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Posted

The design was well ahead of its time and it's a shame that politics, like with the Tigershark, was what killed this plane. I think that the YF-23 was a more practical design for today's world than the YF-22. It was faster, stealthier and judging by the design, could carry a greater payload of weapons, or atleast more conveniently hold them. Separate compartments had to be made to accommodate Sidewinders for the YF-22. Thrust vectoring is nice but I don't see it being practical given the current aerial combat tactics used now. It seems like more roles could have been filled with the YF-23s design. As someone pointed out, they were even looking towards it to potentially fulfill a bomber role. A stealth replacement for the F-15E possibly?

Posted

A production F-23A would have had a separate Sidewinder bay right in front of the AMRAAM bay---though it would have been 1 bay that held 2 missiles, rather than the F-22's "1 missile per bay" setup.

Posted

It amazes me the amount of engineering that went into this & other projects. It's a segment of our society that I wouldn't even know how to begin to enter. The laboratories, the computers... awe inspiring. I can only imagine what is going on under our noses at this very moment.

Posted

A production F-23A would have had a separate Sidewinder bay right in front of the AMRAAM bay---though it would have been 1 bay that held 2 missiles, rather than the F-22's "1 missile per bay" setup.

I wonder how the trapeze-racks for the AMRAAMs would've worked out

If something jams there you'd be down 2 usable missiles instead of just 1

Posted

I'm still surprised by the weight gain between the YF-22 and the F-22A. I have to wonder how much more a production F-23A would have weighed by comparison. Also, I know they said it was agile, not as much as the Lightning II but it sounded like the YF-23 could easily out turn an F-15 by the way they were describing it in the video.

Posted (edited)

Mx on the YF-23 was no more intensive then other stealth jets at the time, and would have only improved. The B-2 has always been a maintenance pig, but improvements made in the last few years have halved the Mx time. The YF and F-22 are still Mx pigs in a lot of ways, in large part because of all the Mx stations shoved into the internal bays instead of having their own access hatches. A friend of mine is an engine maintainer and dreads pulling F-22 engines because of the fact that you have to cut into the jet to do it then reseal the cut afterwards. The F-35 on the other hand learned a lot from the B-2 program and so a lot of those Mx issues have been lessened.

Talking to the NGC engineers I work with here, a lot of the Mx issues seen on YF-23 were to be addressed in the production bird, especially the engine tiles, which were the biggest Mx pig.

Edited by Knight26
Posted

I'm still surprised by the weight gain between the YF-22 and the F-22A. I have to wonder how much more a production F-23A would have weighed by comparison. Also, I know they said it was agile, not as much as the Lightning II but it sounded like the YF-23 could easily out turn an F-15 by the way they were describing it in the video.

I got the impression that it's quite agile in the supersonic flight envelopes.

Posted

A production F-23 would have had a smaller rear fuselage around the engines, due to not needing room for thrust reversers---so it would actually have weighed less there. (the YF-23 didn't have reversers either, but the change was late enough that the rear fuselage was still designed to have room for them)

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