US Navy 6th Gen Fighter - F/A-XX

Sferrin said:
Much less control authority. Especially if you're ditching the TVC.
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Close coupled canards and Levcons aren't so much for control authority... they're for increasing lift at high alpha / low speeds. You can see unstable deltas (e.g. Mirage 2000) with plenty of control authority despite not having any canards.

TVC might be desirable to keep if eliminating the vertical stabilizers.
 
H_K said:
Close coupled canards and Levcons aren't so much for control authority... they're for increasing lift at high alpha / low speeds. You can see unstable deltas (e.g. Mirage 2000) with plenty of control authority despite not having any canards.

TVC might be desirable to keep if eliminating the vertical stabilizers.
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If the NATF YF-23 had sufficient control authority without a canard it wouldn't have had one. F/A-XX has the same requirements for low speed as NATF did.
 
Sferrin said:
If the NATF YF-23 had sufficient control authority without a canard it wouldn't have had one. F/A-XX has the same requirements for low speed as NATF did.
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You’re mixing 2 different things. Control authority and lift generation. The close coupled canards are there to increase lift and enable lower approach speeds than a conventional YF-23 wing.

If you look at a Rafale M on approach the canards barely move (indeed if they moved too much it would destroy lift generation on the main wing and lead to a sudden sink rate, which is the opposite of what you want).
 
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H_K said:
You’re mixing 2 different things. Control authority and lift generation. The close coupled canards are there to increase lift and enable lower approach speeds than a conventional YF-23 wing.
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Still not seeing why it would be different for F/A-XX than for the YF-23 NATF, especially if the latter also had TVC (not certain it did but there has been talk that it did).
 
Sferrin said:
Still not seeing why it would be different for F/A-XX than for the YF-23 NATF, especially if the latter also had TVC (not certain it did but there has been talk that it did).
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Agree it’s not different for F/A-XX. They both need high lift devices, just like every other carrier aircraft out there. There are lots of ways to do this… wing blowing, canards, levcons, big LERXs etc.

But my point is this has nothing to do with control authority. It’s about lift generation.
 
H_K said:
Agree it’s not different for F/A-XX. They both need high lift devices, just like every other carrier aircraft out there. There are lots of ways to do this… wing blowing, canards, levcons, big LERXs etc.

But my point is this has nothing to do with control authority. It’s about lift generation.
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If you want to turn it does. Where the CP is matters. Assuming the static CP is the same for both designs, as soon as you put angle of attack on the canard your lift up front is going to increase. Would the "levcon" do as well? It's got a lot less surface area.
 
Sferrin said:
If the NATF YF-23 had sufficient control authority without a canard it wouldn't have had one. F/A-XX has the same requirements for low speed as NATF did.
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The original non-canard NATF-23 did not have sufficient control authority hence the the canards and thrust vectoring. USN did not like the canards due to visibility concerns but they could have gotten used to them.
 
Close coupled canards and Levcons aren't so much for control authority... they're for increasing lift at high alpha / low speeds. You can see unstable deltas (e.g. Mirage 2000) with plenty of control authority despite not having any canards.
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Funny to think Kfir, Mirage 4000 and Rafale got canards but not the Mirage 2000 - or, somewhat, atrophied canards (the small strakes on the air intakes).
 
Hydroman said:
The original non-canard NATF-23 did not have sufficient control authority hence the the canards and thrust vectoring. USN did not like the canards due to visibility concerns but they could have gotten used to them.
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In addition, the canards and vectoring were required for approach and landing.
 
djj said:
Limited to 15 feet in what dimension? Length or width, perhaps?
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Josh_TN said:
No. Not suitable for a carrier, likely for a host of reasons, but the most obvious being that carrier weapon elevators are limited to 15 feet.
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To be fair, it so weird they would choose to limit the weapon length like that, especially for a supposed hypersonic missile. How hard it is to put the weapon on a slanted holder or just put it in aircraft elevator?
 

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