was a technology demonstrator and development platform for various TCV systems, etc.

From NASA Dryden
The ACTIVE aircraft is a modified F-15, originally built by McDonnell Douglas in 1971 as the first two-seat F-15 or TF-15A #1. In the late 80's, F/A-18 stabilators were added as canards along with F100-220 engines, pitch (2D) thrust vectoring/thrust reversing nozzles, stregthened landing gear and a quad-digital fly-by-wire flight control system for use in the USAF STOL/MTD (Short Takeoff & Landing/Maneuver Technology Demonstrator) program.

When NASA acquired the aircraft in 1993, F100-229 engines with Pitch/Yaw (3D) thrust vectoring nozzles were added.

[edit on 22-11-2004 by engineer]

F-15 Active is a Upgraded F-15 with new avionics and computers and all that, plus it has thrust vectoring like the F-22, also has canards right behind the cockpit. Not sure if it has new engines though.

The plane is just a concept plane, for now at least, if for some reason they needed too keep the F-15's now and upgrade them then that would be a good route too go. I'm sure it would give these other next gerneration fighters a run for their money still.

That's a neat airplane, and I didn't know anything about it at all.

But like my colleague said, it was a technology demonstrator with a whole bunch of things added to see what would work.

I gather thatthe idea of canards seemed not to have panned out, since the newer generations of aircraft haven't incorporated them (at least, not here in the US).

The fly-by-wire and the replacement of the original steam gauges with a glass cockpit -- obviously that's caught on, since even the re-manned Lockheed C-130s (being done by Boeing, by the way) have glass cockpits.

[edit on 22-11-2004 by Off_The_Street]

I'm afraid that the F15 Active isn't (or at least wasn't the last I heard) any kind of new develpment that may see production. It was purely an experimental NASA backed project to explore control methods for damaged aircraft. I believe that the project stemmed from an F15 that managed to recover to base safely after loosing the best part of an entire wing. This set people thinking about how modern flight control computers might be able to save otherwise doomed aircraft and the Active was simply a project to explore what kind of systems could be developed to achieve this.

The canards are simply modified tailplanes bolted on to the front of the aircraft, and the idea was to see how a digital flight control system could allow a pilot to achieve controlled flight using all available control surfaces plus engine thrust to retain control of an otherwise mortally damaged aircraft that has lost one or more of its normal flight control surfaces.

It certainly was never claimed to be any kind of combat capability enhancement or development. A very interesting project in its own right though in my opinion, which demostrated with some degree of success that digital flight control systems could compensate reasonably well for the loss of traditional elements.

In a sense I guess it proved the claim that digital fly by wire systems could keep a grand piano in the air if the software is good enough. But hey, anyone who knows much about the Eurofighter Typhoon's total lack of conventional aerodynamics could back that theory up.

Very smart piece of engineering the F15 Active. Very smart indeed.