KSP Original Design Competition

[Cyrus Playz]

Gen 2

Contract 10

Cyrus Playz

DF-20 Valkire

This aircraft could easily reach mach 3.Has an ore tank for bombs

https://www.mediafire.com/file/d6ta8i53dj5qvg5/DF-20_Valkire.craft/file

Edited February 25, 2019 by Cyrus Playz

[Xen0m3]

Gen 4.5

Contract 12

By (ya boi) Xenome

Yerckovik Kilmkov K-3XF

Experimental version of the mass produced Ykil 3, the Ykil 3XF featured a one-off attempt at a railgun slung under the rear fuselage at the cost of the center pylon. 
The standard Ykil 3 has 5 pylons, but the XF had only two, one for a targeting pod and one for an Active Experiment Pod (AEP) for gathering data. 

The Ykil 3 was developed as a response to North American fighters such as the F-15, F-16 and Au 30/61. With a top speed of over 800m/s at 4500m and over 1200m/s at high altitude, it was one of the fastest aircraft of its time, although it was unable to maintain speeds of over 1000m/s for longer than 5 minutes. The Ykil 3 cannot perform post stall maneuvers due to the lack of thrust vectoring ( i mean so do most generation 4.5 aircarft irl :shrug:), and has 280 parts with nothing on the pylons.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Xen0m3

[Cyrus Playz]

Gen 3

Contract 3

By CyrusPlayz

FX-10B Hawk

A carrier capable fighter,it could take off at the speed of 50m/s .

https://www.mediafire.com/file/bbg8j66iqrt0y0v/FX-10B_Hawk.craft/file

[HB Stratos]

Was away over the weekend end I come back to see lots of new submissions.
Keep it up! They are awesome!
And feel free to share the competition whereever you like so more people get a chance to participate. (rating the thread here also helps)

HB Stratos over and out

[Night_Ranger428]

Contract No. 010
Generation 2
Night_Ranger428
YB-56 Grey Raven

A high speed tactical bomber with canards and tailplanes designed for in and out strikes against targets. Performance is Mach 2.5+ with the ‘burners lit, and on dry it will just about hit the sound barrier. Maneuverability is pretty good for a bomber. The bomb bay arrangement is side by side, but capacity is good, it can take over 8 tonnes in the bomb bays, and you can put hard-points under the wings if you wish.

Action Groups:
AG1: Toggle Engine Mode
AG2: Toggle Flaps (check the deploy direction before you fly it, as they tend to switch from time to time which way they deploy).
AG3: Toggle Bomb Bay Doors.

KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/Night_Ranger428/YB-56-Grey-Raven

Edited March 3, 2019 by Night_Ranger428

[Cyrus Playz]

Gen 4

Contract 9

By Cyrus Playz

AR-50 Pulsar

A  maneuverable two seater fighter.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/6n1galpo14wvkkw/AR-50_Pulsar.craft/file

[panzerknoef]

Contract #007

Generation 5 

Panzerknoef/Zircon Aerospace

Zircon DEF-20 "Toba"

The DEF-20 "Toba" is a prime generation 5 fighter, offering everything required at the lowest possible price. For this trade-off we have decided to let the Toba be a subsonic aircraft, but in return you get a whole range of nifty features! First and foremost there's the stealth capabilities, we've put a lot of effort into creating a solid and stable design with as many differently angled parts as possible, effect of this is dispersing radar beams so you can go undetected for a long amount of time. We've also chosen to go with an internal weapons bay. This choice allows us to create perfect radar shielding for all carried weaponry, once again adding to the stealth factor. The aircraft is also highly agile and quick to respond to input, making it a perfect platform to fly low over the surface, further avoiding radar detection. By default the weapons bay has been left empty (because stock weaponry is huge and doesn't easily fit inside, screenshots with bda weaponry though, which isn't included). It does also come with 2 cannons just in case.

Spoiler

Download link: https://kerbalx.com/Panzerknoef/Zircon-DEF-20-Toba

[Cyrus Playz]

Gen 5

contract 007

By CyursPlayz

X-25 Pather

A smaller,much more maneuverable version of the X-21 Cougur(made by me)and it is hard to detect.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/y9c5wqmmuq9c6le/X-25_Panther.craft/file

[HB Stratos]

A question to you all that have participated:

Would you me to announce a winner for each generation.
In that case I could also send the winning plane "back for further developement to a production model" aka to collaborate with me and maybe @Servo to make the winning designe even more awesome if the designer chooses to do so.

For every other design you can always pm me on Discord (HB Stratos#0800) if you want to do what was mentioned above. This offer is open as off now, not when the competition ends.

[Servo]

3 hours ago, HB Stratos said:

Would you me to announce a winner for each generation.
In that case I could also send the winning plane "back for further developement to a production model" aka to collaborate with me and maybe @Servo to make the winning designe even more awesome if the designer chooses to do so.

As the co-conspirator for this whole thing, I'd like to suggest an few alternative formats centered on the idea of Design Cycles.

Basically, we'll take all of the planes which have been submitted already in each of the categories and have a fly-off, rating them on looks, speed, maneuverability, and weight (cost of real-world fighters is pretty closely related to weight, and works better than KSP's cost measurements). The winners in each category will be announced, and a production model "ordered". All of this may or may not include a video.

Then the process starts all over again, with any planes submitted after the first competition (optionally including the planes which didn't win the first round), potentially with new competitions.

 

Alternatively: Escalation challenge.

We begin in the year 1944, with the first contracts (Gen 1) for jet fighters being solicited. At the end of a set time period, we collect all the planes submitted to Gen 1 contracts and do the fly off. Winners are announced (again, potentially involving a video). Then, the round begins again in Gen 2. If these rounds happen once every few weeks, it would last for a couple months before we'd run out of generations.

This seems like it'd be better at both including planes already submitted, at encouraging future growth, and at encouraging people to submit to multiple competitions (since they're not all happening at the same time).

 

I'll leave these out to the rest of you guys for discussion.

[Mr. Peabody]

Has this contest ended? If so I hope there will be another. I'm almost finished developing my newest jet.

[Servo]

1 hour ago, The Dunatian said:

Has this contest ended? If so I hope there will be another. I'm almost finished developing my newest jet.

Definitely not - so please continue! We're just discussing if/how we want to have this be a proper competition rather than just a bunch of challenges.

[prgmTrouble]

10 hours ago, HB Stratos said:

A question to you all that have participated:

Would you me to announce a winner for each generation.
In that case I could also send the winning plane "back for further developement to a production model" aka to collaborate with me and maybe @Servo to make the winning designe even more awesome if the designer chooses to do so.

For every other design you can always pm me on Discord (HB Stratos#0800) if you want to do what was mentioned above. This offer is open as off now, not when the competition ends.

I would love to see how much grant money the government is paying out. Perhaps that could be some form of system to evaluate how well each plane met contract criteria...

EDIT: I just had an idea: maybe a futuristic contract involving sub-orbital hops? I think some super spicy space stuff would be fun!

Edited February 28, 2019 by prgmTrouble

[Cyrus Playz]

Gen 1

contract 001

By CyursPlayz

FR-12

A quad engined WWII aircraft

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ofr9csh26w08i0a/FR-12.craft/file

[HB Stratos]

@Cyrus Playz Please upload you planes to kerbalX and post all the links here, would help me out a lot.

[Servo]

I suppose that it's a little unfair to submit a craft that I literally wrote the proposal for, but at least this way you guys get a chance to fly it around.

Contract No. 005
4th Generation fighter (more of a Gen 4.5, but whatever)
Servo
YF-28 Alleycat
 

There's a good bit written about this one...

Spoiler

In May of 1986, in a series of conflicts over undisclosed waters revealed a severe tactical flaw in the U.S. naval fighter forces. In a series of aerial engagements, the MiG-28 Fogbank was shown to be tactically superior to the existing F-14 Tomcats, except in the hands of the Navy’s most elite pilots.
An emergency fighter contract was released to Grumman for an updated Tomcat which retains the flight envelope of the F-14, but with increased low-speed and pre-stall characteristics. The contract proposal was to be due by December 31, 1986, with a prototype completed by April of 1987 upon acceptance of the proposal.

To save time for the proposal, the YF-28 was developed off of a modified Tomcat airframe, saving the entire forward fuselage, engine nacelles, and central fuselage. To save weight, the variable-incidence wings were removed and replaced with a delta wing, with a pair of large canards incorporated into the leading edge to increase high-alpha maneuverability by increasing airflow over the wing.

Other modifications included the one-dimensional thrust vectoring engines and actuating intakes originally destined for the F-15 HARV. The twin tail fins were swapped for a single stabilizer to combat the buffering effects from the canards.

The YF-28 was delivered to the U.S. Navy two weeks ahead of schedule, after making its first flight on March 12, 1987. It was rushed to deployment, first reaching combat squadrons in late August of 1987, just over 15 months after the first request for proposals.

Very quickly, the YF-28 was nicknamed the Alleycat for the screeching noise that the air made flowing through the canards during the wild maneuvers the -28 could pull.

In a series of encounters through the fall of 1987, the Alleycat proved itself highly capable, stunning the Soviet crews with the first combat displays of post-stall maneuverability as a method to turn dogfights on their tail.

The maneuverability of the YF-28, as well as its low-speed handling characteristics impressed the USMC, as they underwent a procedural procedure exploring the possibility of basing a small subsquadron of YF-28s equipped as quick strike or fast-launch fleet defense fighters from the smaller, non-catapult equipped USMC Carriers .

Download link: https://kerbalx.com/servo/Grumman-YF-28-Alleycat

And because I wasn't quite happy with the maneuverability and top speed of the 1:1 version, I give you the Kerbal Scale version!

Download link: https://kerbalx.com/servo/YF-28

[panzerknoef]

On 2/27/2019 at 7:57 PM, Servo said:

As the co-conspirator for this whole thing, I'd like to suggest an few alternative formats centered on the idea of Design Cycles.

Basically, we'll take all of the planes which have been submitted already in each of the categories and have a fly-off, rating them on looks, speed, maneuverability, and weight (cost of real-world fighters is pretty closely related to weight, and works better than KSP's cost measurements). The winners in each category will be announced, and a production model "ordered". All of this may or may not include a video.

Then the process starts all over again, with any planes submitted after the first competition (optionally including the planes which didn't win the first round), potentially with new competitions.

 

Alternatively: Escalation challenge.

We begin in the year 1944, with the first contracts (Gen 1) for jet fighters being solicited. At the end of a set time period, we collect all the planes submitted to Gen 1 contracts and do the fly off. Winners are announced (again, potentially involving a video). Then, the round begins again in Gen 2. If these rounds happen once every few weeks, it would last for a couple months before we'd run out of generations.

This seems like it'd be better at both including planes already submitted, at encouraging future growth, and at encouraging people to submit to multiple competitions (since they're not all happening at the same time).

 

I'll leave these out to the rest of you guys for discussion.

I'd actually prefer the second option. Not only would we have more time to submit and stuff, it would also put a whole lot less strain on you and Stratos. Judging other people's planes is something you definitely will get bored of after a while, so it's best to go with a way that spreads it out more evenly imo. Whatever does end up being chosen, I'm looking forward to it!

[Thor Wotansen]

I guess this is a Gen 4, although it is certainly not a Navy plane, more of an F-15 competitor.

Presenting the F-49 Wolverine

Spoiler

It has a low takeoff speed and is quite responsive in flight above around 80m/s.  it is a tad slow at low altitudes, but that goes away higher up.  It is remarkably stable in flight, to the point where it should b flyable without SAS.  The engines are not gimballed, but maneuverability would be greatly improved if they were.

[prgmTrouble]

Contract 8
Generation 6
C7R - prgmTrouble
X-26 Volantis Ala

The lead engineer was eating tortilla chips while derping around in the wind tunnel. Spotting the chief of management out the corner of his eye, he quickly placed a chip on the test stand. The management chief did a double-take, then asked "what the actual ████ is a half-eaten tortilla chip doing in the wind tunnel?" Thinking quickly, the engineer explained that he was "testing a revolutionary new stealth triangular aero-manifold whatever-o-tron thingy." Apparently, the chief was so impressed that the project was entered into full-scale development the following week.

Spoiler

Download on KerbalX

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Contract No. 04
Generation 3
Kronus_Aerospace
TS-1C Aisling
This lighter fighter craft was designed to maximize maneuverability and responsiveness. practically invulnerable to stalling and able to liquefy Kerbal intestines with 30+g maneuvers, this fighter craft is unbeatable in low speed dogfights. Any fighter larger than itself stands little chance up against this plucky aircraft.



https://kerbalx.com/Kronus_Aerospace/Kronus-TS-1C-Aisling

Edited March 9, 2019 by Kronus_Aerospace

[Night_Ranger428]

Contract No.009
Gen 4
Night_Ranger428
YFB-42 Fury
KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/Night_Ranger428/YFB-42-Fury
Description: 

A tactical fighter-bomber designed for light strikes, and can dogfight in extreme situations, but it is not advisable. Maximum speed, depending on load, can exceed Mach 2. Weapons capacity is very good as weapons can be mounted in the bomb bay and under the wings. Fuel load is 820 units, which gives good base range, and drop tanks can further that, mounted internally or externally.

Action Groups:
AG1: Switch Engine Mode.
AG2: Toggle Flaps.
AG3: Toggle Weapons Bay Doors.

Spoiler

Contract No.009
Gen 4
Night_Ranger428
YF/A-52 Kangaroo
KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/Night_Ranger428/YFA-52-Kangaroo
Description:

A high performance fighter/strike aircraft, capable of speeds above Mach 3. The maneuverability is pretty good, giving it good capabilities as a dogfighter if necessary. The weapons capacity is good, mostly under the wings but there is space under the fuselage for loads as well. The fuel capacity is pretty good, and adding drop tanks help with that. Mounting a centreline fuel tank with a large pylon between the fuselage sections is a feasible way to minimally impede the weapons capacity. Overall it is a very capable ground attack and fighter aircraft.

Action Groups:
AG1: Switch Engine Mode.

Spoiler

Also some additional suggestions, create a contract for a twin engined normal fighter aircraft in the Gen 4 or 4.5, and add an attack aircraft contract in maybe Gen 3 on the kind of design and capability basis of aircraft such as the A-10 and the Su-25. Maybe also depending on where you want this competition to go also add a couple of cargo aircraft contract for a light and heavy transport.

Edited March 12, 2019 by Night_Ranger428

[HB Stratos]

@Night_Ranger428 feel free to pm me a contract if you want to write one, I´ll incude it in the original post.

[JollyGreenGI]

Contract No.006
Generation 4.5 (projected to remain relevant with Gen 5 concepts)
Auth: JollyGreenGI

F-40 Warhawk II
An Air Superiority Fighter turned Multirole. Essentially if the F-22 had been introduced a decade earlier, and was a Fighting Falcon with a face lift.

Strip away the stealth paint and digital cockpit, the Raptor would still be a very formidable fighter. However, in 1986, it was apparent that F-22 would not be ready for service for another 2 decades. An interim was needed, no waiting for technology to catch up. Intended to be a more conventional stealth fighter, the ‘Warhawk’ has proven itself not only to dominate the skies, but as a force multiplier popular with ground forces. With a large payload and respectable loitering ability, she is truly a force to be reckoned with.

Aside from the shiny gold cockpit reducing radar returns from inside, Warhawk's stealth comes solely from its geometry. Because of this, design had to focus on maximizing stealth from certain angles rather than all around. From above and below, radar reduction is minimal, but from the front and back, the Warhawk II nearly vanishes from radar screens. 

Noticeably heavier than the equally small F-16, Warhawk II's powerplant had to produce twice as much thrust compared to the Viper's. So it does. And then some more. Thrust to weight reaches 1.1 on dry thrust, and exceeds 1.6 on afterburners. All this while having 2D thrust vectoring, a beastly engine needs to chug jet fuel like no tomorrow. Luckily F-40 has the fuel reserves and efficiency to perform intercontinental trips at transonic speeds without refueling, and can run its engine on high bypass to increase efficiency further and reduce exhaust temperature, and IR signature.

Download: https://kerbalx.com/JollyGreenGI/F-40-Warhawk-II

 

Notes: I just got back into KSP after nearly a year hiatus, so if you notice anything hilariously stupid please let me know. Something like this should have internal bays, but such a design produces too much drag in Kerbin's air.

[valens]

Contract n° 3 (and also a bit of 4)

Third generation jet fighter

Valens/Kyasish'ev Model 3c and 4c "Buzzard"

When the government opened contract bids for the development and production of a new fighter strike aircraft, Kyasish'ev's engineers came up with the Model 3c "Buzzard", an all-weather fighter-bomber that features an innovative slatted wing, extensive range and a two-kerbal team of pilot/interception officer allowing greater flexibility over a large range of tasks. The "Buzzard" is a large plane though (over 20 tons with missiles), and, although it can take off and land on relatively short terrain, a navalized derivative was thus created with the Model 4c. The 4c retains most of the layout, especially the wing design, but is ca 5 tons lighter than its big brother. It does not, however, seats an interception officer, and, with its single engine and reduced fuel reserve, does not retain the higher speeds and large range of the 3c.

NB: The production models come with a twin gun. However, as these aircraft were first envisioned as missile platforms, these were added late in the design process.

Spoiler

 

[Production notes: How to design a third generation jet fighter without having the F-4 "Phantom" in mind ? The first iteration (nicknamed "Opera") resembled so much the F-4 that I had to scrap it (of course, I still have it and might publish it someday...). A second iteration wound up closer to a beefed-up hybrid of F-86 "Sabre",  F-9 "Crusader" and Fiat G91, had only mediocre TWR due to its single engine... I took a step back and looked at other airplanes from that era. So both iterations of the "Buzzard" have DNA from the MiG-23 "Flogger", the Mirage F1/F2, the F-111 "Aardvark" and the F-4. Looking at all these aircraft, one third generation innovation that was implemented and stayed with all these planes was the use of leading edge slats, which help on short take-offs and add pitch authority. Also, the "Buzzard" sees the introduction of a new type of landing gear-based rockets which is slightly lighter than the previous one.]

Edited March 19, 2019 by valens
Typo correction

[HB Stratos]

We got five new contracts and even a new contracts section thanks to @Night_Ranger428! Go check them out in the first post on the thread!