The YF-23's Air Inlet Design Was Its Most Exotic Feature You Never Heard Of
Citat:So instead of creating separate intake structures with splitter gaps underneath the YF-23, Northrop installed 'gauzing panels' atop and ahead of where the fuselage meets the leading edge of the air intake. These panels had small holes drilled all over them and would 'suck-up' the boundary layer air 'sticking to' to the fuselage before it entered the air intake. This air was then vented out of a flush aperture and a pair of small doors on the YF-23's upper surface. In effect, it acted like an invisible splitter plate of sorts but instead of separating the air it removed it. The system was called the Boundary Layer Control System and worked automatically.
As a result, the YF-23's engine inlet design was incredibly simple. It didn't 'hang' below the fuselage as a discrete structure, instead, its trapezoidal shape simply terminated into the lower fuselage itself. In this sense, it was very much a part of the fuselage. And considering there aren't really any known major complaints about the F119 and F120 engines' overall stability during YF-23 high-speed testing, this concept seemed to have worked well. The system may have even helped the YF-23 best the YF-22 is supercruise performance, as well.
You can clearly see these panels in photos of the YF-23, which some have wrongly attributed to an unpainted part or stealthy baffles of some sort.
The YF-23's Weapons Bay Layout Was One Of Its Best Features And One Of Its Worst
Citat:Northrop's YF-23, on the other hand, went with a far less straight-forward weapons bay configuration. Instead of shallow, largely conformal bays, the YF-23 had a single, coffin-like, cavernous weapons carrying cavity that ran from behind the cockpit, back into the area between the aircraft's widely spaced and very unique air intakes. The bay was covered by two very large outwardly swinging doors and the interior of the bay was far deeper than the one found on the YF-22, but also a bit narrower overall.
The technology demonstrator aircraft were designed to notionally carry three AIM-120s and two AIM-9s in this bay—three AIM-120s mounted in a staggered fashion on trapeze launchers and two AIM-9s attached to the bay doors.
Citat:A big, deep weapons bay is great for air-to-ground applications, but it does invite potentially unwanted complexity for air-to-air applications. By stacking missiles above other missiles, it means that if one jammed, the ones behind it would not be usable—or worse. It also meant that an elaborate missile handling and launching mechanism would be required. This could add substantial weight and complexity to the design, and thus increase risk and possibly cost associated with it. At the same time, a big, deep, trough-like weapons compartment meant that the YF-23 could potentially carry substantial air-to-ground stores, including 2,000lb class weapons, and possibly even larger. Such a bay could also be subdivided for different types of off smaller weapons to be carried at one time.
The final F-23 configuration would have been markedly different than its YF-23 progenitor. It would feature two weapons bays instead of one. A similar large bay roughly in the same place as the original, but also another smaller, shallower bay under the cockpit that would hold a pair of AIM-9 Sidewinders. By most accounts, this configuration would have allowed for four or maybe five AIM-120s and a pair of sidewinders to be carried, but some claim that elaborate and complex AIM-120 carriage contraptions could have drastically increased this to as many as eight or even 10 AIM-120s. Once again, this would rely on stacking missiles in magazines or using a form of a rotary launcher, among other concepts, some of which Northrop did receive patents for in the late 1980s when the ATF competition was underway.
Patent za vertikalni lanser
F/B-23 kao bombarder
Citat:In the mid-2000s, models and renderings of an F/B-23 emerged. The design, dubbed the Rapid Theater Attack concept, was an enlarged and elongated version of the YF-23 with room for two crewmen and featuring more traditional exhausts and supposedly divertless supersonic intakes—a feature that was slated to make it onto production F-23A's as well. Literally, this was the supercruising, deep penetrating, hard-hitting, regional ranged strike machine that many of us had long dreamed of. An aircraft that possesses a multiple of the unrefueled combat radii found on tactical fighters and capable of transiting relatively long distances in short timeframes via sustained supercruise.
Such a concept made a lot of sense then and it still does today. And the YF-23's big weapons bay, expanded in this stretched version, could pack a lot of damage that could obliterate even deeply buried bunkers. Keep in mind, that once the F-117 was retired in 2008, the Pentagon had no tactical aircraft that could penetrate deep into enemy airspace and unleash 2,000lb class weapons. Only the B-2 strategic bomber would retain this capability until the F-35 would become operational a decade later.
All this was happening as the USAF was pondering an FB-22 with similar, albeit likely less specialized capabilities as the YF-23, but the FB-22 would have had the advantage of leveraging much of the F-22's support and manufacturing infrastructure. It ends up that the USAF passed on both aircraft, although the concept seems to be making a something of a comeback as of late as Japan and even the U.S. eye a new heavy fighter that incorporates both the F-35's best attributes with those of an enhanced F-22 airframe.
As for the F/B-23, or any other outgrowth of the YF-23 including a potential tactical reconnaissance variant, there is no hard evidence that anything of the sort ever existed in a prototype, let alone an operational form. But who knows, maybe one day we will find out that the YF-23 was recycled in certain respects for a deeply classified program, but for now, the fighter with serious bomber potential remains a dead-end in the annals of military aviation history.
This Is What A Northrop F-23A Would've Looked Like If Lockheed Lost The ATF Competition
Citat:
You will notice that the F-23A would have been longer and more smoothly molded than the prototype technology demonstrator that came before it. The YF-23's big trapezoidal nacelles would become more blended into the F-23's fuselage and its engines would be spaced closer together at slightly toed-in angles. Without the requirements for thrust reversers, which was baked into the YF-23 design but the hardware was never fitted, a more efficient low-observable flap-nozzle could be installed and the flat exhaust troughs would get updated heat-resistant coverings.
The F-23's nose would be redefined to accommodate a powerful active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and its intakes would be drastically changed. Gone was the innovative but high-risk 'gauzing panels' that worked to separate turbulent boundary layer air from entering serpentine intakes. In their place was a diverterless supersonic intake-like configuration similar to what is seen today on the F-35 and J-20, among other aircraft. The intake leading edges would be serrated as well, giving them a menacing look and enhanced low-observable properties.
The F-23's boat-tail would also be simplified, with a simpler overall 'w' shape, with the additional indentures found on its YF-23 predecessor deleted. The F-23A's weapons capacity was expanded and offered more relevant weapons storage than the single bay found on the YF-23. The bays were arranged to carry a pair of AIM-9 Sidewinders in the front bay and four to five AIM-120s in the rear bay. Air-to-ground munitions could also be carried, including much larger weapons than what the F-22 is capable of carrying today due to the greater depth of the F-23's rear weapons bay.
The refueling port would be moved over from the aircraft's centerline to its left over-wing shoulder position, offering pilots a similar tanking 'picture' as the F-15 Eagle. The landing gear would also be strengthened and the ventral barrel section would feature a less acute and more blended mold-line.
Beyond being more refined, the F-23A is a narrower and somewhat elongated design iteration of the YF-23, which would have likely helped improved its already blistering kinematic performance and excellent radar cross-section metrics. But still, as you can see in the scaled illustrations below, the F-23 was to be a beast of a fighter that was overall larger than the F-22 Raptor—the aircraft that became the end result of ATF competition.
Citat:Sandburg talks about how the YF-23's massive tailerons were so powerful that they largely mitigated the perceived advantages of the YF-22's thrust vectoring. There are many other details about the genesis of the ATF program overall, in-flight emergencies during the flight demonstration phase, how the YF-23's radar cross-section helped influence its unofficial Black Widow moniker, and even how that famous picture of the B-2 landing with the YF-23 in the foreground came to be.
Kaze Lokid je imao marketing, znao je kako da predstavi i proda proizvod, Northrop nije.
The Only Man Who Flew Both The F-22 And The YF-23 On Why The YF-23 Lost
