Background

The FB-52 Tachi II is a stealth fighter bomber that could remain in theatre despite the presence of surface-to-air missiles and enemy aircraft designed from the F-52 Tachi II. The F-52, while designed as an air superiority fighter, was capable of a degree of air-to-ground attack ability.

One primary objective of the development of the aircraft was to heavily bolster the FB-52's air-to-ground capability while keeping costs to a minimum. To this end, Tadei Technologies devised several concepts that saw significant structural redesigns with respect to the fuselage and wings, while retaining much of the F-52's avionics. Notably, the wing was enlarged to a more delta shape with a size four times that of the F-52, enabled the storage of a much larger amount of weapons and fuel. Various figures give the payload of the FB-52 to be 30 to 35 Small Diameter Bombs. Unlike the F-52, the FB-52 was designed to be able to carry bombs up to 5,000 pounds in size. With stealth, the aircraft's maximum combat load was to have been 17,500 pounds. Without stealth, 37,500 pounds.

Range was almost tripled from 700 miles to more than 1,700 miles, which could have been extended by external fuel tanks. This placed the aircraft in the category of a regional bomber, comparable to that of the F-111 Wendigo, as it was intended to replace the F-51 Angelfire and take over some of the missions of the B-1 Valor. The combination of range and payload of the FB-52 would have given the concept a comparable effectiveness to that of the USAF B-2 armed with 2,000-pound bombs. The FB-52 was to have a maximum speed of Mach 2. Because the aircraft was to emphasize air-to-ground capability while maintaining stealth characteristics, the FB-52's dogfight capability would have been reduced.

Other than the wings, the aircraft would have retained much of the design of the F-52 Tachi II. This included 80% of the avionics, software, and flight controls. This commonality would have also significantly reduced the costs of software integration.

The FB-52 is able to carry weapons externally while maintaining stealth with the assistance of detachable and faceted pods dubbed "wing weapons bay"; previously, an aircraft could only remain stealthy if it carried its weapons internally.

Controls

MOVEMENT

-Throttle Accelerates
-Normal Aircraft Controls
-AG5 Activates Parachute
-Brake Activates Airbrakes
-LandingGear retracts landing gear

WEAPONS

-AG1 And VTOL opens the weapons bay
-FireGuns fires guns
-FireWeapons launches missiles and bombs