ESVENSSON%brage.qz.se@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (07/16/90)
From: ESVENSSON%brage.qz.se@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU In the 4-10 July issue of Flight International there were some good pictures from the YF-23 rollout. That's one strange looking bird! Actually it's not all that strange. The fins and the tailplanes are merged into two (tailfins? finplanes?) canted outwards about 45 degrees. The engines are housed in two big boxy bulges located ontop the airplane between the two finplanes. The trailing edge of the wing is swept forward and leading edge backwards, creating a truncated triangle. There's a sort of leading edge root extension going forward from the wing root all the way to the nose. The cockpit canopy is large, but seems to be smaller than the F-16, the seat looking to be placed lower than in the F-16. The head-on photo shows the HUD, which seems to be much larger than earlier fighters, F-15, F-16 etc. The aircraft is large, larger than the F-15, I can't remember how much bigger, though. The contractor (which one I don't remeber) forgot to edit the drawings shown, wich included the weapons bays. According to Flight the drawing showed two (2) Sidewinders and four (4) AIM-120s (btw,has it got a name? the AIM-120 that is). This seems a bit under-armed to me, since most new aircraft today carry 8 missiles or more. I also wonder about air-ground loads. Will the ATF be able to take any? Indeed, will there be an ATF at all, with the budget problems and all? Erik Svensson Guided Weapons Division National Defense Research Establishment Stockholm, Sweden net.address: esvensson@brage.qz.se
wjh@wayback.att.com (William J Hery) (07/24/90)
From: wjh@wayback.att.com (William J Hery)
>The contractor (which one I don't remeber) forgot to edit the drawings shown,
YF-23 is being developed by Northrop and McDonnell Douglas. The competing
ATF prototype, YF-22, is from Lockheed/Boeing/GD. I don't know what was
in the magazine you cite, but photographs and video of the actual plane
have been released.
Bill Hery
AT&T Bell Labs
201-386-2362
att!wayback!wjh
wjh@wayback.att.COM