Overall program costs are a significant issue, if you have to overhaul your engines twice as often as other operators that doesn’t say much for online availability and combat readiness. You better have a lot of psare engines around to plug and play with while the maintainance group does the overhauls. Even the best western engines have hot sections that last half the time of the cold sections and it affects them to a certain extent. Same with airframe life, if you have to replace your aircraft twice as often as your possibly hostile neighbors that’s a drain too. It’s compromise based on what’s affordable now and what’s available in the future. In some countries maybe short lifespan jets aren’t all that bad, they’re expendable as they’re not worth upgrading systems as much. Give 10 years and they’ll be looking for a better deal on a newer design from another vendor.

How about the ace of aces Eric “Bubi” Hartmann, a man so detested by the Russians they threw him in jail after the war for for a decade for shooting down so many of their pilots.

Hehe, somebody beat me to it.

Any of the ME-163 pilots would do as well, that was one evil aircraft. The hydrazine/alcohol mix and concentrated hydrogen peroxide made it probably the most dangerous plane ever made to the pilot. The fuel tanks even were right in the cockpit area, they had to basically sponge one pilot out as he had melted from the corrosive fuels.

If you hard core Raptor fans haven’t got enough eye candy to enjoy go to:

http://www.f22-raptor.com/media/index.html

Click on Video Gallery and a box comes up, 3 high quality Raptor vids full of tailslides, missile tests, manufacture of airframe and engine, and climate hangar testing.

Go nuts.

There are other vids there too, quicktime but they’re not as good, production improvement and first flight video clip from LM Georgia plant.

Nice pic of the Sukhoi Fitters, i have a pic of a USAF test squadron operated one somewhere.

Ah, the spook plane, not many of the old guys left is there, Mele Vojvodich died last year.
Was nice to see them get their due publically after so long, the recognition for doing what nobody else would or could do. The SR got the glory, the A-12 led the way.

The article itself was pretty clear, do some searches online, or read Ben Rich’s autobiography, he said the same thing, the Blackbird propulsion system was highly optimised and was very efficient despite the J58 being in continuous afterburner. The engine did act like a quasi turboramjet, but the intake statistic is from multiple sources.

Read the online pilot manual too, has everything from compressor inlet temp limits, inlet spike scheduling, allowable epeeds, limitations during climb and decent, it had a profile in which it operated, and in that environment it worked very well. The actual J58 engine certainly ran during cruise, it was not shut off, but it was used primarily during cruise as an air inducer. You can’t say the Blackbird has an engine, it has an integrated propulsion system, the spike, the engine itself the bypass doors and dump vents, the nozzle all worked together as a whole.

You have to remember the F136 engines design cycle started much later than the Pratt engine, its internal aero is much more advanced, it uses forward swept compressor aerofoils for instance, that’s right from GE aero engines, its the first engine designed to have that kind of architecture. Allison is the master of transpiration cooling of metal products with its Lamilloy product. The F135, while advanced, is more or less just an F119 derivative with a larger fan, uses Pratts Superblade and Supervane product, the differences between these 2 engines is much like the ATF competition prototype engines, except the new GE engine does not have variable cycle this time i believe.

😮 😮 😮 nothing else i can say, my old man is a sleeve valve freak, fired this his way and he just about ate his fork.