Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin

Model: unknown

Name: ThunderStar

Type: Attack bomber

Date: 2022

Status: Operational

Country: United States of America

Service: U.S. Air Force

Designation: A-40A

It's 2017. The budget cuts that plagued many a defense program are no longer in order. The war in Afghanistan has been long and costly. The U.S. Department of Defense badly needs some high-flying light bombers to strike repeatedly the mountains hideouts of Afghanistan as a means to end war as quickly as possible. A requirement for a brand new, dedicated attack aircraft is issued, to which Lockheed Martin answers with the ThunderStar, a four-jet, enlarged derivative of the Raptor with side-by-side seating.

The company wins the contract over Northrop Grumman and Boeing/Bombardier, and the Thunderstar becomes the A-40A. Eightly aircraft are purchased by USAF, and nearly 200 get exported to Britain and Germany.

A naval variant, the A-40B, is also produced in 50 examples for the U.S. Navy, while 40 more examples find their way to Britain.

To create the A-40A, I started from a photo of an F-22A taken by Daniel Wales. Here is his deviantART page: [link]. I considerably reworked the shape and proportion of each of the aircraft's element until I obtained the new design I was looking for. The finishing touch on the aircraft was the addition of the bomb bay open underneath the fuselage.

I then searched for a photo of an Afghan mountainous area on the web and once I found what seemed like the perfect image I used it as a background. Finally a couple of bombs were added underneath the aircraft and blurred for realism.

Now the tricky thing is here is where the bomb bay could possibly fit with four engines taking up all the airframe! I'll have to think of this and perhaps imagine a three-view with partial cutaway... That would be a first for me.

• Awesome. (angrypandaink)
• I'll be damned O.o Since this one is bigger [and presumably heavier], even w/ 2 more engines, I guess it's not as fast as the original Raptor...or is it?  (Roddy1990)
• Whoa il est impressionnant celui là  (ItalianDragon)
• Très beau concept et très bien réalisé! La description est aussi vraiment bien écrite, ça donne une bonne idée de la situation pour laquelle tu as conçu ton avion. Ça mérite un ! (DeserkeR)
• Dang, this is made of all kinds of awesome man. 2018 bomber FTW  (Jetfreak-7)
• Guess, "A" in "A-40" stands fo "Awesome". (ACZCipher)
• this is brilliant, good imagination and i liked reading that description. good job  (LostIdentity1110)
• Does this remind anyone of SWAT Cats. (Dox482)
• I wonder how the engines affect the stealth capabilities.....Very impressive !! (edwardio1973)
• Good design, but four engines are of course out of the question. Beside that, some for Germany sounds good.  (MacPaul)
• Something that replace B-52's, B-1B's and the superlatively costly B-2... As ever, an apparently simple idea was transformed in a very expensive solution by the Lockheed management. It's like joining two fuselages by new wing section in early aviation times... (CUTANGUS)
•  the picture is wonderful. Very well done, thanks! (Tophe)
• ... blah blah - world need peace not bombers  ! (popoff)

I agree with you, popoff. It's not because I love airplanes that I agree with war! Quite the contrary in fact.