CrisK

Based on this discussion, here's my take on an interceptor-style 5th gen fighter. (Mods: Adjustable landing gear, b9 wings, FAR, BDArmory, MK2 Cockpits) Supercruises at Mach 3.4. Highly maneuverable. Able to perform a vertical climb. Stable at all altitudes up to 24km. It carries a relatively small armament of 4 AMRAAM missiles and 2 sidewinders. I also updated my Boeing X-32 design. It's now 3,000kg lighter with 1.9m/s more DeltaV. (Mods: Adjustable landing gear, b9 wings, FAR, BD Armory.)

You're arguing for an interceptor or a reconnaissance aircraft. Again, that may be the way of the future - there's merit to that argument. However, any of the fighters in this thread can outmaneuver your designs by a wide margin. Your design can already reach Mach IV with ease, at which point it explodes. Modern fighters operate between mach 1 and mach 2. There's no practical reason to go faster than that. The Eurofighter and Raffale supercruise at around 1.4-1.5, and the F22 supercruises at 1.8. Designing your fighter to be better in the transonic to supersonic ranges will lower its maneuverability. It comes down to what you value more - the ability to go really fast in one direction, or the ability to maintain Mach 0.8-1.2 and be highly maneuverable.

No, even before I modified the design the balance was poor. FourGreenFields, this conversation reflects a difference in opinion on what a fighter should be. None of your designs could really be considered fighters because they're not maneuverable. They can move quickly in a straight line, but they'd be easily outmaneuvered by the other designs in this thread. Now, you could make the argument that interceptors like the YF-12 are the way of the future. Why are you so concerned with the wave drag? If you really want to minimize it: 1. Use the offset tool to push the external tanks closer in. 2. Use the offset tool to push the wings further into the body. 3. Move the wings forward. 4. Rotate the RAM intakes. 5. Remove the intakes on the wings. You're not bad at this. It really just is the crappy stock wings that are holding you back. Here's a version of your plane with a simple delta wing using B9 procedural wings and adjustable landing gear. Your design looks darned good with B9 wings, and it flies very well. It's also stable up to Mach 4 at any altitude under around 20km.

Here's my take on your craft. Here's what I changed: There was far too much fuel. The mass of the aircraft was roughly twice what it needed to be, and the mass was shifted towards the rear of the aircraft. The clipped wings added weight and drag, and did not provide any additional lift. I removed the extra pair of wings and replaced them with control surfaces. I added a communotron to extend the front hub. I think that's the look that you were going for. The FAR settings for the control surfaces were causing your craft to stall constantly. I optimised them. I set up some spoilers so that it can land safely. The rear canard shifted the center of lift too far behind the center of mass. They were really hurting your design. The structural intakes cause drag and serve no function. But they look cool, so I kept them. I added struts to reinforce the structurally risky areas. The craft no longer flexes. I added drogue chutes so that you perform short landings. For example, on the island or KerbinSide's aircraft carrier. I added basic action groups. Press 1 when you want to use the drogue chutes. Press 5 when you go transonic and press 4 when you're below mach 0.8 again. With these very minor changes I think that you have one of the nicest light fighters in this competition. It's a good design! It's stable up to Mach 4. The main limiting factor in your design is the stock wings and control surfaces. They suck. The stock swept wings especially suck. If you replace the wings with B9 procedural wings then it performs amazingly well.

This is not a bad design. If you post the craft file I'll take a look and give you specific advice. I'm sure others will as well!

I'll set aside some time this weekend to fix the aero parts in SXT.

I really like this little guy. It makes me want to install the KerbinSide aircraft carrier so that I can launch F-18s off of it. In other news, BahamutoD is back and he's updating BDArmory. His new laser targeting feature looks amazing.

Thanks guys! I added the craft file to the post.

New body for the Boeing X-32 for the new version of FAR:

I rebuilt the body of my Boeing X-32 to optimize the shape for the new version of FAR. I also took the opportunity to make the body better resemble a flying bathtub, just like the original. I'm not sure how the scoring works, so some help there would be appreciated. The armament is 4 AMRAAMs, 2 sidewinders, 2 hellfires. The radial tanks are currently empty; they can hold an additional 800 fuel. Super maneuverable. Top safe speed of Mach 3.5. Explodes instantly upon reaching mach 4 due to the exposed BDArmory missiles. It easily pulls 13G. Supercruise range is not great since it's a compact fighter - 10,000m/s of DeltaV flying normally, 21,000 with the radial tanks full (2 hours 2 minutes). The radial tanks carry 1120 liquid fuel. It cannot sustain a straight upwards climb. Here's the craft file. Mods: BDArmory, B9 Wings, FAR, Kerbal Engineer for the readouts. Bonus screenshot: all of the BDArmory missiles explode the instant it reaches Mach 4. R.I.P. Magmy.

1.25 is incredibly high for a fighter jet. They normally sit at around 1.0. I like your second and fifth suggestions. BDArmory is neat, but the weapons are not properly scaled to Kerbal parts. Edit: I suggest dropping the limitations on turbojets so that we can make some fun (goofy) single engine designs. Does anyone know of any good Mac-friendly screen capturing software? I'd like to record myself flying everyone's creations around. There's an intrinsic problem to this challenge: what constitutes a 5th gen fighter? A larger multirole fighter like the Eurofighter or Rafale, or a something a bit smaller like the F-35 or Saab Gripen? The Rafale replica that I built is arguably a much better multirole fighter than the flying bathtub/Boeing X-32 replica that I built, but I entered the X-32 into the challenge because it's a fun little... I run KSP at half quality, windowed, and with minimal mods. Hodo, I found out that FAR's Flight Assistance toggles were causing your plane to go wild. When I turn the flight assistance toggles off, the 150 flies perfectly.

The B9 wings require a lot of configuration, but on the plus side they require very little memory. You can replace all of the Squad stock wing parts with the 4 B9 procedural wings. This is great for people like me who run KSP on an inexpensive Macbook Air. PS: I don't know if I've written this yet, but thanks for coming up with this challenge.

Will do!

Thanks! I think that it might be due to your use of the CH-J3 avionics nosecone. For some reason it seems to be far more sensitive than the regular nosecone. I stopped using it on my own planes because it snaps off easily. Darren, that looks great!

You're right about the tail - this was actually a flaw in the original X-32. Engineers wanted smaller, canted twin tails, but Boeing wanted to get the prototypes ready before a set deadline. Some day I'll create a nicer version of the YF-23.

The Boeing X-32: Moved to the OP. I created this craft for Halsfury's 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR].

I was able to fly Hodo's X-150A craft around. It reached supercruise at no problem, and was able to sustain a healthy Mach 3.2. It was reasonably maneuverable, but turns caused the nosecone to snap off at mach 1. FourGreenFields, I'll test out your P 14! Thank you for sharing the craft file. Here's my official entry: The Boeing CrisK X-32. The design is absolutely original and not copied from a certain American company that starts with B. Single engine, lightweight, trapezoidal delta wing at a high angle sweep, and conventional tails. It's inexpensive at 25,747* Kerbal funds. TWR of 2.07 with the thrust limited to 50%. Craft file for verification. *747 reference unintentional.

Thanks buddy! The Rafale uses the following mods: B9 Procedural Wings Adjustable Landing gear FAR

Thank you for sharing these. I'll have fun flying the 150A in the morning. The XF-149B has too many mod dependencies for me - but it looks great. Did you make any changes to the craft?

Dassault Rafale:

Tetryds's advice is worth following. To give a visual illustration, this is my plane before and after I adjusted it to consider area ruling. The parts are the same, but I shifted the wings, adjusted thicknesses, etc. The strength of the wings is set to 1. Before: After:

Here's a Dropbox folder with the craft file(s) for my plane. There's a sub-folder that contains parts for a stockalike drop tank and an ICBM body. These will let anyone add stockalike (RAM-free) ICBMs and drop tanks to their planes. That should help everyone with this challenge. (These are just modifications of Squad's models with slight alterations to make them perform better at high speeds and altitudes. I offer them under the CC BY license.)

Your plane(s) may be based on historical designs, but they are different enough that I would still consider them to be original (unlike my plane). If you post the craft file then I can help you adjust it to make it FAR friendly. I can also explain how/why I adjusted things to make the plane perform better in FAR. I like your design! Edit: Even easier, I'll post the craft file so that others can play around with it and verify what I've posted. A second option: use action groups to control the deflection of control surfaces. I have key 5 set to decrease deflection (for high speeds: over mach 1) and 4 set to increase deflection (low speeds, below mach 1).

I created a plane that fits the design requirements, but I'll excuse myself from competing because my plane is a direct copy of the Dassault Rafale's design. Still, it was a fun challenge! It has 5 drop tanks in the same design and position as the Rafale. It easily maintains Mach 3.2 at 10,000km with all 5 drop tanks. It can go faster without them, but I did not attempt this because I worried that the exposed tanks would explode if I dropped them at such a high speed. Two-seater, like the original. It supercruises at Mach 1 for 17hrs + at 10,000km, or 1hr and 45 minutes at Mach 3. It needs all 5 tanks for this. Mods used: B9 procedural wings (no fuel added, durability set to default settings of 1), adjustable landing gear, Kerbal Engineer (for the readouts). The drop tanks are a little part that I made by rescaling the stock liquid fuel tanks to 0.5 and setting the fuel appropriately. I'd be happy to share this part with everyone - it makes for some really nice stockalike drop tanks! Dassault Rafale:

Wanderfound, I like the downward facing jets. How does this thing fly? You could use Infernal Robotics to make the vertical shaft rotate (no immature jokes please ).