YF-22 vs YF-23

[allenperos]

Some photos of ship 042, the first F/A-22 to arrive at Langley.

[sferrin]

Some shots of the 1st F/A-22 ship (042) delivered to Langley:

where?

[allenperos]

Here are some shots enroute with F-15 escort.

[checksixx]

What Titanium??

[allenperos]

Around the powerplant hot-section. Also, from what has been published, the fuselage sections also have titanium materials, about 39% of it.

[Roscoe]

This is gonna be fun...

There are 2 overwhelming reasons why the YF-22 won the competition and neither one of them has anything to do with performance or maintenance costs.

1) Northrop already had the B-2 contract. The USAF wasn't about to give Northrop ALL their money.

Having run and/or participated in multiple source selections for DoD contracts, I can tell you with 150% certainty that this is never a player. The source selection criteria MUST be documented with grading levels before the RFP is even released. (1) Do you think anyone would ever put something like this this in writing? And if it ain't in Section M of the Source Selection Plan, it ain't a factor (2) If Northrop were going to be excluded, it would have known this before contract award and therefore would never have let them bid. Leading them on to spend millions of their own money preparing multiple proposals is setting you up for a lawsuit. (3) Excluding a capable bidder would break so many laws it isn't funny.

2) Sam Nunn, who at the time was on the Senate Armed Forces Appropriation Committee, voted for his constituents.. From Georgia. Where Lockheed-Martin is located.

Wrong. Nunn had nothing to do with it BY LAW (although I will concede that he most likely played a role in placing the production line in Georgia rather than Texas) Source Selection Authority for DoD contracts were, are, and always will be DoD officials. Can you even imagine the number of protests that would result if senators and congressmen had this kind of power? It would paralyze the DoD (just like it has paralyzed congress... )

Sadly it was all VERY political. The YF-23 had a lower RCS by not a small margin...

How would an air traffic controller have any idea of the relative RCS of the two designs? In fact, for competitive reason very few people were allowed to know both unless they were involved in the measurements or VERY top level decision making. And if for some unimaginable reason you did, you would have signed a non-disclosure agreement to NOT talk about it...ever...or face lengthy jail time. So STOP it already.

...was faster...

I'll buy that it may have been faster, but you obviously don't understand requirements. If the slower plane meets the operational requirement, then more speed by its competitor isn't necessarily a good thing if it sacrifices something else or costs more money. It's a balance of overall capability (“best value”), and that includes maintainability (of not just the plane but also the signature), cost, perceived risk/likelihood of success by the company and its leadership...

...and performed the 'intended' role of the ATF better by most people's opinion.

I love these kinds of comments…“by most people”. I would love to know who “most people” are. Certainly not anybody involved with the program. They were the folks who (1) were biased for Northrop (like employees) or (2) folks with only peripheral knowledge and base their opinions on rumor, pretty pictures, and limited areas of concern (e.g. ignoring all the factors that go into selecting a winner and focusing on narrow areas like top speed)

I was an air traffic controller during the tests at LA Center and personally handled the traffic in the supersonic corridor northeast of Nellis AFB. While I can't give numbers anymore (too long ago for my brain), I can absolutely tell you without question that the YF-23 was faster. Acceleration rate in max military power had it running away from F-15's in full AB.

The supersonic corridor was NOT northeast of Nellis but is in the R-2508 airspace over Edwards. I've flown in it, and I was golfing at Edwards in those days watching the tests overhead.

While I can't give numbers anymore (too long ago for my brain), I can absolutely tell you without question that the YF-23 was faster. Acceleration rate in max military power had it running away from F-15's in full AB.

Sure the -23 may have been faster, but unless you knew the test points and why they were doing those points, you have no clue about their relative performance by just watching radar tracks. And how does an air traffic controller know the throttle settings of an aircraft in a test range? Don’t think that data was available unless it was said over the radio, and in this environment I will bet a paycheck that they wouldn’t have said this over an open radio (OPSEC and all)

The YF-22 was good.. don't misunderstand, but the Black Widow was hands down the better aircraft and fell victim to old tradition of our armed forces getting the second rate equipment for political reasons.

BS, crap, and all that. The F-22 was selected because it WAS THE BETTER OVERALL SYSTEM.

out

[allenperos]

Well Roscoe, if anyone around here would know about this competition, it be you. I have a great tendency to lean more towards what you have to say than anyone else, although I must admit I too have alittle bias towards the competition, but if you say so, then I know things are true. Great comments, great presentation, once again, thank you.

[Guysmiley]

Well formed argument Roscoe, thank you for approaching it reasonably. You DO have to admit the YF-23 looks cooler, and I think that plays a part in biasing the uninformed public. I know I was rooting for Northrop, but not for any quantatitive reasons.

[Roscoe]

First look at this site: http://www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects/yf23a.htm

Yea, there is an authoritative source…

RCS is done best if the A/C is in a hopeless Diamond configuration, a hopless diamond is like taking 2 pyraminds, one biger than the other and point the pointy sides together. The F-23 has that, making it a better RCS than the f-22.

Utter nonsense. There are many ways to lower RCS. And you have NO way of knowing which plane was better other than “I read it on the internet”.

F-23 did loose to the F-22 because of politics and politics only...

Utter crap. The contract calls for requirements, and the proposals are graded based on how they met those criteria (which by the way include a whole lot more than just RCS and aero performance) against a standard that must be approved before the RFP is ever released.

...but it did everything to what the fly specs were, it did not have VT nor launching a missile because it was not part of the fly off.

I won’t argue that it MAY have met all the specs…you or I will never know this one way or the other. But you also have to concede that you have no idea as to 1) how the F-22 did against the specs and 2) the proposed cost. Based on the source selection criteria, the better plane won.

F-22 WAS gonna cost 30 mill a copy but is now a staggering 250 mill a copy after being from concept (1981) to now.

You read the newspapers too much. $30M a copy (in today’s dollars) was never the projected cost. Besides, you are comparing apples and oranges...there is a SIGNIFICANT difference in flyaway or marginal cost (cost to built one more) and the total amortized cost that includes all the developmental expenses. LM recently announced that they had gotten the unit cost down to (warning...memory) about $130M and hope to eventually get it down to less than $100M.

...the NAVY will not buy F-35 because it is a single eng a/c)...

What ARE you smoking??? The Navy is a full partner in the F-35 program.

...and the govt wants to share the egg basket with other manufacturers than one.

To the best of my knowledge (and I’ve been doing this since 1984), this has never been a factor.

In think the F-23 was and still is the better aircraft.

You are entitled to an opinion, but at least make it an informed one.

[ottleymonkey]

how many weapon compartments does YF-23 have? As I recalled, all weapons are located in the belly, and in an event of a jam door, the plane could be useless. I wonder if the "V" tail configuration compromises it's agility.

[allenperos]

True, false.

[Roscoe]

Well formed argument Roscoe, thank you for approaching it reasonably. You DO have to admit the YF-23 looks cooler, and I think that plays a part in biasing the uninformed public. I know I was rooting for Northrop, but not for any quantatitive reasons.

As for looks...absolutely. I was at Edwards during the Dem-Val and we all thought he YF-22 looked more like Dumbo than a fighter with those HUGE tails. The 23 was certainly slicker, but I thought it looked awfully long and had vairly small control surfaces to be very nimble.

Some time later I worked with Northrop on an F-5 avionics upgrade program ("Tiger IV") and we wre provided a hangar at Edwards. Turned out one of the YF-23 birds was in there on a trailer. Was supposed to go to an airshow but the mountings (to the trailer) were judged to weak and concerned that a bump on the road would liberate the bird, it was parked...Sure was a damn cool looking airplane!

[VPRGUY]

...the NAVY will not buy F-35 because it is a single eng a/c)...

What ARE you smoking??? The Navy is a full partner in the F-35 program.

Good point Roscoe, and I'll add one more that I've mentioned before; the navy won WWII with single engine aircraft. Two isn't always better, and with the reliability of modern jet engines (single engine AF jets fly accross the ocean all the time) having one or two engines is almost a moot point these days. My anyway.

[LWF]

In my opinion, the YF-22 was the better of the two, because when Northrop designed the YF-23, they tried to make it as conventional as possible, quite simply put they tried to make an innovative, conventional plane. And also, according to my sources the YF-23's higher top speed was projected, and was never proven.

I say if the plane is a magnificent fighter but it costs the national treasury to maintain and takes a long time to service it may not be a good idea to buy it.

But truth be told, most of this discussion is all academic, because now that the Widow is rejected we have no idea how it would have performed in a war and the only basis we have to judge on is on how it performed under more or less optimal conditions.

[EBJet]

I'd have to disagree with your opinion that the YF-23 was "conventional". Its design was anything but conventional,and this was due to an unprecedented set of requirements for the proposal.

The F-22 "looks" a lot more conventional in design than the YF-23,but to suggest the Raptor is a "conventional" fighter as compared to say,an F-15,would be highly inaccurate,and the same rationale applies to the YF-23 as well. I can't speculate on the Raptor's top speed as compared to what the YF-23 could achieve, but it's a well known fact (and long since unclassified for you touchy folks) that the YF-23 supercruised quite a bit faster than the YF-22. Heck, if I'm not mistaken,the F-119 powered YF-23 supercruised faster than the GE F-120 powered YF-22, and the F-120 had a good bit more thrust than the F-119.

BTW, the supercruise speed of the GE F-120 powered YF-23 is still classified, but is officially listed by Northrop and GE as "Very fast @ 41,000 ft." As for my opinion, that's the combo (-23/GE F-120) that shoulda won the contract. But then again, maybe I'm just a bit biased