"Arved Sandstrom" wrote:

:Just out of curiosity, why were they not able to design conformal external
:fuel tanks that also are fairly stealthy? I find it difficult to believe
:that it could not be done.

Because the weapons carriage is internal. You can't launch weapons
through a conformal tank. It would also make the tank quite expensive
(rather than just steel). There is also the issue of changing the
shape of the airframe with conformal tanks (all those join lines),
which makes this a lot more difficult than you apparently think.

All this means you might as well just design the volume into the
airframe in the first place (which is what they did).

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney