I would like to know, how many additional weight and compromise this “can” cost the designers. Someone remember the story from the 1990s about an aircraft with 14t OEW. Last time I checked we have been at 19t. Thrust to weight, wing loading and fuel fraction all no big improvement over the F-15.

The thing to remember though is that the F-22 has as much dry thrust as an F-15 in max A/B, and isn’t carrying any draggy external stores. Additionally it’s operating 10-20k feet higher. When the Raptor does light its burners, it has more than 20k pounds more thrust than the Eagle. If you compare the T/W with similar fuel loads the figures will look a lot different.

As for the speed claim- that was Paul Metz who made that statement, and the claim was that the Raptor could go faster than 1600mph(M2.42).

The 28deg/sec sustained turn rate was mentioned in the video by the Air Force F-15 pilot, at Red Flag.

As for unlimited AoA- that means that a pilot doesn’t have to concern himself with stalling his aircraft, so he can fly more aggressively.

The specifications of the F-22A. At close to Mach 2 the coating starts suffering in a tremendous rate, even at the less dense air above 35000 feet.

Can you send me a link to where you’re getting this information.

That can happen, when the F-35 does fell short of the exspectations and there is no longer the need for that. and advances in technology do render the present stealth useless.

And when can we expect these advances to occur? There’s never going to be a point in time, where a stealthy target will be detected/tracked at the same range as a non-stealthy one, so long as the laws of physics remain in effect.

I think the point was their treatment as tragedies. While 9/11 is constantly being mentioned as such a tragedy and monumental loss of life, the fact remains that there are tragedies of at least equal magnitude where human lives were lost that people barely noticed or are unlikely to regularly remember.

It’s true that any loss of life is a tragedy, but there’s a big distinction between being murdered, and a natural disaster where no malice was involved.

I hope you’ve seen my quote of Code One Magazine from 1998 where they defined it as greater than M1.

I have seen that article from 11yrs ago, that you posted. How long ago did they change the figure though? It hasn’t been that recent.

Given the amount of marketing F-35 enjoys, I’d dare to say that if there was slightest indication of F-35 being able to achieve/maintain supersonic speed at military thrust, we’d hear that trupmpeted out all over the news.

I would also say that if this was the case, then LM would immediately drop their requirement of M1.5 as definition of supercruise. The reasons are logical – creating a separate category for F-22 is pointless since there will be no exports, anyway. At the same time, kicking out the F-35 from the supercruise category just for that would be plain stupid – F-35 is and will be battling other designs in various competitios around the globe and it needs every argument that would help it win. Supercruise yes/no is definitely a selling argument (although I personally still see this feature as completely useless)

The separate category for the Raptor was for US audiences(i.e. the folks with the purse strings). If the USAF and LM are trying to get more Raptors, they want them to be shown is a good a light as possible. If the F-35’s capabilities are too close, then these folks start asking why buy Raptors. My guess is that if 187 ends up being the final number of Raptors, then we’ll start seeing more specs released about the F-35. As for foreign markets, the F-35 is already doing pretty well. The countries that have gotten briefed on its capabilities have apparently been impressed.

2.What cannot be utilized/deployed, does not count. Designing a fighter allegedly capable of doing M2.42 and then limit it to M1.X is pure waste of money and weight. It has been done before (read F-14 or Su-24), only idiots would repeat the same mistake.

You’re confusing the speed with AB vs. the speed on dry thrust. If the Raptor needs to fly faster than M1.8, then it’s perfectly capable of engaging its AB and getting up to 1600+mph. Also, the 2.42 is somewhat ambiguous, as we don’t know what that + works out to be. It’d be more accurate to say that the Raptor can reach speeds of at least M2.42(or more).

With that I agree.

While, personally, I would tend to consider it a hint that their marketing department does not milk a potentially given SC ability or that sample mission profiles in LM presentations had it cruising at M0.9, I would in no way claim that this is conclusive evidence. I wouldn’t be surprised either way and look forward to full envelope testing of production-representative units.

That’s all I’m saying. KPP thresholds, and vanilla public briefs are certainly not proof of what can or cannot be done(other than not meeting the minimum requirements). I suspect we’ll hear a lot more in due time. We keep finding out new things about the F-22, and it’s been operational for several years, so I see no reason to expect to know the performance envelope of the F-35 already.