Seeker,

Great to here some solid arguments that aren't just thrown around.

I had a response all done but it seems to be lost in internet land somewhere... anyway there was nothing of great importance in it...

But i will answer you question again:

The Viper was designed to try a few ideas we had coming off the back the CAP. We had some theories regarding hull shapes and volume distribution that we wanted to try out. The Viper was really a prototype for these ideas before we implemented them into an F18. The result is even still surprising us with what it can achieve.

As for weather it is a Capricorn compressed... not even close. One of the joys of CAD design is that you can have many hull designs overlayed on one another, we had the Cap as a reference but the whole hull was built from scratch. also with Cad design , product development is quick, cheep and easy so there is no need to cut corners. i have had some people want jobs done on the cheep and from experience, it is ALWAYS better in the long term to do it properly from the start.