That’s exactly why the Indian Flankers are so expensive – but now the sto protsentov чистый русский Flankers are catching up in price. It’s all for the good, I suppose.

Well the Vietnamese are certainly “diversifying”. Guess which country they held naval exercises with last year?

The F/A-18 and Rafale are quite expensive, too expensive for CAS.

Not as expensive as trying to get something like the Cessna A-37 or a PC-9 to do ‘naval attack’ or ‘intercept’.

In your view, what is the most cost-effective aircraft to perform so-called CAS missions against a force armed with S-300 AD systems and fielding armoured battle groups?:confused:

They are almost completely identical and as I said, it is not necessarily BPR but probably transonic drag which represents the biggest problem by a country mile for the F-35.

Half the thrust, but also half the weight, lower bypass ratio and probably much better transonic drag.

Is transonic drag anymore a problem for the F-35 than for the other fighter designs of the last 20 years?

If we can believe that the Typhoon can do M1.5 without burners why not the F-35 at M1.2, even taking into account engine designs?

The fact is, the F-35 would be the outstanding exception if it couldn’t supercruise clean – even the old F-16A block 15 could reach M1.1 with a pair of wingtip sidewinders

Thrust per engine in isolation is meaningless, you might as well expect a 777-300ER to supercruise.

An aircraft that could do M0.85 at 41,000 feet on engines with a bypass ratio of 8:1.;)

but let’s play devil’s advocate here

You’re not the only one.;)

Interesting discussion from a year back on the feasibility/practicalities of aircraft such as Gripen NG, F-35 or even F-16 and Typhoon operating at moderate super cruise speeds.

Starting from here:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=90432&page=15

Its thrust/weight ratio is fine (at sea level, anyway), so no surprise there. Hell, one variant is supposed to land vertically, it’s NOT going to be lacking in raw thrust, is it 😉 However, it has a relatively high bypass ratio which means dry thrust falls off comparatively quickly with altitude – drag would be the main problem though (a BPR of 0.6 isn’t THAT high). Thrust/weight ratio alone doesn’t make an aircraft supercruise, look at Concorde or the B-58 and contrast with the Harrier…

The F135 has a lower bypass ratio than the Al-31F, believe it or not.

The question is, if the maximum speed in military power of the F-35 is of no consequence to national security, is the figure actually freely available. Have LM or the USAF published it yet?

SAAB weren’t long telling the world that the Gripen NG could “supercruise” at M1.2; i.e. on an engine (F414) perhaps half the power of the F135.

Do French still have products to sell. at most improving production qualities of Russian products.

Strange question. The French probably sell more helicopters around the world every year than the Russians, they certainly sell more airliners…

Found this on another website:

Malone: One, that’s right. And guess what? The clean configuration only requires military power to takeoff. Operators will have the option to not use afterburner in order to take off in a clean training configuration and so that potentially may help lower noise abatement in the surrounding community.

If you have a lot of ordnance on the wings, if you put it in its most heavy weight condition with let’s say external stores, then you’d have to use afterburner in order to takeoff. But if you’re in a clean configuration, even with internal stores, you would still be able to do a military power takeoff, which is not using the full thrust of the engine in order to make your takeoffs.

This basically helps solve some of the noise abatement issues that operationally you might have if you had to do afterburner takeoffs on every single takeoff.

http://www.sldinfo.com/moving-from-the-f-16-to-the-f-35a/

If you don’t need afterburner to take off with a full internal load, well, who knows what can be achieved at 40,000 feet with just full military power?
I presume when he says “even with internal stores” he’s talking about two 2,000 pounders, plus two amraams (for example)?