F/A 37 Talon: Real OR Fake?

Below are photographs of a prototype aircraft known as the Talon. Reportedly it was taken onboard the USS George Washington CVN-73 for catapult fit checks. It noted that it was not exactly still Top Secret but certainly not yet made public.  

The type design is an interesting concept shown in 'Stealth' movie, yet I don't know how practical it is. 

 

F/A-37 Talon Specification:

• ·         Speed: Mach 3.5
• ·         Top Speed: Mach 4+
• ·         Classified Aircraft:  Super-Cruise Stealth Fighter / Bomber / Interceptor
• ·         Flying Range: 4,000 Nautical Miles (nm)

From some information I have, Talon has a 10,000 hour life airframe and engines that require replacement only at failure or signs of trouble.

My standpoint: It was FAKE! Why???

From wing stand-point: 

• Look at the wings while they are folded up. The control surfaces are facing forward. It would be extremely hard to control the aircraft especially since there is no way to control the yaw. I know the B-2 has no vertical stabilizers but it does have double-flapped ailerons that open and cause that half of the plane to slow, therefore turning it.
• Although the design is fantastic, the foldable wings can prove faulty.  It should be extremely difficult to control and if it does it would be to slow to even maneuver around tracers.

From an engine stand-point:

• 1.   The intakes seem smaller than that of the Vipers (Which just feeds the F100-PW-229) You wouldn't get enough airflow to any engine to make that much power with small inlets.
• 2.   Intake position is poor for high Angle of Attack, AOA flight. Ever notice fighter intakes are on the sides or bottom of most combat aircraft.
• 3.   Cannon position directly ahead of intakes. Allows gun gas ingestion problems.
• 4.   The "spare engine" shown in the movie doesn't look like it would fit in the length / height of the available fuselage. (Then again it looks as if most known engines wouldn't fit anyhow?)

Now if a "true engine" used Methane for fuel: ?

Methane has a flash point around -300*F (-187*C). For comparison the "special" fuel needed for the SR-71 Blackbird (JP7) had a flash point of 140*F (60*C) Now how do you keep methane under control in an aircraft traveling MACH 3+ when it begins to heat?

If the F/A 37 not a Fake, Nothing can I say. AWESOME!!.  Another generation of aviation engineering was born. 

The Concept Design of The Aircraft 

Odd design cuts the cost of high-speed flying. Rolling down the runway, the little twin-engine jet looked like any rich man's weekend toy, but as it picked up speed over the California airstrip and began climbing, the craft underwent a bizarre and visually unsettling transformation. Its wing began slowly to swing around—its right half angling forward in the direction of flight, the left back.

This flying pair of scissors looked like the joke of some eccentric inventor. In fact, the 38-ft.-long aircraft is a test design that comes from the same no-nonsense people who created the space shuttle. Pursuing what NASA officials refer to as the "small A" (for the less publicized, low-budget aeronautics in their agency's name), they built the single-seat model to overcome two major obstacles in supersonic flight: high fuel consumption and thundering noise.

At high speeds, an aircraft operates most efficiently if its wings intercept the air at an angle. Trouble occurs when the plane is flying at slower, subsonic speeds: swept-back wings reduce lift and increase fuel consumption. One way designers have tried to overcome this problem is by creating "variable geometry" aircraft that can swing back their wings at higher speeds and bring them forward for reduced speeds, especially during takeoffs and landings, when the plane needs maximum lift.

But swing-wing planes are difficult to build. They require greater structural strength, weigh more and burn more fuel than a comparable fixed-wing aircraft. As far back as 1945, Robert T. Jones of NASA's Ames Research Center, who proposed the first U.S. swept-wing aircraft, saw a simple solution: a single, rigid wing that would swing on a single pivot point. The oblique wing, as he called it, would vastly simplify the structural problem. The fact that one end of the wing would be pointing forward might look odd, but it was, he realized, aerodynamically unimportant. In high-speed flight, what matters is the angle at which the wing meets the onrushing air.

 

U.S. was seriously considering construction of a large SST, a commercial supersonic transport, and wind-tunnel tests confirmed that the oblique wing should do the things he claimed it could. At supersonic speeds conventional swept-back wings create noticeable pressure on each other, like two motorboats speeding side by side through the water and slamming waves into each other's hulls. But this mutual interference is reduced when one boat pulls ahead of the other. Despite raised eyebrows at the plane's odd appearance and fears that the forward wing might break off at high speed, NASA finally built a test version at a bargain basement tab of $218,000, and has found it performs up to expectations.

Oblique wing is heading into an uncertain future, nevertheless. A full-scale plane big enough to carry 150 passengers should be twice as fuel efficient as the 100-passenger Concorde. But its maximum speed of 1 ½ times the speed of sound (Mach 1.5) would be 25% less than the Anglo-French craft's Mach 2.04. A likelier role for a scissor plane might be as a military patrol craft whose pivoting wing would allow both long flights and the bursts of speed needed for hot pursuit. NASA thinks the flying scissors also has a role as a cost-cutting corporate jet.

Another top secret is "Project Aurora"

Project Aurora is about a high-speed, low altitude stealth bomber, not a single-pilot stealth fighter. I will come with the article later.