F-35 JSF vs Eurofighter Typhoon
viper12 wrote:spazsinbad wrote:
It's also quite surprising that the Super Hornet was deemed too large, when only one dimension is bigger than the Eurofighter, its length. On paper, the Super Hornet also has a bigger wingspan, but according to this source, it's below 10m wide when its wings are folded, which is around 1m less than the Eurofighter : http://www.airvectors.net/avhorn_2.html
Did you consider how the Super Duper's wings fold? do they fold flat, or are they upwards at a 90° or 60°? My point being that even folded, the tippy tops of the wings might still klonk into the hole in the mountain. I'm guessing the hangar may be roughly elliptical in shape, so folded wingtips may still be too big or too tall.
Take an F-16, stir in A-7, dollop of F-117, gob of F-22, dash of F/A-18, sprinkle with AV-8B, stir well + bake. Whaddya get? F-35.
Shornet NATOPS Says.... https://info.publicintelligence.net/F18-EF-000.pdf (19Mb)
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Last edited by Corsair1963 on 07 Dec 2017, 05:54, edited 1 time in total.
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steve2267 wrote:Did you consider how the Super Duper's wings fold? do they fold flat, or are they upwards at a 90° or 60°? My point being that even folded, the tippy tops of the wings might still klonk into the hole in the mountain. I'm guessing the hangar may be roughly elliptical in shape, so folded wingtips may still be too big or too tall.
If this hangar's cross section were an ellipse that could fit a Eurofighter, it would then have a semi-major axis a of at least 5.5m and a semi-minor axis b of at least 2.7m based on a quick check of its dimensions and how it would more or less fit in an ellipse with its undercarriage deployed.
On my monitor, the NATOPS figure has the Super Hornet's length at around 26.3cm, so with its true length of 18.31m, you get roughly a 1:69.6 scale. Based on the span with wings folded, with x = 0 and y = 0 the point in the wing planform right in the middle of the aircraft, one can deduce that the coordinates of the folded wingtip are around x = 4.98m and y = 1.87m.
So a rough calculation with the a and b values above gives (x/a)^2 + (y/b)^2 = 0.82 + 0.48 = 1.30 > 1. So yes, with the assumptions made above and approximate measurements, an ellipse-shaped hangar that can barely fit a Eurofighter couldn't host a Super Hornet, but I would say it would be truly baffling if there weren't any margins built in the hangars or that the costs of enlarging the hangars were deemed prohibitive at the scale of fighter aircraft procurement.
Last edited by viper12 on 07 Dec 2017, 17:32, edited 4 times in total.
Everytime you don't tell the facts, you make Putin stronger.
Everytime you're hit by Dunning-Kruger, you make Putin stronger.
Everytime you're hit by Dunning-Kruger, you make Putin stronger.
Worth noting that a super hornets folded wings do not exceed the top of the fins. Whether that's by design or not it helps idiot proof the ground handling, because if the fins don't clear you won't get half way in, before an oopsie happens with the folded wings if pushing tail first
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XanderCrews wrote:Worth noting that a super hornets folded wings do not exceed the top of the fins. Whether that's by design or not it helps idiot proof the ground handling, because if the fins don't clear you won't get half way in, before an oopsie happens with the folded wings if pushing tail first
Not all hangars or shelters are shaped the same. The one's we had at Bodø fit the F-16, but not any visiting F-15. Not sure if the F-35 will fit, but I assume they will.
The image below shows a typical shelter I have been around. I don't know how a folded wing would fit with the slanted roof of the shelter.
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spazsinbad wrote:'swiss' perhaps you have not seen my bio here (mentioned several tymes). I'm so old that back in the late 60s early 1970s I flew Vampires in the RAAF then RAN FAA where I also flew the Sea Venom (but not onboard HMAS Melbourne) then the A4G Skyhawk onboard (quite different from those other relics ). Checkout the link at the bottom of my posts.
Your are right i didn't see that. I will take a look for sure.
The costs to enlarge the Caverns for the F-18 at the airbase Meiringen where around 120 Million Dollar. Not cheap i would say. The 2 Caverns can take 15 F-18 each. But its very narrow there. You need cranes to move the planes. So i think it make sense to enlarge them again for the SH. Even with folded wings.
Here a short video from the old Caverns ( In German ).
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swiss wrote:The costs to enlarge the Caverns for the F-18 at the airbase Meiringen where around 120 Million Dollar. Not cheap i would say. The 2 Caverns can take 15 F-18 each. But its very narrow there. You need cranes to move the planes. So i think it make sense to enlarge them again for the SH. Even with folded wings.
Like I said, that's pocket change when talking about buying fighter aircraft, even more when computing the whole life cycle cost ; the Gripen's price tag of $3.5B (acquisition cost I suppose here) is roughly an order of magnitude above enlarging the few undermountain hangars, and the latter cost becomes even smaller when compared to the $10B figure quoted for the life cycle costs : https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/ ... b/38607010
Especially when you consider the Rafale and Eurofighter that were also in the RFP, which have been shown throughout numerous tenders to not be cheap at all. If I had to guess why Boeing retracted its offer, it was rather for the 2 following reasons :
1) Making the customer pay a few hundreds of millions to enlarge the caverns doesn't look good in the press, even if the whole program would likely have been one of the cheapest, thanks to the economies of scale offered by the F/A-18E/F program.
2) Just as the F/A-18E/F designation was a way to persuade Congress it wasn't really a new aircraft, using the same designation would likely have made the average [s]Joe[/s] Müller think it's the same plane that was bought in the '90s, hence facing a very high chance of not passing the referendum.
Everytime you don't tell the facts, you make Putin stronger.
Everytime you're hit by Dunning-Kruger, you make Putin stronger.
Everytime you're hit by Dunning-Kruger, you make Putin stronger.
Pair O'SupaDupas [1 TANKER] WINGS FOLDED & Helioplicker: https://i1.wp.com/fightersweep.com/wp-c ... sevelt.jpg
viper12 wrote:Especially when you consider the Rafale and Eurofighter that were also in the RFP, which have been shown throughout numerous tenders to not be cheap at all. If I had to guess why Boeing retracted its offer, it was rather for the 2 following reasons :
1) Making the customer pay a few hundreds of millions to enlarge the caverns doesn't look good in the press, even if the whole program would likely have been one of the cheapest, thanks to the economies of scale offered by the F/A-18E/F program.
2) Just as the F/A-18E/F designation was a way to persuade Congress it wasn't really a new aircraft, using the same designation would likely have made the average [s]Joe[/s] Müller think it's the same plane that was bought in the '90s, hence facing a very high chance of not passing the referendum.
Yes, that makes sense and I agree with you! If those two points weren't the "sole" reasons why the SH wasn't considered for the Swiss competition/evaluation than they seem to have heavily weighted on the decision for not considering the SH.
“Active stealth” is what the ignorant nay sayers call EW and pretend like it’s new.
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