Over G…..The thrust vectoring improves roll rate in the Raptor not because of differential action (they only operate together up or down) but because the TV nozzles take work out of the horizontal slabs in pitch leaving them do do more for roll control.

The stated goal of the IHPTET program by phase III was to have demonstratable technology in jet engines that would double the effective performance of the “base level advanced turbofan” of the late 80’s, being the prototype engines for the ATF program, which became the Raptor. The F119 already has a generous specific thrust in terms of its airflow, but it is quite a heavy engine when coupled to its 2D vectoring nozzle. The goal was to double the thrust to weight of the baseline engine, so much of the technology isn’t in making a big heavy engine more powerful, its to take hopefully hundreds of pounts of weight out of the propulsion system, which has a huge impact on range, altitude, instantaneous and sustained turn rate, the less mass you have the better wing loading and specific excess power. The Air Force verion of the F-35 has a propulsion system weight of 6354 lbs, that’s a BIG engine and every pound of weight they can remove in future versions can only improve the thing. Same thing with the F119, the actual engine is slightly below its weight specification, but the nozzle despite having 3 generations of exerience with 2D vectoring nozzles, eg F-15 SMTD, YF-22 and finally EMD production model F/A-22 is above its weight specification. It is an effective but heavy technology and i don’t blame them for looking for other avenues in order to reduce weight.

One technology is called fluidic nozzles, simply speaking it uses bleed air from the engine to modify the engine exhaust profile such that there is effectively vectoring effect with next to no moving parts, greatly reducing weight and mechanical complexity. The computational fluid dynamics labs are working to understand the physics of the effect and are working under the aegis of IHPTET to bring it into fruition.

As for supercruise, i’ve seen many shots of in house weapons systems sims that Paul Metz flew, and while having quite a generous amount of fuel left and at 80 percent throttle was supercruising very quickly. A good program that has many unique shots including the CAD damage analysis model (amazing how little room there is for fuel inside that aircraft, it showed location and volumes of all fuel tanks, they’re tiny except for the one that sists behind the pilot leading aft to the intakes and the 2 saddle tanks that sit inside the tailbooms.) The program was on the Canadian Discovery channel and it was called Flightpath. If you can buy it do so, despite being dated somewhat by time the interviews are very clear specifically on supercruise performance and RCS limitations.

You’re right there, typical cadmium plated tools would rot the fasteners right off once they got up to temperature, marking airframe pieces was equally difficult because common items like felt pens were corrosive, even a graphite pencil etched the titanium. They literally threw all tools into a vat which stripped off all cadmium and other coatings so they’d be safe.

Chlorine in city water also had an effect, welds failed that were done in summer but those done in wintertime, that were cooled with non chlorinated winter water held up fine. Fluorine for the same reason, the drinking water had trace amounts to fight tooth decay so they had to find sources which didn’t have that contamination.

True, there is no sound on that file. Not that one expected sound on an old archival film of flight testing.

Somebody needs to get the pics and video of the super STOL Herc they planned to use for rescuing the American hostages in Iran over 20 years ago. The one video clip i saw of it of the first STOL test the lift rockets fired prematurely and it was a write off.

To make an analogy US Navy types used to see a radar return on a wake but not see the ship and mutter “Ah, there’s the Kirov”, it had some limited low observablility features on it, in the same way stealth aircraft CAN be detected by a combination of very low frequency radar which can see it coming generally, and a very high frequency radar which doesn’t detect the aircraft but rather the turbulence the airframe and engines produce, similar to how doppler radar can detect tornados. The SR-71 Blackbird i’m told when it lit the afterburners, the plume, the enormous energy it put into the air and I’m not talking IR, but just the pure mass airflow velocity delta, it was very detectable by radar.

Active cancellation was talked about during a 60 Minutes clip a decade ago, it has it.