A Boeing rendering of an advanced fighter from the late 70’s/early 80’s. This design features variable sweep wings and inlets mounted over the shoulders, reminiscent of the Boeing Model 818 design proposed in the early 1960s for the TFX program (won by General Dynamics, resulting in the F-111… check out “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol 1” for more on that). There are four weapons mounted conformally to the underside. All in all it looks like an early attempt at a *somewhat* stealthy aircraft… not true stealth, but a substantial reduction in radar return, specifically from ground-based radar. This would seem to indicate that the aircraft was intended to generally fly low and to serve in a strike capacity.
The configuration is broadly conventional, apart from the inlets. The twin exhaust nozzles are 2D vectorable, reducing IR signature and increasing agility and short field takeoff performance. The twin tails are canted outboard, probably to knock out the “corner reflector” problem for radar returns. This was likely intended to be something of a replacement for the F-111 rather than the next air dominance fighter like the F-15.
The full rez scan has been uploaded into the 2022-11 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up Patrons/Subscribers.
