OMG, the ogival-wing Arrow is beautiful. Breed a CF-105 with a Concorde - lovely !
Both the airframe and the wing started out as lines on paper drawn by this man, Jim Floyd. Small world.
OMG, the ogival-wing Arrow is beautiful. Breed a CF-105 with a Concorde - lovely !
I`d hate to be a killjoy but I am struggling to think of many production fighters that had major structural modifications like are being proposed here for the Arrow. The Tornado ADV was stretched from the IDS but that`s about it I think. Sure there have been wing kinks and slats, bulged bellies for extra fuel, lumps and bumps for electronics and the odd canard foreplane but everything else has been incorporated within the basic design as frozen back when production started. I struggle to think the Arrow with be the plane to buck this trend, indeed if it needs this sort of radical redesign then it would have to be considerd a failure.
The Arrow as a very narrow GAP btw it's empty weight and it's maximum take off weight, the MTOW being only a bit over 40% higher than empty weigh. That's low for an interceptor. The F106 has 60%, the MiG25 over 100%. unless the aircraft could get very efficient engines, that would be a serious drawback.
The Arrow would need to be able to lift more weight to be really useful.
Was that with the J-75s, because it could be been a bit better with the Iroquois Engines that never got a chance to take off.
I hate being a killjoy too. When an aircraft design proves to be something special, it's natural to extrapolate the good properties into broader function using the age-old cut-and-paste technique. The FSW S-37 and stealth T-50 required some fresh lines drawn.
The SU27/30/34 is an extreme version of what I mentioned. The Su 27 got cannards on it`s LERX and a stepped canopy on a bulged back to become the Su 30, and the SU 30 got its bulged forward fuselage widended to become the Su 34. All the while the wings and other fight surfaces and fuselage have remained constant. Even this extreme example may be the exception which proves the rule.
The MiG-21 was another aircraft which achieved some cut-and-paste treatment. <snip>
So did the MiG-19. It's original version is quite different to the Q-5 which the Chinese are still using as a ground attack aircraft. Some of the more important changes are: solid nose and redesigned air intakes; the addition of an internal weapons bay; new wings; and a stretched area-ruled fuselage.
I don't know how relevant this is to a discussion of altering the Arrow's airframe, but there seems to be some precedent for these sorts of modifications. Perhaps the Eastern bloc were more willing to consider that sort of approach?
On closer examination the forward fuselage, the part that can be detached from the main fuselage gets altered regularly enough; the F4D got stretched into the F4E, the Mirage IIIC into the IIIE, the Tornado IDS into the ADV, the Su30 into the Su34. However this is more or less built-in to fighters at the design stage, this is how the RAAF and RCAF managed to buy brand new Hornet centre barrels and replace the time-expired centre barrels on their Hornet fleets.
Behind this main attachment point, where the engines are mounted and flying surfaces are attached to the main fuselage, does not get altered in production aircraft. Parts get scabbed on, but these major structures don`t get stretched etc.