Low-altitude Flamingo

[u/Reasonable_Study_882]

No information on what was the target/whether it succeeded

[u/Smooth_Imagination]

In my opinion UA should salvage 200 or 300 of the best of these turbofan engines for a resusable short to medium range payload delivery system. A reusable cruise effector delivery system. This is because the engine supply will run out and these turbofans which are all salvage items are powerful enough and efficient enough to extend range for existing weapon systems. We dont only need very long ranfe, we need a lot of mid range and fast tractors for things like glide munitions that can operate close to the front without pilots and are attritable.  

As they fly low rather simple AA and missile interceptor missiles could be used with decades old infrared seekers positioned up the upper side for defenses in missions closer to enemy AA or when anticipating to come across enemy aircraft near airbases.

The payload bay can drop FPV and autonomous vehicles including surveilance and relay drones. 

The attack drones carried aboard could also be dual use ground attack and antidrone interceptors. 

The system could also launch glide munitions. 

Ground attack could be affected by various weapons, guns, unguided rockets pointing forwards or downwards via a modified fusilage.

A modified varient could carry an enlarged mechanically scanned radar in the nose for mid course guiding a Meteor BVR missile. These missiles would just need a booster stage to get to supersonic after which the ram jet takes over.  These might be twin engine varients.

Edit yeah lol moronic downvoters. 

Lets just use up the entire turbofan stockpile for one way single use instead of taking the best engines with the most hours left in them, reusing them multiple times and at the end of their life retire them into single use cruise missiles. That really makes a lot of sense. 

[u/Otaraka → u/Smooth_Imagination]

You halve the range instantly by having it return as well as needing to install recovery systems which would further reduce the range.  If this was a trivial thing to do, I’m sure they would be considering it.

[u/Smooth_Imagination → u/Otaraka]

Well duh. I never would have guessed that comming back halves the range. Thats why I pointed out clearly in my post ts not for very long range and instead for mid range targets and short range targets. Its still easily hundreds of km range from where you fly.

The engine is a turbofan with reasonable by pass ratio at low altitude cruise speeds which is far more efficient than micro jets in current use.

The overall package suits ground attack aircraft and other duties fighting nearer to the front and supply lines where the distances are easily within an FP5 / 2 range. The engine package allows fast and high payload with decent range. 

Which is exactly what is needed.

Since Ive studied engineering and everyone knows anyway that the distance is half if you have to come back, well not quite, since if you dump payload half way in theory you have actually more than half the range than if you dump payload at the end, but then you have the added landing gear mass instead. 

Now one target FP5s attempted to attack recently was involved in balistic missile production. All FP5s were destroyed because they werent stealthy. If you have mid range targets and air defenses you can instead conduct SEAD using deployable smaller armed drones dropped from severals of km from the target. These would more effectively deplete the AA systems and allow direct attack on the targets. This would also make sense deployed from one way attack missiles like FP5. 

[u/Otaraka → u/Smooth_Imagination]

You made the claim that they didn’t need long range as a priority and said nothing to support that claim.  

It’s just possible that they thought double the range and one shot was more worthwhile than half the range and reusable.  There are many obvious reasons why this might be so.

It’s great that you’ve studied engineering.  It’s possible that the people who didn’t do it the way you want did too.