Rockwell International's ATF Proposal

Found these on an old thread, Nice smooth design for a fighter.

www.aircraftdesign.com...

www.aircraftdesign.com...

www.aircraftdesign.com...

www.aircraftdesign.com...

If it was a real aircraft, Would this have been given the F-22 designation?

Love the design...

Hardly a F-22... The pics have image quality from the 80-90... and so does the guys hair in one of the pics... And it's not modern design... maybe from the TSR 2. era... don't know...

Originally posted by Figher Master FIN
Love the design...

Hardly a F-22... The pics have image quality from the 80-90... and so does the guys hair in one of the pics...

And it's not modern design... maybe from the TSR 2. era... don't know...

It was a 1980s concept and was in direct competition with the "YF-22" concept for the ATF program - obviously it lost out. Rockwell didn't seem to have a strong understanding of stealth...

Nice design.

Is it me, or does the Rockwell design seem reminiscent of the current Sukhoi designs? I think it just goes to show you that if a group of engineers in any given company/country decide to take the current state-of-the-art in aerodynamics and expand them.....the outcome(s) would be similar no matter who designed the product.

What I'm saying is that (IMHO) if the US decided to go to the next generation of fighters after the F-15, and also decided to completely ignore stealth, the eventual aircraft designed would have probably looked alot like the current Russian designs.

Pyros, I was thinking the same thing!

Perhaps those Rockwell engineers like to "share" their ideas with the Ruski's or the Ruski's are inspired by the rockwell concepts?

I am kinda proud of Rockwell though since they hail from Iowa...or atleast has major factories there.

something's not quite right with that design, but I can't quite put my finger on it. What I can put a finger on is the widely seperated engines, and question aircraft stability in a burnout situation.

Originally posted by Pyros
Nice design.

Is it me, or does the Rockwell design seem reminiscent of the current Sukhoi designs? I think it just goes to show you that if a group of engineers in any given company/country decide to take the current state-of-the-art in aerodynamics and expand them.....the outcome(s) would be similar no matter who designed the product.

What I'm saying is that (IMHO) if the US decided to go to the next generation of fighters after the F-15, and also decided to completely ignore stealth, the eventual aircraft designed would have probably looked alot like the current Russian designs.

Exactly. The laws of physics are the same for everyone.


Doesn't stop complete idiots coming on and saying "Ohhh, X copied Y with that plane".

Originally posted by Travellar
something's not quite right with that design, but I can't quite put my finger on it. What I can put a finger on is the widely seperated engines, and question aircraft stability in a burnout situation.

I actually had been thinking about such a layout, advantages (in my mind):

- 2 widely spaced engines, reduced chance of one missile taking both out
- leaves plenty of space for missile bay and lifting body fuselage in between
- and the killer, with TVC, you have two large roll acutators with plent of leverage distance - if they hooked up TVC on those things you'd have a simply fantastic roll rate - far beyond all current designs.

with sufficient outward rotation, 3-D thrust vectoring could overcome the flat spin problem that plauged F-14s in a burnout.

It was a pretty cool design. Rockwell if I recall thought that Stealth was a passing fad for the USAF and decided to basically reinvent the F-15. It would have made for a very good conventional fighter and they large flat fueselage would have made a great platform for many hardpoints and alot of fuel.

Browno,

And it is that 'nice, smooth, design' which is it's principal disinformational illusion if not engineering impossibility (see the Canard equipped Lockheed design which is nothing more than the 'top half' of the YF-22 shape without the stabilators fitted).

Indeed, while the Rockwell design is indeed /well blended/; the LE and wingroot thickness' in particular are absurd for a supersonic platform even as the structural carrythru is nothing remotely close to what a pod-over-deltoid configuration (like the Su-27) displays.

Aesthetically, while the first time I saw this configuration I thought it was the best looking of all the ATF concept jets but one; it also had more of the look of the old LORAL stealth fighter (see Monogram 'F-19') than the Su-27.

Yet it wasn't until I later when I saw this drawing-

www.habu2.net...

That it became clear that the long fuselage was nothing more or less than a mounting point for the flex-pallet GD-Westinghouse AAAM-

www.designation-systems.net...

Which was indeed originally 'hinged' on the F-14 but later progressed to a semi-submerged pallet configuration.

With a less unidimensional fuselage, you have something to 'sweep up from' on the ventral side and this makes the wingroot/LERX area more believable even as the chunkier belly provides not only structural depth for the wingspars but a believable top-and-bottom longeron system to place heavy stores hardpoint attachments.

Mind you, there are still likely problems with slabsided multipathing between the nacelles and the nacelles and pod while the use of conical centerbodies does not do enough to protect the inline compressor fronts and further look shy of total capture area and vulnerable to masking at some high AOA conditions. I imagine that boattail issues and general ruling/profile drag penalties would also be monstrous with all that wetted area and depending on how they intended to configure it, the nose looks shy of depth sufficient to house even a suitably large AESA. Without a notable nose-droop to justify clearance issues, obviously the storklike A-4 gear is going to be a hardsell too, not least because it's going to also mean intrusion upon wing area already compromised by the nacelles from carrying much in the way of external ordnance.

Against which, conceptually, one can argue that as many as 12, 100nm+, AAAMs _greatly_ ease many of the total penetration depth problems on a fighter that could fly out of England to hit targets over Eastern German if not Poland. Similar to the capabilities achieved by the YF-12.

When compared to a true SC&M penetrating OCA system which must survive to reach AIM-120 (as it was then, a 20-25nm missile) poles.

Yet, while escorting strike aircraft as well as attacking it's own surface tagets, the F-22 as it is seen today is more flexible if only because you aren't TOF'ing out an LRAAM through the loh'ing herd of a strike package while a QRA threat comes up off a road base 10-20nm to their front.

Whether you could achieve similar payload flex to say the Canberra removable bay door system in an F-4 CFT type layout is another question we will likely never know the answer too but in general, it seems to me that Rockwell did not do enough to integrate all of the mission systems of the jet with enough residual 'multirole' growth capacity to make it a viable contender.


KPl.

The wing design is similar to the First Su-27.

T-10-1