It seems to me the X wing was designed to go up against larger ships, thus the more spread out fire range. By that token though, TIE fighters should have pinpoint accuracy.

The X-Wing would be so much better if its engines and weapons swapped positions. Of course, it would then be a Starfury. Actually, the Thunderbolt Starfury looks to me to be a much better take on this aethetic style.

Convergence was actually mentioned in the first Rouge Squadron book by Michael Stackbole, Wedge Antillies had Corran Horn’s weapons zeroed for close range when he was actually running a ground attack scenario and Horn complained about it, thus getting chewed out by Wedge.

about why wings separate, i would guess its so to better handle heat and or damage. Basicly if one cannon gets overheated/damaged, it wont disrupt the other one. Maybe. But the real answer is of course it looks mad cool as hell on ice.

Well the convergence thing with the cannons isn't a new problem. WW2 fighters had this issue, some were set straight ahead, others had a specific distance they met at with odd results if fired at further or closer distances to the target. Still for some fighters, the pilots are sitting on fuel / ammo right below the seat anyway, some jet fighter models have the fuel tanks passing fairly close, and others have the cannon and ammo being really close, same with some WW2 fighters and their ammo situation.

With regards to the turbines, they may not be actual turbines at all. Some real world jet engines have similar looking devices on the front, but they actually non-rotating slats, fixed in position but able adjust their pitch, to regulate the amount of air coming in through the intake. Sort like Venetian blinds in a radial arrangement. Such a system could actually be split in half like we see in the sequels and still work just fine since the blades aren't actually spinning around the central axis (of course, the main reason to arrange them in that manner in the first place is because you want to fit it right in front of a turbine that _can't_ be divided in half, so still kind of a silly design).

if i remember my lore right one of the reason for why the wings split was to aid cooling for the weapons. the wings themselves contain cooling systems and the cannons are overpowered (mostly due to their rather long for a fighter craft effective range along side raw damage potential) and thus produce a lot of heat (depending on the firing mode as you can alter that traditional its single cannon at a time rapid cycling, in pairs (top left and bottom right then the other pair) or fire all at once). the long nose contains the sensor, ECM, and main targeting computer systems (yes the X-Wing is supposed to have some kind of electronic countermeasures) as well as the torp launchers and other systems. the rear of the fighter is mostly the main power generator and Hyperspace generator.

Playing Devil's advocate, parallax error aside, Star citizen taught me that having the weapons somewhat spaced out makes it much easier to get hits on target *if* you have a fast firing weapon that, as you said, saturates an area of space by volume of fire. It makes it very hard for an (usually unshielded, in the case of the Empire) enemy starfighter to thread the needle between what is effectively a wide continuous stream of laser cannon bolts coming straight at them. Of course, since Star Citizen made even fixed weapons gimbal slightly to compensate this effect is a little harder to observe. But taken from that perspective the spacing between x wing guns isn't so egregious.

The attack configuration makes a lot more sense if you're attacking large targets like cruisers and capital ships... So does the armament. Boom and zoom strafing runs with twice the primary firepower of your typical starfighter to whittle away at shields and then save the torpedos for exposed hard-points. That seems like a workable plan.

"The X-Wing is a horrible star fighter design" - So say we all!

You ever get the feeling that spacecraft designers in star wars have a seething hatred of rearwards visibility

Parallax and convergence is something WWII fighters dealt with. Fighters had their convergence distances set to the tastes of the pilot. By using tracers, they could adjust the position of the aircraft to walk their machine guns onto the target. The bolts of energy the X-Wing fires glow like tracers... as Star Wars combat parodies WWII purposely... the parallax thing makes sense. Oh.. and to point out, all rifles, especially those with scopes deal with parallax all day.

I think I have a relatively good theory for all of Incoms designs, if they were actual designs and not just a prop maker coming up with something that he thought looked cool. The chief engineer was originally a propulsion and maneuvering engineer. He literally gave them anything they wanted, because he understood it. Everything else tumbles along from that. You've seen this in real life designs of fighters throughout the history of fighter aircraft. I could walk through the design process that would give you a ship that would look like the X-wing given these cases, but I doubt anyone cares all that much.

The E-wing fixes basically all the problems of the X-wing whilst getting some of the benefits of the A-wing.

Built a model of this p.o.s. as a youngster. I remember thinking, "Good God! The Rebels had to be really damn desperate to use this p.o.s." As far as the "new" Xwing went, it did the same thing the new movies did. Namely, subverted our expectation that it wouldn't totally suck.

4:40 Even splitting the wings, with actuators you still only need one axis of freedom to bring the weapons onto the flight axis because the centre of the wing crosses about the centre point of the axis of the craft • It's not to hard to fix this problem with servos, the AH64 uses hydraulic azimuth and elevation servos running at around 3000PSI driven by 1960-70's computers to deliver area of effect fire 1-2km away. It's easy with real technology to resolve the convergence issue. My beef is *why* do the weapon systems have to be out there? But please, don't take this as negative against yourself; you're very entertaining 💚

I don't thing the X Wing is that bad, there is another design that makes it a TIE...

Let's be perfectly honest: ALL Star Wars ship designs are visually interesting and iconic on screen, but extremely senseless and impractical from an engineering and practicability stand point.

Actually this was a problem in the X-Wing game from the 1990s, too, and was the reason why I vastly preferred the Y-Wing to the X-Wing even though the X-Wing's stats were the most balanced: you had to shimmy your ship around slightly to make sure all of your lasers were aiming correctly. With the Y- and A-Wings aiming was much easier.

No argument here, there’s plenty of good reasons we never had wingtip mounted weapons. Drag (yes mostly a non-issue for the x-wing), but the worst offender is the convergence, what an actual nightmare. The A-wing design is far superior, low silhouette, high maneuverability, and guns mounted along the body that have traverse.

Uh, actually, the little bulb on the nose of the X-Wing is a deposit of Spermaceti to help with buoyancy and using sonar clicks to find the targetting range for the laser cannons xD

This is why all best x wing pilots have astromech droid to assist in targeting😅

Look. The only spaceship design that really makes sense is the Borg Cube.

The astromech droids also act as in-flight engineers, which makes sense considering how many constant repairs x wings must need to stay in the air

You have a lot of very good points, however I feel like you missed the best argument for the X-Wing: It looks awesome.

4:45 for convergence, the 4 guns only need to rotate on the plane of their wings, so the problem is still 2 dimensional (you can see it a 2 fighters superposed on one another and rotated a bit)

Referring to the original X-Wing game, I cannot tell you how many times I missed a tie fighter, because it was straight in front of my X-Wing! The Y-Wing was better, because its two laser cannons were close together.

Having spent a number of hours playing Star Wars: X-Wing, I understand your consternation; however, as someone who discovered that spinning the stick would let me plug every shot into the same spot - it's worse than you can imagine. But damn if it wasn't easier to aim with than a B-Wing.

After playing star wars squadrons the real issue with all star wars ships is visibility. The cockpit being fixed into the fuselage means that there are no fighters with a rearview and only a few have a tiny useless window at the rear. If there were more advanced sensors of some kind it might not be an issue but the only sensors are forward radar.

Thank you for verbalising all the issues I always had with this beautiful craft. I love it, I love Star Wars but the engineer in me wants to scream my head off.

In terms of the armament, wouldn't it make sense to swap the positions of the guns and torpedoes? In other words, move the laser cannons to the nose (shortened) and then put the torpedoes on the wings. It's a start...

When five year old me is puzzled by the weapons placement, you know it's more than a little off. That said, the separating wings is for cooling. My design would be to have the four where they are for capital ship engagement, but also add a pair of cannons directly in front of the pilot, either on either side of or poking through the sensor bulb on the nose and a rear turret. The rear turret could be AI or squishy powered. Either way, more dakka.

This reminds me of the WWII Spifire and Hurricane fighters. Both initially had 8 machine guns in the wings, but the Spifire's were spread all over the wing, while the Hurricane's were clustered in one spot, closer inside. This was one of the reasons the Hurrican was considered a better & more acurate gun platform.

I could kind of see a variation of the standard design where the weapons and sensors switched positions so the tip of each wing would have a small sensor pod and when they opened up the wings that would spread the sensor packages out a little more for better targeting information.

Because it looks cool. Back in the 90s someone tried tell me the lasers on the X- wing are zeroed at 250 meters. That means you don't aim at the target you herd the target into the lasers.

Starfury: Engines on the ends of the wings/struts, weapons on the roots. X-wing: Engines on the roots, weapons on the ends. There's your problem

Considering the level of computer technology ( they have self propelled A.I.s wandering around) couldn’t there be micro motors keyed to the weapons and targeting computers I know it adds complexity and you hate complexities , but since we don’t live in the star wars universe so we don’t know if it’s a minor thing that just works or what yes if the rebellion had brains to match their pluck they would be using SA-23Es instead of T-65s or something inspired by SA-23Es . If you are going to conduct analysis on what something is you have to ask why would someone use something if it has the flaws you attribute to it . Example why does most of the empire’s equipment cheep garbage? Because the empire doesn’t really care about individuals it’s overwhelming numbers they rely on, the standard galactic citizen doesn’t know that storm trooper armor is only really good against thrown rocks and shrapnel, they don’t know that stormtrooper marksmanship is mostly propaganda, they know that there are some 100, 000 of these guys on their planet. Now why are AT-ATs top heavy? it’s pretty hard to bring one down it’s short legged republic predecessor could be stopped by barriers and you yourself pointed out how repulsor lift tanks are basically 60+ ton pool balls. Love the righteous anger towards stuff in your videos 👍👍👍

I actually would prefer something like the Z-95 Headhunter. Just put the guns in the body and put mounts on the wings for missiles. Was actually how I went about a concept for an upgrade used by the New Republic called the Z-100 Headhunter.

Extend the wings? So someone can say the line, "lock wings in attack position"

The real-world reason for the X-wing's huge nose, incidentally was George Lucas' love of WW2 air combat movies. The X-wing was loosely based on the Spitfire. Great interceptor, but had a notoriously long nose. You had to swing the plane from left to right while taxiing, because the pilot couldn't see the runway over that long front end

all they had to do was put the engines on these massive perfect levers for star fighting, and then put the guns next to the pilot. Suddenly you have a faster turning ship, with better gun placement! Yay!

"and DO NOT let the positive pressure side hatch to hit you on the way OUT" You got a sub and bell from me.

The look down targeting, the lack of output for its sensors, visual tracking with a cockpit that deep in the plane and no rear sightlines. Video games had to add all those thing to make the thing fightable.

I play games where you build ships. Space Engineers, Star Made, and such. And I tend to always make guns clustered together. Makes it eayser to hit stuff. Only time I designed something with guns further apart was if the ship was meant to go after a large target, and the weapons are normally explosive.

next one: TIE fighters, another nightmare

The whole premise of Star Wars vehicles is that the tech is so advanced as to make no sense to our primitive understanding of engineering and physics. The more outlandish, the better.

Laughs in Gunstar Sweats in Gunstar

The wing separation actually has a semi-logical explanation in Cannon though. The idea being that more surface area equals better heat dissipation

an X-Wing fighter has all of the aerodynamics of a flying brick, and none of the benefits.

A-wing best wing. Yes this is a challenge.

I remember when I was studying the Eurofighter Typhoon design I came across a PDF how the gun on the typhoon was placed in such a way that made it harder to shoot down enemies. Most modern fighters tend to have their guns somwhere adjacent to the pilots line of vision.

Out of all the "good-guy" fightercraft from the films, the most sensible design keeps standing out for me as the Naboo N-1. Twin engines, centerline proton torpedo launcher, close-set twin guns ahead of the cockpit as the Force intended, and even an astromech socket for the especially suicidal or combat effective R-series whistlers. The Prequel trilogy did some things in our time but the N-1 and the LAAT were some of the good ones. I'm also forgetting the Y-Wing, one of the Originals, and an even more multi-role ship thanks to it's ion cannons, onboard hyperdrive, and multiple heavy ordinances to choose from.

I think the astromech was also supposed to do minor repairs and adjustments while the plane is in flight. A flight engineer, basically. Not saying it's not a dumb fighter, but the astromech was the one part that made sense to me.

The Torpedo storage put’s me in mind to the WW! British built BEc2, that had a fuel tank between the pilot and the observer in a two seater plane. Oh, and the observer was infront of the pilot.

Also I have been told my ship is now a cube , so I'm here to pickup my cube .

George Lucas wanted Star Wars to look like WW2 in space and the moving wing design was inspired by the F-14 Tomcat.

Can attest to the issues of the spaced guns. X-wing alliance they had 3 fire modes, 1 at a time, all 4 at once, and pairs. The pairs were diagonally opposite too. So neat note is an average Tie with no shields took exactly 2 shots to blow away, so twin linked fire was easily the most efficient firing method. The distance between the guns though did mean if I wasn't perfectly lined up/rotated 1 would often miss, took a lot of practice to compensate.

This is actually a long standing problem in fighter design. The decision is generally to either align them to the axis of the craft and just line your pilot up with a targeting reticle and the shots all stay spread out, or you aim the guns to converge at a set point in front of the fighter. In the first case you assume that either what you are aiming at is big enough to exceed the size of that pattern or lightly armored enough to not need to hit it with every shot to do enough damage. In the second case you have a very intense amount of fire hitting that designated range, and by the geometry of those lines of fire then diverge beyond that point, effectively limiting the maximum effective range of those weapons. It increases the effectiveness at or near that convergence point, but severely limits it at any longer range. In space combat where maximum engagement ranges can be literally astronomical the range limit would be a severe problem, so I'd side with a fixed parallel line of fire. They expect to be facing primarily TIE variants which are notable poor on durability, so less hits and a wider field of fire is a fair compromise. I would however have at least some shots near the center of that pattern as well.

On the intake issue, it gets worse when you realize that the split intakes were actually the original design from before the first film was shot.

Years back I tried to figure out why they would do this. And I figured they didn't have microservos to counter parallax effects and that spreading the fire was considered beneficial somehow. And wracking the little grey cells brought me up with the idea that volley fire of them creates an area of effect that has a higher chance of causing a hard or soft knockout that a tightly grouped cluster that provides a harder punch. As in Starwars dogfight combat it does seem to be a MOSTLY one hit kill situation so the ability to get any hits matters more than absolute precision of all firepower on a target point. Also as parallax is highly based on the ratio between the delta-X(viewpoint-viewpoint)/delta-X(viewpoint-target) which as we are in theory in space the delta-X(viewpoint-target) should be very large and thus reducing parallax effects to approaching zero...but dogfights. WWII/Korea dogfights in space are...unsettling... also would love to see a breakdown of the Imperial class Star Destroyer who I think gets a bad rap in terms of speed and maneuver vs demonstrated abilities in the EpIV (where I have been impressed with Its roll speed) and EpV.

I never really got what benefit the adjustable wings provided. The only thing I can think of is that the X-wing was inspired by the F-14 Tomcat and it's variable-swept wing feature since the F-14 was kind of hot, new fighter jet around during Episode IV's development and release. Hell, the X-wing even has the same 'steel gray with white and red accents' color scheme that a lot of the F-14's had.

Gun convergence was entertaining in the pc games. In the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, the guns had no convergence at all and only fired straight forward. X-Wing Alliance introduced auto-convergence but there was one ship excluded from that, the Z-95 Headhunter. In that game the Z-95 had manual convergence adjustment.

Can we talk about the damn QUACK QUACK noise the damn cannons make?

The way i see this is an easy fix, just swap out where the proton torpedo's and laser cannons (4 proton torpedo's and 2 laser cannons are the end result) and these explain the following- 1) the wings store missiles and torpedo's (explains why it has wings) 2) the wings fold and "X up" because if one of the wings are hit only that wing explodes (putting distance between each independent arsenal) 3) the lasers are right next to the pilot (making the aiming system practical and easier to engineer) 4) if the laser system underneath the pilot is hit, it doesnt rip the fighter in half with an explosion underneath the pilot, instead you would only lose your laser system (but still have a very large arsenal of missiles and torpedo's because again you have 4 wings full of them)

Yeah, I’m late to the party… First, I always considered that the four guns shoot directly forward, and did not need to deal with parallax. Spinning the ship (which, apparently, is a good trick) maximises the number of hits from each emplacement. Standard tactics, I believe, were to extend the S-foils, start your attack run, using a corkscrew manoeuvre, then executing a Kiogran-turn, flying out of range, then starting the manoeuvre all over again. This was used against larger ships. In dogfights, all bets were off - but the T-65 was a far superior ship to the standard TIE/ ln fighter. So much so, that even an average pilot was expected to take out a minimum of three TIEs in each engagement. Oh, also, it just looks so damn cool… Regarding the black variant you show an image of…. Where is this from? I cannot recall ever having seen this craft befo…. Oh, wait. Is that the “T-70” from that bunch of fan fiction that was crapped out by Disney? Everyone knows this was a parody set of films, set in the Star Wars universe, and bears no relation at all to the two previous trilogies, which explored the Skywalker Saga. Word has it that all the new Star Wars related shows coming out on Disney+ will actually be retconning this entire “sequel trilogy”, either through shenanigans with the “world between worlds”, or someone waking up from a terrible fever dream. So it would behoove everyone to pay it no mind…. :) In any event this is the fourth of your offerings I have watched. Based on the strength of them, you have a new subscriber. Thank you.

This fighter has a large thruster between each wing and the main hull. Imagine all the problems they could solve if they swaped the placement of the thrusters and weapons around. Putting the thrusters on the tips of the wings and the cannons next to the cockpit

Astromechs also act as in-flight engineers, not just navi-computers. Also, the Legends X-wing books did established that the weapons would be zeroed in at a certain point, 150m-250m for dogfights and 1000m or more for ground attacks; the idea being they would be zeroed by trained engineers at base for their mission, where repairs can be made if something breaks. I also suspect that astromechs could make adjustments to the zeroing when landing for emergency repairs or hiding. The "wings" may provide some lift in atmospheric flight, but they are actually called "s-foils" in-universe and are established to be heat radiators since the weapons produce a lot of heat, so they are placed far from the pilot and they are also separated from each other, hence the the x-configuration of the s-foils is called attack position. but seriously the X-wing books from Legends does a great job of showcasing the use of the x-wing and it addresses 99% of the "flaws" are mention. Ad the split engine from the sequels - "rule of cool" is the best answer I got.

Fun fact: the old-school X-Wing DOS games demonstrated this quite a bit. The X-wing SUCKS for gunnery unless you figure out the lanes in which each individual laser travels to hit the zero point for the targeting system. It's incredibly inefficient. The X-Wing's saving graces are its speed and agility. Now if we could combine that with the glorious Y-wing's armament setup on the centerline, we'd be in business.

It's kind of interesting having a decent way to compare the different designs in a practical-ish but still obviously fictional setting; playing Star Was: Squadrons really gives you a feel of the good and the bad of every fighter. The X-wing is half decent in it, though the B-wing is is godawful as you'd think, thanks mostly due to the unconventional/strange mechanics of its cockpit. But my favorite fighter to fly is by far the TIE fighter. Sometimes simple and stripped down works better. Assuming you have the skill to use it right.

a fight between that and a starfury..... over fast

Rule of cool strikes again, besides if you remove the wings then you essentially get the geonsian starfighter, which I'd love to hear your take on.

Personally, when I first saw the A-Wing I said X who? I need to see how the A-Wing holds up.

Laughs in Starfury. :-)

LOL I'm pretty sure the hatch on the back is for servicing the reactor.

Sometimes design is just a compromise. It's really dumb to put the fuel tanks in the wings (i.e. the most surface area and most likely to be hit), but it was standard practice in WW2.

If I understand the splitting of the wings has to do with heatsinks of the lasers/power system, and is closed for hyperspace to narrow the shield I think

I'm sad you didn't mention the landing gear, which extend out the bottom of the engines, thus leaving no room for engines.

Personally always didn't like the X-Wing either but i recall reading that in lore the spreading of the guns like so actually helped accuracy... I can only assume this is because all the pilots were terrible and having more random error helped them hit.

Childhood is thinking X-wings are cool. Adulthood is realizing A-wings are the best.

WRT to proton torpedoes being right beneath the pilot: the original M1 Abrams (and M1IP) had three 105mm rounds for the main gun, stored right inside the turret (at the Loaders feet). Of course, later models did away with those, and all 120mm ammo is behind armored doors in compartments with blow-out panels. Point being, there is only so much space inside the hull, and stuff has got to go somewhere. But....then again, Star Wars vehicles don't generally rely on aerodynamic flight principles, so external ordnance pods would seem like an alternate solution; put all the dangerous "BOOM" stuff out on the S-Foils.

7:30 that snoz is where the weapons should be. Place them there just below the pilot and it would be a much better design right away.

Totally true! Oddly it's for all these reasons that make it iconic and beautiful. ... but it looks really good on screen in a space fight, or in model format. And it makes the little kid in me go "YAY!" regardless. Similar problems plague other iconic ship favorites of mine such as the Space Battleship Yamato.

There's also the fact that swinging the "s-foils" open reduces the distance between the port and starboard pairs of engines, lowering the turning moment they exert on the ship, thus impairing maneuverability. See diagram at 6:00 Don't look at me, I didn't design it.

Parralax and weapon gimballing is indeed the biggest complaint about the X-wing from a technical standpoint. The only thing I can think of, and that goes back to the B-wing comment I made, is that the Tam & Bak lasers are so heat-dissipation-happy that you HAVE to space them out so they'll cool quicker. The gimballing could be non-mechanical (magnetic focus components on the tips). I won't over-defend them, they would work better for aiming if they were in close. The proton torpedo launcher magazine is a non-issue. Nobody is trying to specifically shoot the pilot of an X-wing since starfighters are so nimble that just _Getting a hit_ on the thing in general is effort. And direct hits tend to result in fireballs almost every time. PLUS! Plus, proton torpedoes are... Proton Torpedoes. Doesn't matter if they're parked under your ass or sequestered in the nose, they pack enough kaboom to give capital ships a headache. You think the pilot is going to be safe anywhere in that fighter if the magazine lights off? Given that most kill shots come from behind, or from above (as deflection shots to a pilot pulling up), the magazine's probably in the best place it can be. The astromech droid is an up in the air question. Yeah, there's something to be said about having your navigational computer able to go for a walk, but remember the astromech is ALSO a field mechanic. I can see INCOMM saving a few credits by saying: "Well, the mobile mechanic ALSO does hyperspace calculations, so we can save money and weight by just making it do double duty." And if one asks why that's not a built-in feature... There's this thing called Off The Shelf procurement, in which a manufacturer of military components saves R&D and production resources by grabbing a perfectly suitable commercial option 'off the shelf'. R-series astromechs fit that description. Then, the Turbines? Those aren't intakes. I don't know WHAT they are, but they aren't intakes. They look like coils. Why said coils are exposed is anyone's guess. I would say heat, but it would be more efficient to expel excess heat with the engine exhaust than to have coiled radiators exposed facing forwards. The real point of failure on the X-wing would be the S-foil articulation servos and connection. If you ask anyone who understands the swing-wing of the F-14 Tomcat, large mechanical moving parts of that nature are a maintenance nightmare and represent a serious point of failure. While the S-foils aren't lifting the X-wing, and thus aren't experiencing the strain of that lift, I would imagine that the mechanisms WILL get stressed during roll maneuvers or when the X-wing is landed, as the aft landing skids deploy from the lower engine nacelles. Imagine landing your X-wing, and the mechanical linkage of say, the left side fails, and the wing assembly just snaps off.

Ok, so I'm a few months late to the commenting.. It's already known that the Star Wars Universe uses different physics so... Meh.. As a concept though the X-Wing does, in part, make some sense even with the Paralax Error. Besides other things shooting at you and trying to make explody bits fly off into space; space itself sucks at removing heat from an object. I mean seriously, go look at the huge ass heat sinks on the ISS just to keep the squishies from cooking inside that oven in space. Then you have those giant ass rapid fire heat generators on the end of the wings.. Yup, I'd want them far way from the squishy and the ordinance sitting under them.. You point about them sitting on ordinance... Uuumm... If that shit gets hit and actually detonates then it doesn't matter were it sits the squishy be a bit toasty. At least being inside the hull will give it some protection. The F-22 and the F-35 both keep their ordinance inside their belly. If it actually sat on hard points on the wings (Which, again, could be acting as radiators) then you're just asking for waste heat to cook the ordinance. The intakes wouldn't be for turbines but would probably be Bussard Scoops as the craft is FTL capable and even at subluminal speed could still be taking it the trace amounts in space. When it hits atmo then it's refueling with hydrogen and/or oxygen.. That ass... Power plant and fuel stores. Yeah, I'm not going to defend that choice.. maybe they wouldn't have one. Nose: Avionics and some additional ordinance. Droid as a Nav computer: That droid is Nav computer, co-pilot, emergency repair tech, RIO, etc.. Makes since to me if it has to go get new maps between missions. Current flight crews do that now. These aren't capital ships with Nav teams and charts for and entire sector. We're talking about a fighter with it's mission flight path(s) and emergency contingencies/detours. Your point about moving parts..... Holy hell I wish I could've kept up with all the moving parts on a modern fighter aircraft even when I worked with the things. Heck, I think the X-Wing actually has fewer moving parts than a modern fighter. As for the wings: We've already used and still, to a limited degree, use (a few) Aircraft with variable wing geometry such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-111 Aardvark, B-1b Lancer, F-3 Tornado, Mig-23, Mig-27, Tu-160(Last one actually designed and produced) and others. Though most have been retired. I'm loving the content. 😁

Had this very argument with a fanboy a few years ago, He was shocked when I said that my favorite star wars fighter was the y-wing :).

My take on the X-Wing is that it was designed to be a strafer with the blasters as the primary weapon rather than bombs or torpedoes. You take a relatively large gun, dedicate an entire engine to it for power, then strap it to a large radiator panel for a heat sink. Add three more, and you have an X-Wing. The goal would be heavy sustained fire to break a deflector screen or strafe the weapon turrets of an enemy, punching a hole in the defenses for the Y-Wings to get through with the big boom-boom. Basically, they're the 'Wild Weasels' of the Star Wars universe-- purpose-built to suppress or neutralize heavy enemy defenses to allow other ships to get in and do their work.

Ok Jeremy, the Rebel Alliance has come asking for an all purpose fighter that can do hit and run attacks on a galactic scale. And the Empire has cheesed my onions too much recently, so I've gone all in on this. I have worked flat out to create an extremely fast, reliable craft that can fight a war, fly across the galaxy, smash into a swamp, stay under bogwater for weeks, and then fly out across the galaxy again with no issues. I have striven to add shields, powerful weapons and repair kits that make this ship so much better than TIE fighters that I suspect one decent pilot can murder several hundred TIEs easily. Ok. What do you want me to do? Just come up with a name. Have a look at the design, and come back later with some ideas. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING! ... I hate you Jeremy.

That damn intro was freaking epic! Just to confuse and annoy you a bit more, there are actually real and functional answers to all of these questions. It would just take a very long time to type them all out. The convergence issue alone isn't new. Its been a problem/issue ever since we started mounting multiple weapons on vehicles. It just got a bit worse with aircraft. You question about the engine change between the T-65 and the T-70 is reasonably valid and has two answers. The first is basically because they aren't spinning fan blades on the T-70. The second reason is because the designers/builders thought it looked cool and they weren't thinking of the consequences. Common failing on mot sci-fi properties. My largest complaint about the X-Wing has always been the damn wings. The is no reason in the universe to open the damn things in space and it would in fact cause a number of problems. Its entire function is to add visual drama, and nothing more. It looks cool on screen. That is all. Keep up the good work!

You are right, man! Stay true to your mission statement. I want you to critique these ships. It doesn't diminish how much I love them. Keep up the good work! :-)

I heard somewhere that space in Star Wars just doesn't work anything like it does in our universe. It's a vacuum, but still behaves somewhat like air. I don't understand it, but that's a super simplified version of what I was told. Basically like you said: space magic. I would also imagine that the torpedoes are inert until armed and fired. If they aren't, I can't imagine that the pilot is safe anywhere on the ship if that magazine is hit. Look at modern jets like the F-22 or F-35. They're stowed in the central axis behind the pilot. _If_ they were to detonate, I don't think the pilot would be around long enough to complain.

The X-Wing only makes sense as an allegory of mid-20th century American fighter planes, in particular the World War II-era P-51 Mustang and the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom II. The guns are out on the wings because the P-51's guns were out on the wings, to clear the propeller. The engines are obviously the J79 jet engines of the F-4. Both fighters had long noses. As for the wings locking in attack position, that's probably based on Navy carrier-based fighters (including the F-4) whose wings unfold as they are preparing to launch. It's also a great way to tell the audience the fight has started. The proton torpedoes are allegories of the notoriously unreliable early guided missiles of Vietnam.

No wonder it takes so long for those things to get a target lock.

People getting pissy about whatever. Just wait until you get into Mass Effect.

exactly the reason why the Germans, japanese and italians in WWII, even tho wings had become strong enough and planes big enough to put guns in the wings, kept putting their guns around the nose of their fighters, accepting the drawback of propellor synchonization.... it's also what made the twin engine american P38 so great, with that cannon and 4 mg's all in the nose right under the pilot's aiming vizor. the french in the 30's even made their planes more complicated by putting a cannon through the spinner of their single engine fighters....

Surprising enough the back of that x-wing is actually a storage unit , for tools and spare parts . My references the scene of Luke fixing the thing on degobah .

Oh goddammit, another sub to add to my ever growing list! Seriously though; great content, just discovered you and am currently binge-watching.

Yes, this is what we need.

Point of order on the Hyperspace Computer complaint. It is cannon that astromech droids are an extremely unique breakthrough in technology that has never really been replicated. As such, you have two options for making hyperspace jumps: have a housing for an astromech droid, or have a full ROOM on your vessel dedicated to the banks of traditional computers needed to do the same calculations. This is why its only capital ships that benefit from 24/7 hyperspace capability (even the B-Wing was considered a light corvette; NOT a starfighter). Furthermore astromechs need to be recharged in one form or another on a fairly consistent basis (wish they showed this more often in the movies), and the process requires standardized charging stations that are inaccessible to one "jacked in" to a starfighter. And no actually, you CAN'T just hook the droid up to the starfighter's power source. It's been tried. They have so many different systems that need power and so many differnt rates simultaneously that ANYTHING beyond charger stations fries their electronics. So yes, a starfighter's "computer" had damn well better be fairly detachable, or its gonna die

It would have made a LOT more sense if the lasers were below in the hull and the missiles on the tip of the wings. ..Those things suppose to have guidance systems anyway.. ..mostly aimed at larger targets.. ..Launched from longer range.. ..when hit and explode lesser change to take the whole fighter with it.. .. if multiple are fired at once, you do not want them to hit each other in mid flight to the target.. (also would make more sense to the separated wing system) Ah well, I was not there at the design table.