CGI - Possible configuration of the Boeing F-47 NGAD

PocketAce said:
In terms of clues to NGAD's design in the patch - A voodoo sorcerer (oungan) uses a voodoo doll to attack their opponents at a distance, out of sight.

View attachment 776328

Thus, the little red plane held by the sorcerer in the patch:

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... Represents the CCA/Loyal Wingman which the F-47 controls. It even resembles a Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat, especially in the tail section.

View attachment 776329

Cheers!
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I wonder what @Rodrigo Avella thinks of this idea, as he's based his whole design around the silhouette being held by the sorcerer being the F-47 itself
 
Something I wondered in all of this, do we have any indications for the crew layout of the F-47? Hints or anything?

I just wondered given that the J-36 is confirmed to have two people in the cockpit. While the previous generation is also introducing some tandem seaters with the J-20, Su-57 and KF-21. The first two heavily implying that the second person on board is meant for drone shenanigans, i.e controlling and directing UAVs that belong to the formation, handling the collected data etc.

And given the focus on CCAs, I'm curious if the F-47 (and to an extent F/A-XX) will be a two or a single seater. If it's a single seat aircraft I assume most drone management will either handed towards others, like AEW&C aircraft, the B-21 or ground controllers. Or alternative AI will be leveraged to function as a virtual WSO/Drone operator. Taking workload from the pilot and managing information collected by the drones, sorting targets, etc.

It also occurred to me because all renderings, be it official or from our respected forum members seem to focus on a single seater layout.
 
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gojira007 said:
I wonder what @Rodrigo Avella thinks of this idea, as he's based his whole design around the silhouette being held by the sorcerer being the F-47 itself
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Hi!
PocketAce's theory sounds great to me!
So I'll make a version of the F47 with what he found in the Voodoo II patch.
I still see traces of the red plane from the Voodoo II patch in the F47 renders. But PocketAce's theory makes more sense. And the silhouette he found looks beautiful.
Best regards!
 
VTOLicious said:
What matters is the volume of the airframe and the associated space for fuel, weapons, and whatever else you need to accomplish the mission. Hence my aim was to design something in the order of magnitude of the F-22, but with increased airframe volume.
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What is the fineness ratio of your concept? i.e. max cross sectional area vs length. This is fairly key for supersonic drag.

I'd also think about how to get structurally efficient load paths.
 
EmoBirb said:
Something I wondered in all of this, do we have any indications for the crew layout of the F-47? Hints or anything?

I just wondered given that the J-36 is confirmed to have two people in the cockpit. While the previous generation is also introducing some tandem seaters with the J-20, Su-57 and KF-21. The first two heavily implying that the second person on board is meant for drone shenanigans, i.e controlling and directing UAVs that belong to the formation, handling the collected data etc.

And given the focus on CCAs, I'm curious if the F-47 (and to an extent F/A-XX) will be a two or a single seater. If it's a single seat aircraft I assume most drone management will either handed towards others, like AEW&C aircraft, the B-21 or ground controllers. Or alternative AI will be leveraged to function as a virtual WSO/Drone operator. Taking workload from the pilot and managing information collected by the drones, sorting targets, etc.

It also occurred to me because all renderings, be it official or from our respected forum members seem to focus on a single seater layout.
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I have also been thinking about this. The canopy on my proposal is huge, maybe it has room for two people?

Some of the FA-XX proposals also featured two seats.
 

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VTOLicious said:
Total aircraft length is actually secondary. Look at the F-22 - The horizontal stabilizers extend far beyond the actual body. What matters is the volume of the airframe and the associated space for fuel, weapons, and whatever else you need to accomplish the mission. Hence my aim was to design something in the order of magnitude of the F-22, but with increased airframe volume. To do so, I chose wide spaced engines and tandem bays, wraped in a blended-wing-body airframe - Imho a very efficient layout.

I think the exhaust nozzles in my concept are actually hidden pretty well. Additional factors come into play if you want full TVC (pitch/roll/yaw) - tradeoffs! Btw, we don't even know yet if F-47 will feature TVC at all. This will definitely effect the shape of the nozzles and the rear of the airframe.
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Length has to be reported from tip to tip just like our height in personal/medical records.
All things are connected & matter at their place.
In F-22 there is a reason for stab extension which i already mentioned - to hide nozzles from side & allow transpiration cooling.
Length also gets affected by wing shape, area as part of design criteria.
So the aircraft length is not secondary.

Ofocurse volume matters, if weapons longer than 4m are desired to be carried internally then obviously it will be voluminous & lengthy.
We need space for DEW system also.
But we can't increase volume randomly as per our wish in XYZ axis. The sonic area rule has to be followed otherwise sonic drag will increase limiting supercruising & max speed.

The volume/weight cannot exceed desired ATWR (A/c Thrust to Weight Ratio).
If XA-10X engines give 50% more thrust then for same ATWR assuming same density the airframe can be expanded cuberoot(1.5) = 1.1447 times or 14.47% in XYZ axis.
Imagine F-22 split for 2 tandem bays like in Su-57. So we might have 4 belly bays. The width might increase by say 30%, the length might increase by 20%, the height might increase by 10%, so volume/weight might increase by 1.3x1.2x1.1=1.716 times or 71.6%, so the engines will also have to deliver that much more thrust - 156x1.71=267 KN wet thrust each, 116x1.71=198 KN dry thrust each.

IMO a bigger 6gen jet w/o rudder should have TVC, not for aerobatics or gun-fight, but for control authority. The F-22's nozzles move also during normal flight, t/o, landing. It has become a normal part of an agile fighter with rudder, then w/o rudder it would become a need.

It is totally upto enthusiasts if they wanna make drawings & CADs purely for fun or as realistic as possible.

VTOLicious said:
Someone should make aircraft manufacturers aware of this
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Makers are aware, enthusiasts may not be.
 

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EmoBirb said:
Something I wondered in all of this, do we have any indications for the crew layout of the F-47? Hints or anything?

I just wondered given that the J-36 is confirmed to have two people in the cockpit. While the previous generation is also introducing some tandem seaters with the J-20, Su-57 and KF-21. The first two heavily implying that the second person on board is meant for drone shenanigans, i.e controlling and directing UAVs that belong to the formation, handling the collected data etc.

And given the focus on CCAs, I'm curious if the F-47 (and to an extent F/A-XX) will be a two or a single seater. If it's a single seat aircraft I assume most drone management will either handed towards others, like AEW&C aircraft, the B-21 or ground controllers. Or alternative AI will be leveraged to function as a virtual WSO/Drone operator. Taking workload from the pilot and managing information collected by the drones, sorting targets, etc.

It also occurred to me because all renderings, be it official or from our respected forum members seem to focus on a single seater layout.
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Ideally the drones/UCAVs would be designed to take instructions from any authorized source in air or on ground.

If i anticipate the tech progress of USA keeping in mind that F-22 & 35 have been 1-seat, then there won't be any 2-seat config either for training or just to control a bunch of UAVs which can be done by voice commands like to real pilots or via MFD or even a tab/pad strapped to thigh.
 

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Changes are getting smaller, but I've repositioned engines based on the P&W vid, and generally shuffled around the edges to try and better match the photos. It feels like I'm getting to the end of my journey trying to matching the press photos, at least until we get some more renders or actual photos. Anything behind the leading edge, or under the chine is pure speculation.

Also, I'm finding the fine detail tweaking is butting up against my rudimentary Blender knowledge, which is bringing more frustration than joy at the moment!

I am quite enjoying how this plane, despite looking sort of conventional in orthographic views, looks straight up weird from any other angle
 

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As with Rodrigo's renders I once again took the freedom to insert these beautiful renders into the official artwork for a direct comparison (100%, 50% and 25% opacity respectively).

Great match!
 

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targetpractice said:
Changes are getting smaller, but I've repositioned engines based on the P&W vid, and generally shuffled around the edges to try and better match the photos. It feels like I'm getting to the end of my journey trying to matching the press photos, at least until we get some more renders or actual photos. Anything behind the leading edge, or under the chine is pure speculation.
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Good job look great.
 
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gojira007 said:
Wow those fit really well, I'm more and more leaning on @targetpractice 's design being the closest one every day, and this has convinced me even more
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The intake is my favorite aspect and in line with previous Boeing efforts. However it may be unsuitable for something like Mach 2 supercruise, which I guess Trump somewhat teased?

VTOLicious also has a great one, so does Rodrigo and others here.

But I definitely lean towards a delta-canard or lambda-canard without vertical or horizontal stabilizers in the rear.
 
Boy, I'll tell ya, these concepts are mighty nice and if any one or more of these get really close when the USAF finally takes the wraps of the actual F-47, I will be impressed and hats off to the illustration capabilities and insights!
 
Passing thought: maybe the official renders are of one of the sub scale test aircraft? A smaller, cheaper, maybe single engine plane: that would explain the canopy proportions and the dihedral.
 
targetpractice said:
Passing thought: maybe the official renders are of one of the sub scale test aircraft? A smaller, cheaper, maybe single engine plane: that would explain the canopy proportions and the dihedral.
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That will also probably explain that big ass canopy, which looks like single pilot canopy in ratio but quite large in size.
 
targetpractice said:
Passing thought: maybe the official renders are of one of the sub scale test aircraft? A smaller, cheaper, maybe single engine plane: that would explain the canopy proportions and the dihedral.
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The demonstrators were “full scale”
 
EmoBirb said:
The intake is my favorite aspect and in line with previous Boeing efforts. However it may be unsuitable for something like Mach 2 supercruise, which I guess Trump somewhat teased?
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I went with it because a) The MRF-24X is cool* and b) the weird way the wheel is cut off in the official render. It is definitely a big leap on my part though, and I could easily see cheek intakes as an option.

*Actually just started making a model of this
 
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targetpractice said:
I really need to put this model down, and move on with my life, but here is a version on Sketchfab, if you want to spin and inspect it...

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/f-47-voodoo-6491308624a3482daf8890f22ce756ae
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Now that I've taken a close look at it thanks to you posting it, I am really starting to love this design ! It just fits the renders so well that I'm 90 % convinced you nailed the actual configuration. And it's not just that, I find it so elegant regardless of if it is accurate or not. I'd sell a liver to have this as a model on my desk :)
 
targetpractice said:
I went with it because a) The MRF-24X is cool* and b) the weird way the wheel is cut off in the official render. It is definitely a big leap on my part though, and I could easily see cheek intakes as an option.

*Actually just started making a model of this
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Oh it would make sense for many reasons, as established Boeing is very fond of this sort of intake. Perhaps some sort of variable DSI could be applied even to such a layout. As this sort of tech has been mentioned quite a bit by now (here and in the J-50 thread). Where there is a layer of flexible material over the adjustable portion of the "bulge".

Perhaps it's not a Pelican after all but a croaking Frog x)
 
SailorBoy said:
Do you have a size for the weapons bays? I see two long side bays and one central one, is it JASSM sized or just AMRAAM/JATM?
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Main bay should fit 5x 4.5m long LREWs. Side bays each hold an AIM-120. It's all fairly approximate, though.
 
targetpractice said:
Main bay should fit 5x 4.5m long LREWs. Side bays each hold an AIM-120. It's all fairly approximate, though.
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So not an A2G bomb truck? Seems fair, replacing the F22.
I'm from the UK, where our Tempest might well end up carrying 2 6m cruise missiles plus Meteor and ASRAAM for self defence.
 
SailorBoy said:
So not an A2G bomb truck? Seems fair, replacing the F22.
I'm from the UK, where our Tempest might well end up carrying 2 6m cruise missiles plus Meteor and ASRAAM for self defence.
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I don't remember the GCAP's weapons bays being 6m long, I thought of a ballpark of 5.5m?. If they were 6m then based on the models and renders we've seen, the aircraft would end up being 24m long? Seems quite big. A bay of 5.5m equals a length of roughly 22m.
 
Nx4eu said:
I don't remember the GCAP's weapons bays being 6m long, I thought of a ballpark of 5.5m?. If they were 6m then based on the models and renders we've seen, the aircraft would end up being 24m long? Seems quite big. A bay of 5.5m equals a length of roughly 22m.
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FC/ASW is supposedly between 5 and 6m long so both would work, I think.
The important thing is that cruise missiles need much deeper bays than AAMs, so more fuselage volume.
 
Everyone, did ANYONE see this before? I played with the light settings on the two images from online, and both of them indicate a contoured "BoP" wingtip. It isnt a sharp turn but a gradual one. Could be a huge clue.
 

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