"Scott Ferrin" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:46:28 -0700, "Tarver Engineering"
wrote:


"Scott Ferrin" wrote in message
.. .


Boeing was fourth with damn near no
stealth experience (in the white world anyway) and the historical
king
of fighter producers McD was 5th.

McDonnell already had two fighter contracts and GD had one. The only
logic
that would apply is one where the Pentagon wanted to create an
additional
provider.

Grumman would have been the logical choice if that's all they wanted
to do. They already had experience building figthers and were
current. Yeah it had the Tomcat but even back then production was
starting to taper off.

Grumman was already building a fighter.

Yeah but of the three companies producing fighters it was the closest
to finishing up production. Grumman didn't have anything in the
pipeline after the Tomcat and where at this point in the ATF program
NATF was still a consideration Grumman would seem to be a shoe-in if
they were just interested in keeping the manufacturers going. Come to
think of it one of the reasons the F-22 was chosen over the F-23 was
because of the NATF requirement. Lockheed had planned a swing-wing
F-22 for the carrier requirement.

Not likely.

In fact, the finite element analysis that the F-22 was built off of renders
your comments laughable, Ferrin.

To go from supplying the USAF with
their premier fighter for the last forty or so years (F-4/F-15) to
placing FIFTH in the competition to build a new fighter suggests
that
though the USAF wanted it all, aerodynamic performance took a
distant
second place behind stealth.

Son, let me tell it like it is, when you take it down the road from
number
one you get less, not more.

???? Less *what*? Performance? It was number one on the F-15 and
nobody who's flown the F-22 will give the nod to the F-15 when it
comes to flight performance vs. the F-22.

If the avionics stay lit and the tails doesn't delaminate on the F-22.

The F-15 also had problems with delamination.

What?

Any idea what airframe
number they implimented the fix in on the F-22? Or is it still on the
to-do list?

AV-19 is supposed to be fixed, but there is no way for anyone to know that.