Search results

I, too, read them for the interviews.

Wasn't aware any Shisui had survived. That's why I said 'Japanese iteration', instead of 'Japanese copy'. I am aware some design modification was done.

There's also a MXY-7 Ohka and a MXY-8 Akigusa(training glider for the J8M1 Shisui, the Japanese iteration of the Me-163 Komet) in the picture.

Fighter 'generations' have become meaningless qualifiers, used for marketing teams to try to convince people 'ours is better than the competitor's'.

I'm not. The F-35 does its role quite well, and if what I've heard around is true(big if, I know), the air forces that have them are quite satisfied with their acquisition. The thing is, it's not supposed to be the glamourous fighter-killer, it's supposed to be a bomb truck - a stealthy A-7 more...

There's people saying it's a SAAB Draken.

Same three-barrel gatling as the one on the AH-1.

I think the plans for the turretless Defiant variants originally called for 12 .303 machine guns(early iterations of the Hawker Typhoon also planned to use that armament, and there was a Hurricane subvariant that had it, IIRC).

What I've heard is intermeshing rotors are extremely good for lifting things, but the price they pay is helicopters with intermeshing rotors are slow. For the K-MAX, it doesn't matter, but there are other applications that this is less desireable.

The propeller blade tips are going round at a speed higher than the speed of the sound, that's why the propellers are so noisy.

The Skywarrior was a great plane, with it's biggest problem being, IMO, the lack of ejection seats(A3D - 'All Three Dead'). The Air Force solved this problem with the B-66 Dominator, but that plane had other problems(not least the fact that all the changes the Air Force wanted ended up delaying...

The Rafale is sure a contender, but there is something... majestic about the Mirage 4000, that the Rafale doesn't have.

The best-looking of all Dassault products.

There are two Air Force arguments to that: first one is they are better suited to doing Battlefield Air Interdiction than CAS(this is an argument they present since Vietnam, at least). I agree that they aren't suited to it - IMO, this should be an Army thing, just like the Marines fly their own...

They sure do - and I don't quite fault them. But this is a situation way more complicated than "durr, Fighter Mafia, durr". There are good points for retiring the A-10 as well.

The YF-23's stealth was better than the YF-22's. There were concerns with the YF-23's weapon bay, which carried missiles on two columns of 3, even though the Northrop/McDonnell's team was sure that even with an ejection failure, the aircraft would be able to bring the missile above it to firing...