V/STOL and STOVL Fighter Design,

If an air-force has all its bases denied, its usefulness and value are zero no bases means no use This is where vertical landing fighters find their first essential advantage over all others, for they alone can choose where to land from an enormous range of sites. They would be the only aircraft operating. So in the first part of this lecture, we review a wide range of basing concepts, including dispersed land bases, small and very small ships, ski-jump and Skyhook . Next we turn to the design of STOVL fighter aircraft, starting from consideration of the engine and nozzles system, which is, of course, the heart of jet-powered STOVL fighters. This leads on to consideration of the nature of the aerodynamics of vertical landing, such as hot-gas ingestion, jet-induced suck-down and the groundjets fountain . Then the special features of air-intake design are considered, followed by the special considerations of lifting-surface design. Finally we consider the special features of thrust vectoring in forward flight VIFF.