Sixth Generation Fighter Already Flying

bullethead

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but is the eT-7A the plane everyone is talking about?
No, since the USAF explicitly said the new plane is a fighter. The eT-7A just proves that you can digitally design things inside of a year now.
 

LordSunhawk

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Whoever designed the software that they are using for this digital design, engineering and testing is a mad genius.

Generally with advanced CAD/CAM stuff you can quite easily make the design, even to high degrees of detail. We've been doing that for years at this point.

This software goes way beyond that. It permits design work down to the LRU, and as changes are made to the design it continuously calculates and simulates not simply the performance of the resulting design, but it also determines the most efficient manufacturing methods, layouts, and techniques required for real world assembly.

On top of that, it is possible to conduct many of the basic flight and structural tests virtually that previously would have required years of flight and physical testing. In the future, test flights will be simply to validate the virtual testing, rather than build up the data in and of themselves.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
This software goes way beyond that. It permits design work down to the LRU, and as changes are made to the design it continuously calculates and simulates not simply the performance of the resulting design, but it also determines the most efficient manufacturing methods, layouts, and techniques required for real world assembly.
I wonder how hard it is to add new manufacturing methods to the heuristic engine. Also how big a server farm you need to run all of it.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
The Air Force probably has something better they're working on in secret if they're allowing this information to be shown publicly .
Probably whatever is behind the recent UFO reporting. They were heavily invested in research into the space part of aerospace not to long ago. A new jet with incremental improvements is a very good distraction if you don't want people to pay attention to developments elsewhere, say some anti-satellite weaponry. If we have a space capable drone for securing the orbitals I wouldn't be surprised.
 

Aaron Fox

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It's also all based on geopolitical realities and practicality. While the U.S. had been farting around with COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia has been rearming and up to all sorts of malarkey, ditto for the Chinese, especially the Chinese, and while both have a shared mutual distrust with each other going back decades, one can argue both despise the U.S. even more. You can draw your own conclusions from that. And then there's always the other regional threats...

If you want Peace, Prepare for War.
No, the CCP absolutely hates Russia for the simple fact that the CCP can't get away from China's past. Russia -in China's eyes- yoinked Siberia and still has it to this day, this only worsened after the CCCP and CCP started butting heads after the death of Stalin because of Russia's slights -real or imagined- against China.

If China gets into a situation where it has to choose between Russia and the US, it will absolutely choose the US over Russia.
 

Bacle

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No, the CCP absolutely hates Russia for the simple fact that the CCP can't get away from China's past. Russia -in China's eyes- yoinked Siberia and still has it to this day, this only worsened after the CCCP and CCP started butting heads after the death of Stalin because of Russia's slights -real or imagined- against China.

If China gets into a situation where it has to choose between Russia and the US, it will absolutely choose the US over Russia.
Maybe it'd be smarter to try and make it so that it's US/Russia versus China.

The US and Russia are far more alike than either wants to admit, and our cultures are far more comparable than the Russia/China mix.
 

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