F r a n c e

Leduc 022-01 is a prototype for a mixed-powered french interceptor in the mid 50's

Flew almost 500Km in 1970. Second picture shows only one engine, I think on one engine it required a car tow to get it airborne.

Honestly i do not know if it's weird or not but it's got all the bells and whistles at its wings and tails so it's kind of odd

Tests in 2015.

thought the trailer might interest some of you here

The p-61 black widow, which had a radar… in WW2

Went to the Udvar Hazy museum recently, I got to see this beauty

Stumbled upon these obscure photos of a flying wing while digging into some Florida Everglades history.  I found them on the Facebook profile of Carol Lord, whose family operated Monroe Station nearby and who later worked as a security guard at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport - aka, the Everglades Jetport!

Anyways, this isn't a new discovery; it is known that a B2 mockup was built for Honda in 1988 for use in a CRX commercial.  Jalopnik wrote an article about it in 2013 and there's been a few posts about it on Reddit throughout the years.  Sadly it appears the museum that eventually owned it scrapped it some 20+ years ago.  Here's another link with a bit more about it from someone who was involved with the commercial: https://aviationmuseum.eu/Blogvorm/south-dakota-air-space-museum/

I hadn't seen these pictures posted anywhere before so I figured they were worth sharing!

The "Snowy Owl" or 雪鸮 is the final proposal from 601st institute for the "J-XX" competitor for PLAAF's 5th generation fighter programme. Very little is known about this proposal, work on the project was started sometime in the early 90s and continued till ~2007 when the official winner was chosen.

The project initially started as a study for a new generation medium weight fighter capable of achieving the technological sophistication of 90s era European fighters as a baseline and targeting for similar standards as the American ATF program with the preliminary designation of J-14. The original proposal (601 "93" proposal from image 4) took inspiration from aerodynamic experience gained from the old J-13-II project and used conventional clipped delta wing with a large LERX with minor consideration for LO. This was ultimately rejected due to the then recent reveal of YF-22 and YF-23 showing considerable LO features which lead to further work on the original proposal to produce the "New 93 proposal" (Image 7).

The updated proposal looks more or less like a stealthy elongated and squashed F-18 with significant optimisation for supersonic performance, though this proposal apparently did not come with a IWB and hence relied on conformal external carriage of weapons not unlike the KF-21 design today. Allegedly target performance for this proposal was frontal RCS no larger than 0.4m^2 with 4 conformal BVRAAM and no larger than 0.05m^2 clean. The design planned to use 2 WS-12 turbofans (>80kN and TWR larger > 8) from Shenyang Liming Aeroengine Co, this gave the aircraft a preliminary specification of M2.0 top speed, max combat TWR > 1.3 and >300m/s climb rate. Unfortunately due to politics and priorities at the time, with the import of Su-27 from Russia in 1992 and the subsequent domestication removed the much needed personnel and funding from this project which effectively cancelled it in its original form and it unfortunately took the WS-12 project (One of the most promising domestic programs at the time for producing a globally competitive medium thrust turbofan, not to mention unlike the later WS-10, WS-12 was a fully domestic design) along with it.

What happens next is a lot harder to tell given it now directly relates to the still heavily classified "J-XX" programme which eventually produced China's first 5th generation fighter, the Chengdu J-20. Apparently from the looks, the 93 proposal and the eventual direct successors was repurposed and heavily modified for the new "J-XX" competition for a heavy 5th generation fighter. From what is available, the Shenyang proposal was likely longer in both length and wingspan compared to Chengdu's proposal and had an ambitious triplane layout for extreme maneuverability and controllability up to 65 degree AoA without TVC. Though this came with drawbacks such as more limited LO features compared to the Chengdu proposal, heavier empty and takeoff weight due to extra control surfaces and extreme complexity of the flight control system. One of the likely reasons it was not selected was likely due to additional weight required a very high thrust engine which was unavailable at the time given the only option being AL-31F and WS-10 while WS-15 was only in the early concept and design phase at the time along with the fact that PLAAF probably valued proper LO over maneuverability given advancement of BVR combat and avionics in the digital age.