Why are swing-wing fighter jets obsolete?
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There’s one basic problem that swing wings were intended to solve.
First is the ability to generate lift while moving relatively slowly. For example, when taking off from an aircraft carrier.
Second is the ability to minimize drag when flying supersonic. For fuel efficiency but also to enable them to go really, really fast.
The problem is that you want an aircraft that is able to take off from an aircraft carrier, but also travel really fast. It was a kind of “you can do A or B but not both” kind of problem.
So they invented a wing that could move. That solved the “you can’t do both” part of the problem because now you can move the wing so that it CAN do both.
And then computers got much more powerful and we were better able to model the forces involved in both slow speed and high speeds and we were able to figure out a single wing that is able to handle both kinds of flying.
So once we figured that out, having a moveable wing is just extra parts that can break. So there’s no point in doing it that way anymore.
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