

Chinese J-20 Stealth Fighter
Apparently Liang forgets the new stealth fighter China is showing off







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RE: 20 year gap.
By Reclaimer77 on 6/9/2011 8:50:38 PM , Rating: 2
The B-2 didn't have to be designed to dogfight as well as attack ground targets. It's not a fair comparison to be honest. It didn't even require vertical stabilizers because it only had to be designed for level flight and mild maneuvers at best. But what is this? My dads stealth is less than yours? Both are amazing machines and deserve their place in history.

Reduced radar cross section is only one of five factors the designers addressed to create a truly stealthy design. The F-117 was designed to disguise its infrared emissions to make it harder to detect by infrared homing ("heat seeking") surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. Designers also addressed making the aircraft less visible to the naked eye, controlling radio transmissions and other passive/active systems, and noise abatement. THAT'S why I said it's a "true stealth aircraft". Anyone saying otherwise is just wrong.

Comparing the F-117 to it's replacement, the F-22, would have been more accurate.

RE: 20 year gap.
By Bad-Karma on 6/10/2011 1:47:16 AM , Rating: 2

The F-17 was never intended nor used as a fighter. It is strictly a light attack bomber. It has 0 air-to air capability. Also , its faceted shape makes its maneuverability quite poor. You could compare it's air combat maneuvering (ACM) to something closer in line to the much older B-47.

The F-117 is inherently unstable and takes quite a bit of computational power just to keep it pointed straight and level. If fact the avionic computers will actually override the pilot's commands if he pushes to close to the flight envelope.

Disregarding test and development aircraft the F-22 is the actual first stealth fighter.

Or you could go quite a ways back and point to the YF-12A Oxcart variant that was equipped with a a fire control radar and air-to-air-missiles as the first "stealthy" fighter. Of course how far they got into testing and or production can only be speculated. While the Y-12s and its follow on were quite stealthy they didn't have the advent of Bill Schroeder's mathematical RCS modeling inherent in the F-117.

The more powerful computers of the 1980s allowed the mathematical model to be incorporated into the continuous curvature we see in the B-2. Jack Northrope's original B-49 design, on which the B-2 was patterned, was actually quite stealthy, and he intentionally used as little vertical stabilization as possible to keep down the RCS. Large vertical stabilizers are more about in-flight stability than maneuverability. In fact those attributes are considered a counter to each other in regards to flight characteristics.

Due to desired performance characteristics demanded by fighter aircraft, both the faceted and curved techniques are readily apparent in the F-22 & F-35 even though the F-35's design is far more dedicated to the ground strike role than air superiority.

RE: 20 year gap.
By Calin on 6/10/2011 5:29:01 AM , Rating: 2
The F-117 wasn't designed to dogfight at all - it doesn't even have a gun (or a way to mount one, as was the case with some 'missile fighters' of the old). The F in the name stands for stealth bomber (light bomber, or what you would call ground attack craft), not for fighter. Also, it's black because it only flies at night.

RE: 20 year gap.
By Reclaimer77 on 6/11/2011 1:07:08 PM , Rating: 2
A gun on a nearly undetectable stealth aircraft would be absurd. At the time it was in service, NO air based radar system or infra-red detection known to man could defeat the F-117's stealth. So WWII gun style "dogfighting" is stupidly obsolete. Standoff weapons fired from a completely stealth platform are extremely devastating. The USAF maintained that the F-117A could carry air-to-air missiles, and while much of the information about it was/is classified, that's good enough for me.

But I did absentmindedly use the term "dogfight", so that's my bad. I didn't mean traditional "dogfighting". My point was just to illustrate that the F-117 was designed in part with air to air combat in mind. Whereas the B-2 has ZERO.

