If you ever hear someone call the F-35 a waste of money, just remember that Lockheed wanted taxpayer money to build a giant nuclear powered flying wing with a wingspan greater than the height of the Empire State building.
And this thing was somehow going to have VTOL capability.
retarded OP
Utter retard, The F-35 is just a regular plane, that thing is cool as fuck and is well worth the cost
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Man, him seeing one man almost single handedly wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars of warships and killing possibly thousands of sailors and marines in a single afternoon really fucked Torres up mentally.
I love how is motivation was literally just wanting to make the worlds sickest trick shot. And I think his time stuck under the sea messed with his mind more
Did you know that the nuclear powered aircraft was one of the projects being funded by the government in the early 60's that was axed in order to provide funding for the Apollo project? It didn't get too far off the ground, lol, but they did manage to build the giant hanger for it in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Idaho, about an hour outside of Idaho Falls, home of the Idaho National Labs, the US's civilian nuclear power research laboratory. The hanger is now called test area north and is used to produce the depleted uranium armor used on M1 tanks.
Wait, really?
Who?
https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/idaho_inel-facility-tan.htm
My great uncle was involved with the project out in Idaho. He said the main issue was heat- the planned engines had exhaust hot enough to melt the wings off. Design requirements also shifted midway through from slow and high flying to mid/low fast supersonic. Eventually once ICBM’s came online they scrapped the idea.
>182 vertical lift engines for VTOL
I think you'd have better odds by pointing out that he F-35 actually is able to be mass produce and is an export success, and Russia's 5th Gen fighter hasn't even been able to make enough final production fighters to make a squadron.
Those were 1960s engineers. They could have pulled it off.
This. We'd be on our fourth reactor refit by now with two more scheduled over the next three decades, and the USAF would plan on flying them until the 2080s at least.
>And this thing was somehow going to have VTOL capability.
False. Those sets of lift engines on each side were to just to let the aircraft pitch up for takeoff before the aircraft ran out of dry lakebed, as the control surfaces alone were insufficient for such a feat.
honestly no worse than nuclear supercarriers that we already build
literally the whole thing is just a design study meaning an april-fools' joke from 1960's locksneed.
<<< I don't believe it! They're launching fighters off that huge aircraft!! >>>
ah yes, the real life arsenal bird
If I were in charge we'd have nuclear dirigibles the size of oil tankers covered in CWIS and full of glide bombs enforcing our will on the third world from the upper atmosphere.
>park nuclear dirigibles above big cities
>irradiate the population if they get shot down
based
I think they are actually going to be doing something like a carrier again, but on a much smaller scale
Howard Hughes would be proud.
With laser APS becoming a thing for carriers that plane is actually becoming plausible now
Arguably works better in the sky too since the atmosphere is thinner, so less resistance for lazors
>nuclear powered
>somehow VTOL
If it was done right it would only need to land 6 times a year