Hmm. So probably two so it can measure yaw by the difference in pressures. Then you have the air spike on the front that was attended to by this good Samaritan. That still leaves one mystery dick.
You wouldn’t measure yaw by the pitot tubes. I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but it would be complicated and imprecise. Yaw is measured by a gyro (modern planes are a laser ring gyro rather than a spinny gyro). The pitot tubes would all feed into air data computers for various systems. Flight instrumentation would have at least three (redundancy and error checking) and the fourth could possibly be for weapons systems or something similar, not sure.
Maybe the weird arrangement is just another stealth feature. Refueling, antenna and aerodynamic are also possible purposes I can think of for such a projection.
Looks like pitot tubes, for measuring air speed and altitude.
Hmm. So probably two so it can measure yaw by the difference in pressures. Then you have the air spike on the front that was attended to by this good Samaritan. That still leaves one mystery dick.
You wouldn’t measure yaw by the pitot tubes. I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but it would be complicated and imprecise. Yaw is measured by a gyro (modern planes are a laser ring gyro rather than a spinny gyro). The pitot tubes would all feed into air data computers for various systems. Flight instrumentation would have at least three (redundancy and error checking) and the fourth could possibly be for weapons systems or something similar, not sure.
Maybe the weird arrangement is just another stealth feature. Refueling, antenna and aerodynamic are also possible purposes I can think of for such a projection.
Here I was, ready to reply about wacky “pilot tubes”, then re-read and saw it’s piTot tubes