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.