The location of the blades in the photo and the drawing looks identical, the current engines are far longer than the engines shown in the drawing... in the drawing, those are the length of a dry turbofan for a helo, ship or tank... as they’ve no wet engines that short.. the blades look in the exact place they would…

“...unofficially nicknamed ‘The Saddamizer’ by a design team worker...”

Ok, and why do you need to throw SDBs far? Because you’re unstealthy and you can’t get close enough...Or you might not have enough OECM...

Thanks for making that point. There’s occasionally a creeping tendency here to fetishize devices that too often blow innocent human beings into vapor.

First off, you’re thinking first/second gen LO material technology...F-117/B2 style stealth is not what they are using today.

Not clear that it every really worked well though. Presumably they could build something much more capable today.

Why would you want your bomber-fighter to go mach 2?

Not intending to flame, but I generally don’t like to refer to explosive payload as freedom. It’s death. If death is your idea of freedom, we have very different definitions. Is it necessary? Absolutely. But when you call a horrible necessity “freedom,” you give up all claim to your humanity. War is not glamorous, war…

They are intimidating enough :)

Blackjack comes up about 35,000 pounds short of a B1-B for payload. ~90k versus 125k.

fuck you and your cool pictures.

While I prefer the YF-23 over the YF-22, Lockheed did an impresive number when going to production for the F-22 Raptor.

I took this from last year’s air show at Andrews Air Force Base.

If you wana see an F22 in person come to my home town of dayton Ohio. There’s an F22 on permanent display at the USAF museam on Wright Patterson AFB. By June the yf23 will be on display too

I recently got a tour of Edwards Air Force Base;I signed up and the wait was 4/5 months,worth it .One of the highlights was being able to see a F 22 up close,awesome.We got to touch ,its amazing how sharp the leading edge of the wings are.They had a couple of F 35's also we were allowed to get within 100 ft of it.If…

absurdly tight high and low speed turns, then come to a virtual stop, pitch up and accelerate vertically like a rocket ship

Worked on Harriers for 9 years. That was exactly how I described them. Greatest ability was turning jet fuel into noise.

Not quite, Fighter Jet Test Pilot.