X 32 Jet - The Boeing X-32 is best remembered for its sleek looks, but the first test pilot reveals why looks can be deceiving.
In 2001, two aircraft were competing for a major contract for a joint fighter jet. The winner of the competition will become the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, while the loser, the Boeing X-32, will live on as a line in its unusual form. There is more to the X-32 story than meets the eye. In a recent interview, the chief test pilot of the X-32 program tells us about the aircraft and why it lost out to the X-35.
X 32 Jet
That pilot was now-retired Commander Philip "Rowdy" Yates, a former Navy aviator who, among other things, served as an F-14 Tomcat air weapons tester for Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23). ) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. In a YouTube interview published last year, Yates sat down with Ward "Moch" Carroll, a retired Navy SEAL who served as an F-14 radar intercept officer and currently director of outreach and marketing for the US Naval Institute, as well as a published author.
Why The Boeing X 32 Lost Out To The Lockheed X 35
In the 1990s, the Department of Defense began exploring the development of a family of aircraft to replace existing fighter and strike aircraft. Several aerospace companies have proposed plans for the so-called Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program. At the request of Congress, the JAST program was merged with an existing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program to develop a short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) tactical aircraft capable of advancing. And so, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program was born.
The JSF program was based on contributions from two companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who would submit their designs to compete in the program's comment phase. From 1997 to 2001, the two companies were asked to design and test two aircraft that could demonstrate the capabilities of three different types: normal takeoff/landing, short landing/vertical landing, and takeoff/landing.
While serving with the VX-23, Yates received a call asking if he would be one of the first pilots to fly the X-32 or X-35 as part of the JSF competition. In a 2003 interview for the PBS series
, Yates said the opportunity to test the X-32 was the high point of his career as a test pilot. "The dream has come true. You can use all these banal sentences. Many of my friends and neighbors were very jealous of what I could do with the X-32. "I don't know how to describe it better than it was the highlight of my career."
United Aircraft Building Corporation (design Bureau Y…
Yates initially worked with a team of test pilots and engineers, supporting the development of two fighters. A year before the first actual flight test, Yates was assigned to the X-32 program, at which time personnel from the X-32 and X-35 teams were prohibited from communicating with each other. Yates and his Air Force counterpart who run the X-35 program, Lt. Col. Coll. Paul Smith, the first government pilot to fly the X-35, was contacted.
"When I joined the program, they were very far along in the design process," Yates said, adding that the initial X-32 design came from a stealth and stealth aircraft concept from Boeing's "black program" in its portfolio. and the company "decided to use this design for its X-32". As revealed in the interview, this decision may have cost Boeing the lucrative JSF contract.
The first request passed to the two operators was simple. Competing aircraft must be able to take off and land independently, be familiar with carrier landing procedures in carrier areas, and be able to perform short/vertical takeoffs and vertical landings. Each basic design should demonstrate these three skills with only two variations.
Testing was very limited due to the limitations of the demonstrator aircraft. There was no requirement for high G maneuverability or high speed. "The format is not designed for these types of assessments," Yates said. Instead, each contractor was given just $1 billion and told they had four to five years to build the JSF format based on simple specifications.
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"It's not an airplane," Yates insisted in an interview. "Here each team is given the requirements and go fly." Go design, build and fly your plane and then submit a proposal.” The X-32 and X-35 were not subjected to the same flight test exercise. drag-race format, but instead designed and conducted special tests for them.
Yates said part of the reason for the separate test program is that the program office doesn't want Congress to call on test pilots to report on the performance of each aircraft. "They're just opponents," Yates said. "Each operator will develop their own flight test program that they want to demonstrate beyond the requirements, and have the evaluation come back to the program office with recommendations." Flight test data can clearly be included in these recommendations, not who can fly faster, who can fly better, who can stay the longest, who can drive the most transport or anything like that.
Yates was assigned a "mini-squad" of 20 maintenance personnel and two F/A-18s sent from VX-23 to act as chase planes during the X-32's flight tests. The Lockheed Martin team, on the other hand, used F-16s stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Yates was primarily involved in testing the aircraft's behavior during carrier approaches and evaluating the handling characteristics of the X-32.
Artist's impression of the US Marine Corps version of the Boeing Joint Strike Fighter based on the X-32., Public Domain
Jsf X 32
“They used the features of the F-18 and the rules of the X-32. When the F-18 landed on the ship, this was my reaction after two FCLPs [Field Carrier Landing Practice], what we call bubble season, but I'm going to take that plane to the ship tomorrow. He operated it smoothly and precisely. I was able to make a good adjustment, I was able to make a big adjustment back to the centerline, back to the glide path. There were no problems with the handling characteristics of the X-32 I Flight."
Carroll then asked specifically about the STOVL tests conducted on both aircraft. "It's a big deal," Yates said. "That's probably the one who kicked the dirt a little bit and said 'damn.'
In these tests, the Lockheed Martin X-35 was able to demonstrate STOVL and supersonic flight in the same configuration, while the Boeing X-32 required maintenance personnel to make modifications to the aircraft before it could operate on the STOVL method.
The X-35's STOVL design is "more technologically advanced," Yates said. For vertical ventilation, the X-35 had a 48-inch open ventilating fan with an inlet behind the cockpit that moved cool air from the top of the aircraft to the bottom. The X-35 also featured a rotary exhaust system that diverted exhaust from the main engine to the vertical structure.
Aircrafts Boeing Experimental X32 B Planes Jets Wallpaper
Meanwhile, for Boeing's X-32 STOVL variant, the company went with a vector-oriented propulsion approach with the Harrier using a single engine and exhaust. This variant also had thrust struts and a roll bar on each wing for control and stability when operating in STOVL. Unfortunately, this design allowed hot air from the X-32's exhaust to flow back into its modified intake, weakening its thrust and leading to overheating problems.
This gave Boeing a huge advantage over Lockheed. "One of the problems that arose was that the Boeing design could not perform the short take-off/stand-off exercise, if you will, the test, at Edwards. It should bring the STOVL aircraft to the Pax River. those where the air is a little thicker at sea level to create more thrust and have a safe edge to make sure the plane can fly."
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin was able to demonstrate that their STOVL variant could perform a vertical takeoff, accelerate to supersonic speeds, and then perform a vertical landing. "That was one point where we said, 'hmm, Lockheed has a performance advantage,'" Yates told Carroll.
Then the X-32 test pilot began to realize that the JSF program office "was going to have trouble leaning on the Boeing design," for a number of reasons. “Number one, because what they showed was not the final design that they had planned. It's Lockheed. And the fact that the Lockheed design performed better than the Boeing design. "
Boeing X 32b Joint Strike Fighter Prototype
Yates said he had "great concern" that Boeing's initial design was different from what was ultimately submitted as their design proposal for production. In contrast, Yates said, "Lockheed's design is very close to what they proposed" for the production proposal. With Boeing protesting against its production
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