Gotta admit, the Kaveri is a pretty big step. There’s a big difference to maintaining your engines, even producing spares for an existing engine design to designing, testing and manufacturing a modern combat engine. To go from zero to late 80’s technology is a bit of a jump and i don’t blame them for stumbling. The pics i’ve seen show blisk fan stages…..and it took the west some years to perfect that, the aeromechanical differences between a conventionally bladed disk, with each blade inserted individually and one that’s entirely integral are quite marked. They need better computer modelling, better test facilities and probably more money than they’re willing to spare. Single crystal metallurgy all by itself is hard, not to mention the technology to integrate cooling passages into the blades/vanes and the thermal barrier coatings. It’s a pretty high temp engine, the pressure ratio is pretty modest but heat is heat. When something goes wrong at 15000 rpm, it goes real wrong, real quick. To give a comparision, the F414 engine in the F/A-18E for instance even though it in a sense a new engine design it has a lot of basic design features of the F404, an engine that had its own growing pains. The parts of any fighter aircraft most likely to cause trouble are of course the bits that move…..and a jet engine spins quite briskly indeed.

It’s tested with a Y inlet configuration that’s nominally equivelent to the real thing. So your guess on installed thrust as compared to bench thrust is as good as mine.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-29-2004/0002261456&EDATE=

F135 progressing well.

Heh, a rip off of F-16.net’s Lockheed Martin waranty card.

http://www.f-16.net/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=14&pid=1

At least give credit.

Couple magazine articles have that information, so does a copy of Airpower Journal.

Airforce Today May 1997 has the quote

“The F-22’s pitch rate is so fast that it is inhibited by a soft stop in the aft movement of the sidestick. Pullling the stick through the stop overrides a limit in pitch acceleration and is considered best for the pilot to be aware the F-22 is going to respond very fast. Lockheed Martin engineers and pilots have named the maximum pitch rate regime “Mongo Mode” in tribute to the horse punching heavy from Blazing Saddles”

Fall 1999 issue of World Airpower Journal has the same quote, both articles (longer in the WAJ) were written by Bill Sweetman. In essense its accessed through the time honored way, but unlike a Cobra for instance, its high pitch transients are under full control, not just by a quirk of aerodynamics to bring it back. A recent F-22 Combined Test Force video showed 200 deg/sec rollrates…..ouch.

Incidentally that Antonov is one of my favorite aircraft, uses Coanda effect exhaust blowing for short takeoff. During the demonstration phase of the new transport aircraft competition in the US which the C-17 resulted the opposing aircraft used a similar approach. The C-17 uses under flap blowing instead. Anybody know which approach was more efficient?

The Raptor flight suit is custom for the aircraft, i think it is different to Combat Edge.

http://webs.lanset.com/aeolusaero/Articles/tlss_system_article.htm

The F-22 suit has been tested to 60 thousand.