Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Hi all. I once read online that the weapons bay of the YF-23 prototype had a weapons bay that could store a greater payload than the raptor, but had problems as the system involved a vertical "racking" system. This sparked my curiosity & I've been trying to find pictures of the weapons bay. To my dismay, I was unsuccessful and was wondering if anyone has found any pictures, and would like to share. Thanks.

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t3h_pr3t3nd3r wrote:

Hi all. I once read online that the weapons bay of the YF-23 prototype had a weapons bay that could store a greater payload than the raptor, but had problems as the system involved a vertical "racking" system. This sparked my curiosity & I've been trying to find pictures of the weapons bay. To my dismay, I was unsuccessful and was wondering if anyone has found any pictures, and would like to share. Thanks.

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/lof ... 78418.html scroll down about half way and there's a decent picture of the bay on this model.

Thanks for the link. The AMRAAM bay actually seems smaller than that of the F-22. Have you found a picture of the sidewinder bay?

Floating around on the internet is some of the unclassified drawings of the Northrop’s proposed the EMD F-23 (i.e. the production F-23A.). The main weapon’s bay is huge, ~ 50” wide and about 36” deep; plus about 13-14’ long. Easily able to accommodate between 8 to as possibly as high as 12 AMRAAMs depending on the launcher technology used.

There is also a patent that Northrop won around the time of the ATF Dem/Val that was for a launcher that looked very much like a fire arms magazine where the missiles were stacked on top of each other in individual magazines. A couple of claws where used to eject the missile then the next rounds were dropped down with the bottom missile in the “chamber”; i.e. the next ready round. So it appears to me that the main bay could fit between 3 to 4 of such launchers which could possibly fit 2 to 4 missiles vertically.

So it appears to me that the EMD F-23 could have carried significantly more A-A load out as well as 2,000lb class A-G ordnance. Not too surprising since the EMD proposal was almost 71’ long! The question is would they have been able to meet their weight targets seeing that the F-22 gained around 10,000lbs. To be fair, Northrop’s proposal purported to utilize 50% composites and as I recall the YF-23 was actually lighter that the YF-22 so it’s possible that the F-23 would have ended up being lighter than the F-22A is but such a high percentage of composites would probably have represented a higher developmental risk.

BDF

BDF wrote:

Floating around on the internet is some of the unclassified drawings of the Northrop’s proposed the EMD F-23 (i.e. the production F-23A.).
BDF

Is this is? [ur=http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/YF-23%204%20View.gif]Link[/url]

And I know I've seen a picture online of people standing in the bay of an YF-23. And it is essentially a huge upside down bathtub. It did look much larger than the F-22's main bays combined.

BDF wrote:

Floating around on the internet is some of the unclassified drawings of the Northrop’s proposed the EMD F-23 (i.e. the production F-23A.).
BDF

Is this is? http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/YF-23%204%20View.gif

And I know I've seen a picture online of people standing in the bay of a YF-23. And yeah, it is essentially a huge upside down bathtub. It did look much larger than the F-22's main bays combined.

One of the analysis said when he saw the YF-23 weapons bay "that it looked like a bloody Lancaster bomber under their"

Considering the rework to EMD and the riskier design, maybe that gives a clearer picture as to why the USAF chose the YF-22.

Look up patent #4,702,145. It's the actual mechanism that stored and expended the AMRAAM's.

[Link pending approval]

In the link above, click on the pictures to view them bigger. Take special notice at picture #2.

Wow, that's quite the system! Surprised

So, I guess 4 missiles per system- how many bays would it have had?

StolichnayaStrafer wrote:

Wow, that's quite the system! Surprised

So, I guess 4 missiles per system- how many bays would it have had?

I think it's one center bay, and two sidebays.

PhillyGuy wrote:

BDF wrote:

Floating around on the internet is some of the unclassified drawings of the Northrop’s proposed the EMD F-23 (i.e. the production F-23A.).
BDF

Is this is? http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/YF-23%204%20View.gif

And I know I've seen a picture online of people standing in the bay of a YF-23. And yeah, it is essentially a huge upside down bathtub. It did look much larger than the F-22's main bays combined.

I can’t pull it up but secretprojects does have copies of some of those documents so it’s probably it. Just a monster bay. Some of the main tanks had to be relocated and some are now under the intakes for the engines whereas on the prototypes I don’t believe they were there.

StolichnayaStrafer wrote:

Wow, that's quite the system! Surprised

So, I guess 4 missiles per system- how many bays would it have had?

Just two ventral bays. The forward bay was smaller both in length and depth but some of the Northrop guys state that it was designed with a moveable bulkhead so oversized weapons could have been accommodated between the two bays. I did a “fit check” based my estimates of the launchers patents and I get a total of 10 slammers for the main bay; two on the outsides, three on the two inner “stations”. This is because the top of the bay isn’t flat but curved.

Obviously those drawings do not show the structure for launcher mountings so its possible I’m overestimating the space available on the top of the bay and in that case it’s probably be 8 slammers which is still 25% more than the F-22 can carry presently. Incidentally assuming a folded wing profile a la JDRADM it appears that 14 could be carried if the weight could be supported. I don’t know why you’d want 16 missiles but you could do it if you needed to.

perhaps this will help

[url=[Link pending approval]][Link pending approval][/url]

supacruze wrote:

perhaps this will help

Out of curiosity, is that drawing notional, or is it based on actual Northrop data? I ask because I note that it shows what appear to be three AIM-120As in the bay. The requirement, I believe, was for the ATF to carry four -120As internally. (The actual requirement was for six AIM-120Cs, but since the development of the smaller fin -120C was still secret at that point, the initial public pronouncement was for four -120As.) If Northrop could only fit three in, that would have been a show-stopper right there.

The first time I ever saw pictures of the main weapons bay (the smaller forward bay wasn't on the YFs) those triangular structures were there but the photographer said they were not part of the launching mechanism but rather were for structural reasons since the weapons pack was not installed in the bay for the flight tests. One of the few things that was disclosed after the competition was that USAF was concerned about Northrop/MDD's "single point (launcher)". Their concern was that if that part of the launching mechanism was damaged or malfunctioned, the F-23 wouldn't be able to fire any of its AIM-120s. Supposedly the team satisfied USAF that the EMD/production design would be change so that problem wouldn't occur.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

YF-23 Weapons Bay