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What Hacker News says
- You're exactly right. But as you suspect, there's reasons why you wouldn't want to do that in all cases.
Turbojets derive all of their thrust from the turbine exhaust. It's a small, compact engine, which means high power-to-weight ratio, and it's great for small jet fighters. Unfortunately, it also consumes a lot of fuel. Turboprops are at the other end, where the turbine drives the propeller at much faster speeds than a regular 4-stroke engine would. But the exhaust provides next to no thrust.
Turbofans sit in the middle. They provided much better fuel efficiency than a turbojet but greater power than a turbofan. It was very much a "we need a middle solution" type of engine.
As turbines became more efficient and compact, the turbofan became smaller as well. To the point that they could be places on a fighter, but with a smaller bypass ratio. This gives much better fuel efficiency (range), while still retaining high power.
For jetliners, it's all about efficiency, but still retaining a degree of speed. But for a really high-bypass turbofan (50% or more), it's going to be a huge engine. Fighters are between 15-20% now, but you won't see much more than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_ratio
Tom Clancy wrote a book many years ago in which he discusses this in laymans terms really well: http://www.amazon.com/Fighter-Wing-Clancys-Military-Referenc...
- I get that explanation for books like Red Storm Rising.
At some point it flipped. Probably around the "Sum of All Fears" era. Around then he started publishing non-fictiony books "Submarine", "Armored Cavalry", "Fighter Wing" that were basically guided tours.
