Editing Lightning Fighter (section)

== Real Life ==

[[Wikipedia:Forward-swept wing|Forward-swept wings]] have been tried on real experimental aircraft, and they do confer some benefits, like enhanced maneuverability, improved airflow and the possibility of a more compact airframe. All of which is great for the Lightning as it is about half the size of a modern fighter jet. It also comes with the drawbacks of instability (though modern avionics can make the minute corrections required to keep the aircraft steady) and a risk of the wings twisting themselves to pieces at high speeds. These issues meant that it took about 50 years from the idea's conception before prototype high-performance fighter aircraft with forward-swept wings could be built (the [[Wikipedia:Grumman X-29|Grumman X-29]] in 1984, and the [[Wikipedia:Sukhoi Su-47|Sukhoi Su-47]] in 1997, and both of those ended up being scrapped anyway). For comparison, it took the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] over five hundred years to fix these issues in the Lightning, and they didn't even come up with the idea themselves -- they had to find the [[STC]] first. On the flipside, the people who were trying to fix them were probably being shot at [[heresy|by their own colleagues]], so it's rather notable they managed to fix them at all. On the other hand, Imperial aircraft doubtless work using gravitational and inertia manipulation along with the commonly mentioned vectored thrust. [[Derp|So, the shape of the wings is irrelevant.]]

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