| I'm struggling to find analogies here. Everyone, you need to drive the Ford 35 Mustang. It's not the fastest car but it's pretty fast. If you strap a trailer on the back then sure it now loses all it's maneuverability but it's now a truck, right? So we don't need trucks any more. Since it's invisible you don't need any combat capability, unless you load it out with 8 pylons and now it's not invisible any more, so now it does need to outfly the enemy. But it can't because it needs to carry all this load. It needs to take off and land vertically which means it needs a small cross section but it needs to be able to have a high wing load to turn so it needs a large cross section. It needs to do close air support but it can't get close. It needs to be slow but it also needs to be fast. It needs to be a bomber and have long range, but needs to be a fighter and have high performance (or energy maneuverability). It's what Boyd warned everyone about during the last generation, you need to avoid mutli role aircraft as they're not good at anything. |
Like the F-16 or the F-15E? Hillaker said he'd have designed the F-16 differently(more akin to the F-16XL) if he had known it was going to be multi-role.