Dusty79 wrote:
I think forward swept wings are about maneuverability, but I'm no aerospace engineer so I may be wrong
One of the many hats I have worn is that of Aerospace Engineer, and I have a bit of experience in Flight Controls with the topic of forward swept wings having come up in some of the seminars I've sat in on.
I won't bore you with the math, but basically forward swept wings provide exponentially more lift than their rear swept traditional counterparts. This provides a significantly steeper angle of attack for a fighter, providing the forward-swept wing style a significant advantage over a traditional fighter. The downside is that there is a significant amount of increased stress placed on the structural integrity of the wings, requiring a thicker wing, which in turn reduces the aircraft's critical mach number. To put it more simply, a forward swept fighter can get a tactical advantage by getting higher, but the traditional craft can fly so much faster that the advantage is not worth it.
However, this all changed when the X-29 was outfitted with wings made of space age composites. This provided a bit of "give" to the wings so they could be thinner and still stand up to the increased stress of the greater lift provided by the forward swept design. It was so successful that I once heard Dr. Jan Roskam (Flight Controls Guru) state that the forward-swept wing design was magic.
However, none of this data was compiled in time to significantly influence the fifth generation fighters' design.
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