Forget the arguments about cost, capability, concurrency and timelines.
What is much more important than all of those, and something I don’t think has been fully established yet, is does the thing look good?
Elegant, fugly, or just plain ugly.
Am veering towards just plain ugly, how about you?
LOL, great subject for a debate on F35
I’m only going to comment on the ‘B’s here, but seeing them come down for a vertical landing on the WASP
I was forcibly reminded of the Harrier, and for that I love them !
Ugly or Not they are the coolest ! Watching one “transform” before take-off is worth the price alone ;)
Beno
http://www.f-16.net/forum/download/file.php?id=17958&mode=view
Oh it could have been so much worse……..
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Boeing_X-32B_Patuxent.jpg
The B looks like a Transformer, and that is cool.
The A and C are ugly except for for certain angles from the above the rear quarter.
I have to say it looks awesome from nearly every angle. In some places its a bit chunky but that comes down to personal taste. I think I we had photos of it fully bombed/missiled up it would look a whole lot more fearsome.
Fat and boxy. It’s more of a box truck than a sleek sports car, and not a single sexy curve in sight.
Got to question the designers priorities. Who wants boring, ugly stealth over style and panache? What’s the point in going to war if you can’t look good and be seen looking good?
In the 1st and 3rd pictures in particular I think it looks pure class. Despite the delays and controversy I can’t wait for them to come into service.
Say what you like about the number of fast jets the UK has (and attrition) , but a combination of the F-35B and Typhoon FGR-4 would make most likely adversaries think twice before going toe to toe with us.
@Brian Black
What’s the point in going to war if you can’t look good and be seen looking good?
Are you French? :-)
I just nearly spat out my tea,
The idea of trying to “BE SEEN LOOKING GOOD”
in a stealth aircraft was particually amusing.
I love it, especially the “grizzly bear” hump on the Bravo.
Mean, moody and m???
Well clean in flight it looks gd from certain angles. In hover or transition a marvel of engineering but hit ever branch of the ugly tree all the way dwn.
As for x-32 I think the words of a famous American are apt “you cannot be serious”
Oh it could have been so much worse……..
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Boeing_X-32B_Patuxent.jpg
Ah, yes, the Boeing X-32, known universally as the “Monica”.
And there have been some great aircraft that were ugly as sin. The Harrier. The Lancaster. The Lightning…
a – Ugly is in the eye of the beholder…
Each of your examples I would say are not even ever so slightly ugly. In my opinion. Theirs is not the classic beauty I admit, but (analogy warning) there are millions of beautiful women that don’t look a bit like Marilyn Monroe – not all beauty is the same.
Proper ugly though?
US A7 – the original SLUF: http://s24.postimg.org/u1cm4nsk5/A_7_corsair_II.png
Ju-52 – three radials do not a pretty face make: http://www.michael-michaelis.de/hostimg/ju52/ju52-1280.jpg
Blohm & Voss P-170 – always something weird: http://web.tiscalinet.it/Nanni/CFS/images/BVAufklarer.jpg
Soviet Yak23 – everything just a bit in the wrong place: http://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acimages/yak23_antonbalakchiev.jpg
An-225 – big & bulbous: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Russian_Antonov_AN-225_in_1989.JPEG
Bartini Beriev VVA-14 – designer’s dog eat his white stick: http://itdoesnthavetoberight.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/vva14-3.jpg
I think it looks great particularly in front profile!
PS Anyone know where we are with obtaining the source codes?
Personally I think from a lot of angles it looks a big squashed, like it was meant to be a couple of metres longer and broader but someone misread the plans in a moment of Spinal Tappery. IMHO certainly not as dashing as the F22 or PAK-FA, but neither a munter like the mig 23 or mig 25.
I’ve tried to like it, but no. The B, with all its flaps and doors open, looks like an old pheasant that’s just run into a hail of buckshot.
The A is fat and ugly. Will never become a swan.
The C – hideous. BTW, has it consistently caught a wire yet?
Edit: It’s a good job they can go invisible at the flick of a switch. LM are still delivering that capability, yes? Software batch 4 IIRC. ;-)
Wise, even the F-14 has never consistently caught a wire, so no big deal. Think there was an incident that a US pilot that made ace in a skirmish against Iran took 3 tries to get back on deck in the same encounter. As long as you don’t run out of fuel, you can always “try try again”.
Personally, to me it looks ok, not sleek and mean but it isn’t too blotchy and lumpy.
“What’s the point in going to war if you can’t look good and be seen looking good?”
Hmm.. maybe a bit of paintwork won’t be too amiss. :) Shark teeth and all.
Let Beauty be in the eye of the beholder:
If you believe “economy is beautiful” it’s pig ugly, but getting better
If you are in the “form is function” school, it’s pretty damned attractive
If you are a Naval Aviator, yea, it is a distant oasis shimmering in the desert
If you are a tatty fat crow its utterly shag-tastic.
Looks like a pregnant Sarah Jessica Parker…
Overly angular and totally disproportioned in the middle.
I’m surprised the Italians are considering buying it as it looks so terrible.
Simon – an interesting point – whatever happened to the area rule for fast (transonic) jets? I thought the rule was that the overall lateral cross-section area had to change in steady increments, meaning that where the wing sprung out, the fuselage needed to be waisted in compensation? Maybe the physical properties of air have changed in recent years then.
Anyway. If you really want to see its ugly side then watch it hover from behind. Yuck!
I think it looks quite good. A bit tubby, for sure, but not ugly.
Maybe I’m just overcompensating and comparing to the other JSF candidate which was ugly in a way you normally only read about.
In some ways it reminds me a bit of the Buccaneer. The same sort of dumpy purposefulness.
I’d be interested in people’s thoughts on what other aeroplanes are ‘ugly’.
Personally I’d say that the A10 hasn’t an elegant rivet on it, the Me109 was clearly made of rudely hammered angle iron and any military aircraft made by Grumman is finished off by repeatedly hitting it with the ugly-stick and then pushing it off the ugly step, with the possible exception of the F14.
Simon, re: ‘I’m surprised the Italians are considering buying it as it looks so terrible.’
Their version comes with a hand-stitched leather dash and matching suitcases…;-)
It’s a pregnant F-22.
It certainly does not look good on the balance sheet.
It also does not look good on TD’s site as viewed using Safari for iOS. All pictures and text are scrunched up and compressed over to the left.
@BB. I think you are slightly missing the point. The point being to look as scruffy as fuck during a war, as if you’ve gone through a hedge backwards, and then you stand a fighting chance of not being seen at all and so not be shot at. You save the sexy glad rags for parties and summer balls, and the girls’ knicker elastic becomes very playful.
Of course, it’s much easier to achieve the desired effect if you are a Cavalryman than if you are a Kevin or an Andrew. The Kevin’s in particular look like municipal bin men even when they do try to dress up or march in straight lines.
I’m a Lockheed Martin shareholder and I think its beauty personified ……….. and so do my kids.
a. Agreed the Boeing JSF was ugly, but I wish its Harrier type lift system had been put into the F-35B rather than the god awful lift fan bodge up.
Mr Fred
This one for a start looks ugly
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Blackburn_beverley_in_1964_arp.jpg
Apache pilots use ugly as there call sign but its so ugly its kinda quirky.
Chris physics haven’t changed its just not optimised to fly there.
It looks alright, when I was based on an airfield, on open days members of the public would comment to me about the F-35 being ugly and ‘un-british’ – if you can believe that. We’ve made some real fugly aircraft over the years.
It’ll be interesting to read/hear/see how the F-35 copes with weathering, from exhausts, efflux, sea salt etc
If we’re talking ugly modern jets, then take a look at the Chinese J-20
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01797/J-20_1797565b.jpg
Bastard love child of the Rafale and MiG1.44
http://www.rusarmy.com/wallpapers/avia2/mig-1.44/mig-1.44_800%20001.jpg
Yes the B is cool especially in Transformer mode. I only think it a shame that it’s wings don’t split and make an x type shape at the back…
Mark,
I’ll agree with that, it looks like a Lancaster bodge-taped to a container.
Blackburn have previous:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blackburn_Roc.jpg
If looks right it will fly right! The F35b just looks wrong! To complicated far to expensive underperforming the only reason where buying this aircraft is because we build 15% of each F35 airframe!
It looks acceptable now. It will look utterly fantastic when we see a real one in FAA colours parked on the flight deck of the QE. It will look out of this world when we see half a dozen or more in the same place.
i.e. just be grateful we’re getting anything!
Looks much better in these colours!!
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/124/d/e/red_arrows_f_35_low_altitude_high_speed_pass_by_ghufranali-d4ykk3z.jpg
It’s undeniable that the PAK-FA / T-50 is the gold standard in modern combat aircraft looks nowadays.
The F-35 is stubby, if not fat. But the F-32 proposal was even uglier.
S O,
I would deny it. The PAK-FA looks downright ungainly from some aspects.
Rather cool, head on, with real space fiction appeal. From any other angle, it’s a flying brick.
We should fly Sea Furies off the Great White Elephants instead – real naval aviation class!
Shades of Brewster Buffalo methinks. And yet that will work very well with the Blairite hubris of building the carriers. But what will serve as Singapore?
Are our one going to be painted the same colour as the US ones or are they going to be lighter grey like the Typhoons. We could always paint them dark grey like the Sea Harriers see if the FAA can get there black death nickname back.
Slightly worryingly, it looks quite good upside-down…
I think it looks great. like a baby F22
I think if the X32 had be chosen it would have been canceled just on its looks by now.
This is how jets should look nowadays.
I should know. I saw it on the television ;-)
Failing that, I’ll settle for this.
It looks like a hippo sat on an F-22. Yuck.
Plus, it’s useless against superheroes, invading aliens and Bruce Willis: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/98aaaa1eed4a
We’re being flippant, right?
Rule one of the fight club, never get into a fight with someone who is uglier than you?
Dave
@Chris
I thought your comment on area rule was very interesting. I understand that the effect is achieved these days through more subtle design effects. The demands of stealth also tend not to deliver pretty airframes, and fly-by-wire means they don’t have to be inherently stable… Also the comparison with the Buc is a good one, as it too was designed to carry its payload in an internal weapons bay, which presumably accounts for the pregnant look – and the positively elephantine X-32. Alas the likes of the aerodynamically gorgeous F-16 are probably behind us – but the Ju 52, does look good to me oddly – so I’m sure we will get used to it.
No strings, but fly by wire. And canards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8019cDHJPs
@Observer – I’ve been browsing the F-14 fansites and while there’s talk of it being a hangar queen, I can find no mention of it struggling to trap.
If I remember correctly an aircraft cross section should conform to the Sears–Haack equation which is essentially about the change in cross-section.
Wise, because it was never a big problem, the people working on ships who are likely to yak know enough to take one or two bolters out of a few hundred as the price of tricky ops while on the other hand, a single miss by an F-35 will be pounced on by all journalists and agonized over with much tearing of sack-cloth and smearing of ashes.
No plane catches a 3-wire all the time.
Varius, think Singapore will take the -A. After you poor guinea pigs…*cough*…guys, work all the bugs out of course.
Simon, why the need for stealth if you can outrun and outmaneuver any AAM in existence? :) Pity you have to think in Russian to use it.
Kind of chunky. Which is good in a tank but……
Observer. I was alluding to the historical arc of the Brewster Buffalo and it’s bit part in the fall of the British Empire. History does not repeat but the F35 is a complicated, single engined aircraft. It looks wrong, with it’s stubby wings and alpha male beergut ( rather like an airborne middle manager) and it costs me lots of tax money. I’d be much happier if my money was spent on a British alternative. A naval multi-role aircraft designed and built in the UK.
The old fries if it looks right it will fly right comes to mind. The F35 fails that test.
But if it can do 90% of what is asked of it, it will tern out fine.
I don’t care if it looks like a Tennis Ball, so long as it can do the job well and gets the expensive “Meat-sack” inside it home in one piece 99 times out of a 100.
I think it looks “conventionally futuristic” as inline with current expectations built around the F-117, F-22 and other aircraft with the smooth faceting look.
Personally, I like Aircraft that “get the job done” so for example I wouldn’t redesign an aircraft like the A-10 because I think it is very fit for purpose. Add in upgrades, like glass cockpits, uprated engines etc and produce some new airframes and keep it flying another 30 years.
I see the F-35 as something that tries to do too much, and consequently does nothing particularly well. It’s looks really are a non-issue, no war was ever won looking good.
I notice that the Observer has had the decency to eject out of this ghastly contraption (pic 2 – yes, it is a shroud for the lift fan, but it looks rather like the coal hole on a Sea Vixen. I know).
Back after a long departure. I think when clean it looks OK, but the “B” in hovering mode looks horrible when compared to the Shar/ Harrier. Its all personal, did anyone like the Short Sturgeon ?
As the old rule in aviation goes:
if it looks well, it flies well.
And thus, probably how it looks could really well be a very relevant issue pertaining to its operational capabilities :D
“Forget the arguments about cost, capability, concurrency and timelines.” – If only we could:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/23/us-usa-lockheed-fighter-idUSBREA0M1L920140123
It appears that now when the piper must be paid the us navy has asked the unthinkable
OSD TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source, in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.
It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny — would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.
http://www.politico.com/morningdefense/0214/morningdefense12888.html