Did you read your grahics of the Mirage properly. All your claims for high-speed and altitude is thinking from the 50s to stay polite.
Do you know how they CLEAR the weapon flight and firing envelops?
Do you realise that these are the user’s manual as published by our Mindef at 400 copies?
What do YOU know?
In real combat fighters did seldom operate in the corner of their performance envelope,
Say WHO?
You? We actually were there to witness the pilots going OVER these limits by a fair margin and that, at ANY altitudes.
If YOU had known anything about it you would have realised that these were safety limits imposed by engine rpm, good weapon separation and designed structural loads NOT the obtainable performances of the aircrafts itself.
Learn French before trying to teach it to a Frenchman.
To go supersonic, you are in use of a burner and when doing so your endurance does shrink considerably and not all airforces do have an arial-tanker near by. 😉
Thanks for the lecture but for this kind of mission profile this theory of yours isn’t making the grade…
France is a much smaller country and they had to intercept threats at high altitude close to her borders.
No time for theories but maximum climb rates and the highers Mach possible before firing for an expected Snap-up performance of 10.000 ft with the Super-530.
The performances couldn’t be reached with a platform flying in subsonic, even not fully in Mid-supersonic, this is what kinetic energy MEANS, try revising your physics if comments from F-22 flight-test pilots don’t do the trick.
It is of secondary importance to which max speed a modern fighter is stressed.
ALL F-22 pilots say the opposite for all the good reasons.
At low level a clean Mirage or F-16 are limited to Mach 1,2 at all when a Rafale is limited to 750 kt or Mach 1,15.
Yet another way to spin the problem.
SPEED and altitudes are what matters, this translates into energy both ways.
France had and has not high altitude SAMs to intercept high-flying intruders.
True at the time wrong today.
With better AAMs even interceptors were limited to Mach 2 because above 40 kft they hardly did accelerate behind Mach 1,7 in an acceptable time without a rocket-booster f.e.
This is NOT true.
1) The Mirage III SEPR Rocket pack was never designed to increase maximum speed, it was limited to M 1.9 at any time.
2) It would have ran out of fuel before the aircraft reached its ceiling of 75.000 ft and the Mirage III performances at this altitude were done on the engine thrust only from speeds as low as 250 kt at 75.000ft (Lower limit for use of After Burner).
3) Maximum ceilling of 75.000 ft could be reached but the SEPR was limited to M1.9 whatever the Mach reached at this altitude.
4) At 50.000 ft, Mach 2.0 was achieved in level flight with the full complement of 3 AAMs, one Matra 530 and two AIM-9D Sidewinder.
5) All what the SEPR was doing was to increase climb rate, not Maximum Mach, it was all about balancing climb rate, minimum speed and engine rpm.
6) The aircraft flight envelop Maximum Mach was not the ultimate limit.
7) By end 1980 the Magic II was fully cleared for Mach 2.0 including firing, providing proper engine parameters from M 1.85 (rpm).
By 1975 the AdA wasn’t using these pack because they proved too difficult to prepare (acidic fuel) and offered too litle gain, they prefered to use the alternative tank and the extra fuel it provided.
Interceptors did not climb at supersonic speed nor did they chase something. They are just vectored against a thread head on, like the F-1 or Mirage 2000 with a Super 530 AAM against a high flying Mach 2,5+ threat or a MiG-25 to name it.
No one ever claimed climb to be made in supersonic, your comments are irrelevant.
A Mirage F 1 doing a 50 kft Mach 1,8 intercept to allow the Super 530 a snap-up profile with some succes of hitting is limited to ~260 km from base.
Limited to 40 kft and hitting Mach 2,2 briefly is ~315 km from base.
This what they were designed for just as F-16 was designed to reach 9.0 g and M 1.8 with 2 X AIM-9s and 50.000 ft is NOT the ceiling, it is only a “safety/without pressure suits” ceiling.
So the US claim about the importance of good transonic performance is correct.
Appart for the fact that these of F-35 are still slower than that of a delta wing with a 48* sweep angle, even with AAMs attached to it.
Even when a combat does start at supersonic it its down to high subsonic,
Actually you have NO clue,egress is not done slowing down, ifyou fire you want to deny your poopnent the opportunity to fire back, thus you will accelerate to get out of its engagement envelop..
when forced to maneuver, what is typical for most clashes the burner will be used to regain lost energy and not to accelerate to subsonic.
???? 😎
But that threat disappeared and the Flankers and Fulcrums still there have transformed into multi-role fighters loaden to high subsonic speed most of the time.
Is that SO? 😮
Similar fate of the Rafale and Typhoon, when transformed into more useful strikers at first.
Rafale was NEVER “transformed”, its aerodynamics are OPTIMISED for Air Combat between M 0.9 and M 1.6, its airframe stressed for M 2.0 Dash and 1.8 In A2A configuration with 6 AAMs all at 9g, M 2.0 sould be reached easly with 4 of them.
The high spezialized F-22 is become an endangered species by that.
Not because of its superior A2A performances NO we all know this, only because it canot be sold to the export and the US NEEDS to sell F-35.
If the still better flying performances of the Typhoon or Rafale do offset the other qualities of the F-35 is questionable.
What is VERY questionable is what you understand from what these F-22 pilots explains to the rest of us.
In my opinion those are not outclassed as claimed by LM and just a better buy when stealth is not a main demand. 😉
Lockheed Martin claims are just about US legacy fighters and already twisted to knots.
The F-4E were equipped with older AIM-7Es. Just a single attempt possible in a head on encounter.
We’re talking F-15 interceps try again later.
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