Shipbucket

Very nice work. 100% believable.

Thank you, Hood!

I need to duck in here more often. The F8B is a work of freakin' art, as is most of this thread.

Thanks erik!

Drawers block lifted somewhat by using an existing design and modifying it to suit... Seeing as someone decided to completely bastardize my original gen.5 aircraft and the fact that I never got around to making it's stable mate I figured I'd look at existing solutions. One of which would be the YF-23 (suitably developed and re-developed towards my needs)
So here is as labelled the FA-23 Chimera wearing the now standardized scheme of FS36118 and 35237 which is applied to all land based FA-15s and FA-39s in addition to the FA-23. (AG-10s will more than likely receive a multi-colour disruptive pattern and the FA-2000s to replace the oldest FA-15s will get the two tone scheme you see here).






During the aforementioned development and re-development the design would have lost the distinctive 2D nozzle arrangement for a 3D affair similar to that fitted to the FA-15s. The M61 would be replaced by either a 27mm GAU-12 derivative or a BK-27, the complicated weapons bay arrangement would be supplanted by the more commonly seen (F-22 and F-35) style of weapon bay without the stacked munitions. The engines would be relocated aft some distance requiring a rebalancing of the airframe and indeed they would use either F119s or F135/6s when the time frame permits. The wing would be re-stressed for external hardpoints which were absent from the PAV-1/2 prototypes. Other modifications include distributed EO sensors and L/S band arrays in various surfaces including the dorsal spine. Aesthetically at least as well I think this much more rounded off than the previous design, that might be something to do with the fact it is in essence a modified YF-23... Anyhow I digress, enjoy the drawings!

~Mark.

Wow! You never stop to impress me blackbuck

Always love that 23, maybe add some Atlantian version of IRST ?

There is a big fat IRST fairing under the nose as proposed for both the EMD and NATF projects.

Under... under... hmmm, I think that putting IRST on nose, not under would be better. Smaller blind zone.

Well there are a multitude of existing designs that incorporate underside mounted packages already as well as the fact that there isn't actually space to fit it topside. Also I don't know if you can see them easily but there are other EO apertures both on the dorsal spine and in the tail structure providing some 540 degress of overlapping coverage in the horizontal plane with the dorsal one being mounted in a rotating gimbal for free travel around the vertical plane not visible is the one on the underside using the same idea as the dorsal gimbal.